![]() Hotspot Shield's Privacy Policy includes some reassuring details on the company's logging practices, as follows: 'Our VPN products do not log or otherwise record IP addresses, device identifiers, or any other form of identifier in combination with your VPN browsing activity. Save a chunk of cash with our exclusive Hotspot Shield offerĪccording to its privacy policy, Hotspot Shield does not keep any logs on its users (Image credit: Hotspot Shield) Logging.Which, translated, means it uses lots of top-notch encryption technologies which are more than enough to keep you safe. It's based on TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.2, with AES-256 and AES-128 encryption, 2048-bit RSA certificates for server authentication and keys exchanged via Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDHE) for perfect forward secrecy (keys last for only one session, with new ones generated next time). Hotspot Shield does explain a little of how Hydra works, though. Unlike the open source OpenVPN, WireGuard or ExpressVPN's Lightway, the code isn't available to the public, so experts can't check for privacy issues. Hotspot Shield's Hydra protocol is more difficult to figure out, because it's the company's own proprietary technology. This can be hugely complicated, but just seeing that a service supports a secure protocol like OpenVPN gives some reassuring feedback about its safety. Understanding a VPN's security usually starts with looking at its protocol support, encryption and authentication details. Hotspot Shield allows you to choose your preferred VPN protocol from its Settings menu (Image credit: Hotspot Shield) Privacy There's no Bitcoin payment option, unfortunately, but you can use a card or PayPal, and if anything goes wrong later you're protected by an unusually generous 45-day money-back guarantee. If you'll use all those licenses, that translates to $2.40 per user per month. Hotspot Shield does have one handy option in the Family plan, which gets you coverage for five people, with five devices each, for only $19.99 billed monthly, or $11.99 on the annual plan. Most providers charge around $3 to $5 a month for annual products, and even less for longer-term contracts ( Private Internet Access offers a three-year plan covering up to 10 devices for $2.19 a month). That's at the high-end of the normal VPN price range. The paid VPN starts at $12.99 billed monthly, dropping to $7.99 on the annual plan to protect up to five devices. ![]() There’s also a big plus – there are no annoying ‘per month’ bandwidth limits, and you can use it as much as you like – but unless you really have no VPN budget at all, it’s impossible to recommend. Hotspot Shield's free VPN plan offers one location (US), almost no features, no email or live chat support, and a host of annoying ads on the mobile apps. Hotspot Shield does release transparency reports ( the most recent in 2018 ), however, we'd prefer third-party assessments.Īs a silver lining of sorts, the provider did pass our VPN leak tests for IPv6, DNS, and WebRTC without issue.You can either pay by card or PayPal (Image credit: Hotspot Shield) Hotspot Shield pricing The provider could quiet most of our concerns fairly easily by submitting to an independent security audit, as some of its competitors ( NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and TunnelBear) have done. Further dampening the mood is that the service uses some trackers for analytical purposes. All the same, they're more invasive than necessary. Hotspot Shield notes that none of these logs contain information about you, your account, or your surfing activity. More red flags: According to Aura's privacy policy, all of its affiliates (including Pango, and by extension, Hotspot Shield) collect information, despite the latter's "No-Logs" promise. However, since this protocol isn't open-source, more questions are raised about its exact functionality and mode of encryption, than is the case with OpenVPN or WireGuard. On paper, encryption seems to be airtight, with Catapult Hydra also used by other VPNs, such as Bitdefender (which claimed the title of best antivirus software in our ranking). " Our steadfast security, inspired by the software defined perimeter (SDP) model pioneered by the US Department of Defense, supports both 128-bit AES and 256-bit AES encryption, and we use 128-bit AES encryption as a standard." In its support area, Hotspot Shield discussed its approach to encryption: Still, so far as data privacy is concerned, you'd have to be born yesterday to blindly trust a Silicon Valley-based tech company. Since our last assessment, support for IKEv2 has been integrated, somewhat rectifying this. Because Hotspot Shield primarily relies upon a proprietary protocol (Catapult Hydra), users are even more dependent upon its security and privacy guarantees than usual.
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