Haven’t used NextDNS but have used PiHole and currently running AdGuard Home. But if you are paying $20/year just for DNS encryption/blocking, you may consider upgrading to Mullvad which gives you DNS Ad blocking but also IP anonymity, tunneling etc.
The two are not the same; with NextDNS I can choose to enable logging and see all requests from each device, as well as allowlist/denylist any domain/subdomain I want.
Except all of these third party VPN and DNS type services are literally NSA honeypots and privacy nightmares. I get that you have to do DNS lookups somewhere, but I'm not going to make it ridiculously trivial for a bad actor to scoop up all that data conveniently in a central location.
It is up to you to decide what you believe, but Mullvad is a swiss company that does not ask for your personal information for signup and even allows payment in cash. You hurt your own credibility each time you make an unqualified claim without looking into it.
NSA tapped the phones of the German Prime Minister.
They are the same spooks that intercept router gear in transit, flashed it with secret firmware, then put it back in the mail. Like, of course the United Stated Intelligence apparatus, agencies with an unlimited budget, a national security mission, and is completely exempt from all laws has 100% capability to spy on some tiny company in Sweden.
I agree there's a very high chance they and the majority of other VPNs are - or if not the US some other intel org.
The US government has form (what was that early crypto machine they sold to allies and it was backdoored?), and they'd be foolish to miss such a strategically obvious play.
