![]() ![]() It’s frustrating that we didn’t find any claim by Hotspot Shield that they keep zero logs. This is because of the strict data retention laws of the country. Loggingīeing based in the US is never good for any VPN. We are happy to see that they have improved on this. They also allowed advertising agencies to collect information from users to target them with ads. Not long ago, they had some worrying statements that implied that they stored user information, but never associated it with user activity. We never share your personal information with unaffiliated third parties other than service providers that we use for internal technology and business operations (such as website hosting, payment processing, data analysis, information technology, customer service, and email delivery).” “Our product will never store, log, or share your true IP address, and we always delete your true IP address after your VPN session is closed. This is not the kind of information one would like to get before or even after subscribing to a VPN,so we headed to the VPN’s Privacy Section to see what they say. We were very pleased to find that Hotspot VPN has improved their privacy policy. It also said that, “Further analysis of Hotspot Shield’s reverse-engineered source code revealed that the VPN uses more than five different third-party tracking libraries, contradicting statements that Hotspot Shield ensures anonymous and private web browsing.” In a study published in August 2017, Washington DC-based Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) said that Hotspot Shield VPN “violates its ‘anonymous browsing’ promise by intercepting and redirecting web traffic to partner websites, including advertising companies.” They have faced some issues of concern regarding the VPN’s ability to keep to keep you anonymous and private. Hotspot Shield VPN privacy has been talked about a lot after the August 2017 study was published. They also have IP leak protection and a Kill Switch to boost your security. They claim that it’s very secure, but because we can’t verify it, you’ll have to take Hotspot Shield’s word for it. In its stead, they provide a closed source encryption protocol called Catapult Hydra. Hotspot Shield does not offer the industry standard and Open Source Technology Improvement Fund-audited OpenVPN encryption. This is pretty strong security, although most top VPNs use the even more secure 256-bit AES encryption. We’ll also mention a few things about Hotspot Shield VPN Free, which has a considerable user base.įor security, Hotspot Shield VPN encrypts all your traffic using TLS 1.2 with perfect forward secrecy (ECDHE), 128-bit AES data encryption, and HMAC message authentication. In this Hotspot Shield VPN review, we’ll focus more on Hotspot Shield VPN Premium and see how it stacks up against the fierce competition in the industry. Hotspot Shield VPN offers two plans: a free version and an Premium version. We were happy to see that these policies have since been updated, and Hotspot Shield now clearly states that they do not partake in those activities anymore. Hotspot Shield used to do this while hiding behind confusing privacy policies. It found that the VPN injects advert cookies and collaborates with third parties to target ads to a user. Hotspot Shield, did however receive big criticism following a study done by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Its client is used by over 500 million users around the world, making it one of the most popular VPNs. This VPN company was founded in 2008, and since then it has gained an extensive international user base. Quite why there is an option to turn it off is hard to imagine: hiding your IP address is fundamental to any VPN service.Hotspot Shield VPN is a product of AnchorFree, a California based company. Oddly there is an option to ‘Prevent IP leak’ which is, at least, enabled by default. The Windows app defaults to ‘protect unsafe Wi-Fi ‘ option rather than protect all Wi-Fi networks, but this is one of the few settings you can change. ![]() Just bear in mind that because of the proprietary protocol, you can’t use HSS with TOR and there’s no ‘double VPN’ option that you get with some rivals. Ultimately, this way of doing things is good for anyone who doesn’t want to get bogged down with options and settings: the only thing you ever have to do is choose a country and you don’t even need to do that most of the time. We do not keep logs of your online activities and never associate any domains, or applications that you access while the Hotspot Shield VPN is connected with you, your device, or your email.” It goes on to clarify that this approach doesn’t compromise your privacy or security, stating “The routing rules and logic all happen in real time on the client, ensuring that information about user browsing is not visible and is not logged on Hotspot Shield servers. ![]()
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