11/10/2023 0 Comments Hotspot shield for chromeThat's why you've seen top-tier privacy players like ExpressVPN (save for two virtual servers), Surfshark and NordVPN move to 100% RAM-only servers in the recent past. While they can potentially create more speed for a service, virtual servers are generally considered less secure than bare metal. The free version of our Hotspot Shield solution openly and clearly states that it is funded by ads, however, we intercept no traffic with neither the free nor the premium version of our solutions."ĪnchorFree went on to offer annual transparency reports, although their value is still up to the reader.Īnother privacy issue is that we don't know which of Hotspot's servers are virtual and which are bare metal (or physical), and we don't know where each of these servers are located. When the story broke, Hotspot's then-parent company, AnchorFree, denied the researchers' findings in an email to Ars Technica: "We never redirect our users' traffic to any third-party resources instead of the websites they intended to visit. Carnegie Mellon University researchers found the company not only had a baked-in backdoor used to secretly sell data to third-party advertising networks, but it also employed five different tracking libraries, and actually redirected user traffic to secret servers. In 2017 Hotspot was hit with an FTC complaint for allegedly over-the-top privacy violations in serving ads. Hotspot's response was offered once the vulnerability was fixed. The 2021 incident was preceded by another privacy scandal in 2018, when a researcher found Hotspot leaking information about users' Wi-Fi networks. On Windows machines, you can find your IPv6 options under your Wi-Fi Properties menu, in the Networking tab. While you're at it, enable Hotspot's kill switch in its settings menu before using it (it's disabled by default). Windows users should make sure they've disabled IPv6 on their machines (it's enabled by default on Windows) before using HotSpot. While testing Hotspot with a default configuration Windows machine, my IPv6 was exposed while my IPv4 was not. These websites come to this wrong conclusion because the DNS request is not going through the VPN tunnel and don't check that the request is encrypted," the site says. It's true that some online websites that detect DNS leaks indicate that there may be a leak with our VPN. We encrypt the DNS request and that prevents DNS leaks. "Hotspot Shield does not leak when making DNS requests. , that appeal to authority isn't much of an argument against greater transparency. Although Hotspot touts the use of its protocol by big names in security like While the protocol is a core component of its incredible speeds, it's still not made available for public audits like its open source alternative protocol, OpenVPN. Hotspot uses its closed-source, proprietary Catapult Hydra protocol. Hotspot Shield has an undeniably dodgy past, its protocol is closed source, and its data collection and privacy policy are concerning. If, however, you're less concerned with quickly streaming media and more focused on finding a VPN with a strong reputation for privacy, you should choose a different VPN. Pain points: Excessive logging, lack of audits, closed source protocol.Hotspot Shield offers incredibly fast speeds for a VPN, but it's privacy policies are lacking. Overall non-VPN speeds averaged about 250 Mbps. Singapore tested ahead of Australian, however, where speeds struggled at an average 142 Mbps. Although Singapore speeds reached a peak of 270 Mbps, their average was just 167 Mbps due to wild swings in speeds, where HotSpot's overall slowest score of 30 Mbps was clocked. US speeds peaked at 348 Mbps, but averaged just 183 Mbps overall. , torrenting, browsing, streaming - speed-dependent services won't be slowed down for Hotspot Shield users in the UK.Īs usual with European connection speeds, high scores in France were balanced by low scores in Germany for an average of 203 Mbps. If my tests were solely based on connections to servers in the UK, we'd have a new speed champion: Speed loss on London connections was under 8%, with a satisfying 230 Mbps average download speed and a peak speed test of 349 Mbps. A 26% speed loss puts it in second place in our speed rankings, falling behind Surfshark - which lost just 16.9% of its speed the last time I tested it - and knocking ExpressVPN down to third place with a 51.8% speed loss at last measurement.
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