A virtual private network, or VPN, such as Hotspot Shield, is a useful tool for safeguarding your privacy. They shield our online activities from prying eyes on unsecure networks, as well as ISPs who sell our data. Hotspot Shield is simple to use, comes with a large number of additional capabilities, and outperforms the competition in our performance testing. However, the main VPN product is costly, and the company's privacy standards are compounded by its choice to finance its free VPN with advertisements.
PROS
- Hefty services bundle
- Transparent, helpful privacy policies
- Excellent speed test scores
- Slick, smart desktop app
CONS
- Expensive
- Free version supported by targeted ads
- No transparency report or audit
- Limited OpenVPN support
Features and Pricing
Hotspot Shield is priced at $12.99 a month, which is much more than the industry average of $10.10 per month. This is where I discuss value and how charging more than average isn't always a negative thing if the firm compensates for it in some way. Because your Hotspot Shield membership includes a Pango account, which allows you access to the 1Password password manager, RoboShield call blocker, and Identity Guard identity theft protection service, the scenario becomes a little more convoluted. To give you an idea of the price, 1Password alone is $3.99 per month.
That's a lot of bang for your buck, putting the Pango array of tools on par with a security suite that includes a VPN or a privacy-focused application like Ghostery Midnight. I haven't tried any of the other Pango-bundled services, but PCMag has evaluated a few of them. This review concentrates on Hotspot Shield as a separate product, although this substantial bundle is tough to overlook.
You may also choose for a one-year subscription, which costs $95.88. Again, that's a lot of money when compared to the industry average of around $73, but the Pango account offers a unique value proposition. A three-year plan is also available for $107.64. However, I recommend that readers avoid long-term subscriptions at least at initially. You won't know if a VPN will work for you unless you give it a go. So, take advantage of the limited-time offer and then upgrade if the service meets your needs.
Other standalone VPNs are far less expensive than Hotspot Shield. Mullvad, our Editors' Choice for inexpensive VPNs, is only €5 ($5.55 USD at the time of writing), while a restricted ProtonVPN membership is only $5 per month.
Nothing beats free, and Hotspot Shield is one of the few free VPN services available. Hotspot Shield's free membership restricts you to only a few VPN servers and 500MB of bandwidth per day. Even still, that's a lot more liberal than TunnelBear's free membership restriction of 500MB per month. Hotspot Shield's free Android version, on the other hand, is monetized. For further information on the privacy consequences of this approach, see the section below. ProtonVPN provides the greatest free service I've come across. While the number of servers you may use is limited, there are no bandwidth restrictions, making it the only free VPN we've found with no restrictions. I utilized a monthly subscription for this Hotspot Shield evaluation.
A Hotspot Shield membership can be purchased using a major credit card or PayPal. Other providers provide more private possibilities. Private Internet Access takes gift cards for locations like Starbucks and Mullvad accepts cash addressed to its corporate headquarters. Cryptocurrency support is pretty widespread among VPNs, although Hotspot Shield does not support it.
A Hotspot Shield membership allows you to utilize five devices at once, which is standard in the business. However, this appears to be changing. Several competitors now provide more, and some have removed this restriction entirely. The number of simultaneous connections is unlimited with Avira Phantom VPN, Encrypt.me VPN, Ghostery Midnight, Surfshark VPN, and Windscribe VPN.
Hotspot Shield, like practically every other VPN service, allows you to use P2P file sharing and BitTorrent on its network. It also has a split tunneling capability, which allows you to choose what traffic should go via the tunnel and what should go through the open. Hotspot Shield is unique in that it allows you to choose domains that may be visited without a VPN connection, which is useful for streaming video or using a bank that regularly bans VPN traffic. You may also choose which applications should and should not use the encrypted connection.
Despite Hotspot Shield's Pango collection of services, that's the end of the list for other VPN and network utilities. The Tor anonymization network is not accessible using Hotspot Shield. Multi-hop connections, which pass your traffic through a second server for further protection, are not included. Both NordVPN and ProtonVPN have these unique, if little used, capabilities.
Protocols for Virtual Private Networks VPN
You may construct an encrypted tunnel for your communications in a variety of ways. You won't have to bother about selecting a VPN protocol for the most part, but I love firms that provide customers that choice.
Hotspot Shield developed its own protocol, Catapult Hydra, and utilized it entirely to power the service until recently. To be clear, Catapult Hydra did not invent a new encryption protocol in the process of developing it. Because an unknown defect may be used to break a new encryption technology, it would require extensive testing. Catapult Hydra encrypts data using the Open SSL library, according to a business official, and the new protocol is merely "an improvement of the transport protocol." Hydra, according to the business, provides many channels for data to pass through in order to increase speed and dependability.
While other VPN providers have promoted their own protocols, Hotspot Shield uses Hydra nearly exclusively. On Windows and iOS, IKEv2, a safe and contemporary solution, is available. OpenVPN, my preferred open-source protocol, is only accessible on routers.
Although Hydra does not appear to be a security problem, I prefer services that follow open-source industry standards. To that end, I'm pleased to see that Hotspot Shield will be implementing OpenVPN and IKEv2 throughout its platform. However, WireGuard, a new open-source protocol that is the heir-apparent to OpenVPN, will most certainly displace both protocols. WireGuard has been completely deployed by Mullvad, and NordVPN is in the process of doing so as well. Hotspot Shield is on the right track, but it may soon be overtaken by the competition.
Locations of Servers and Servers
In most cases, you should connect to the VPN server nearest to your physical location. If you're going far from home or need to fake your location, though, you'll want a VPN service with a wide range of possibilities. Hotspot Shield claims to have servers in "more than 80" countries. On the company's website, there are around 99 total locations. That's a good variety, and it's only a bit behind ExpressVPN's 94 countries supported.
The range of places served by Hotspot Shield is very noteworthy. It has servers in four African nations, whereas the majority of the competitors does not. It also maintains a number of server facilities in Central and South America, which receive minimal assistance from other businesses. Hotspot Shield has servers in China, Russia, Turkey, and Vietnam, all of which have oppressive internet rules.
In my personal research, I discovered that there is no apparent link between a VPN provider's number of servers and superior customer service. The number of servers a VPN has is largely a reflection of the number of users it has. Hotspot Shield, on the other hand, has a decent 1,800+ servers accessible. ExpressVPN, Private Internet Access, and TorGuard VPN each have more than 3,000 servers, while CyberGhost and NordVPN have more than 5,000.
Virtual servers, which are software-defined, are used by many VPN providers. Many virtual servers can be hosted on a single piece of server hardware, and those virtual servers can be configured to seem to be located anywhere other than the real host computer. This helps some firms to better safeguard their server infrastructure by swiftly spinning up new servers to handle sudden increases in demand. A virtual server that protects a risky zone can be securely placed elsewhere.
The issue is that not all VPN providers disclose which servers are physical and which are virtual, making it difficult to determine where your data is truly travelling. According to Hotspot Shield, it exclusively uses hardware servers.
AnchorFree Hotspot Shield Protects Your Privacy
As virtual private networks (VPNs) become a more popular tool for protecting your online privacy, more attention is being paid to what VPN firms are doing to safeguard your privacy. After all, these businesses might track your online activities just as much as ISPs do. After evaluating the company's information, I discovered nothing that appeared to be obviously malicious, although more might be done to protect consumers' privacy.
Pango Inc. owns and operates Hotspot Shield VPN. The firm has offices in the United States and Switzerland. Residents in the United States are consumers of the former, and are so subject to US law. Other businesses employ out-of-country headquarters as a safeguard against government and law enforcement requests for information.
It's not rare for a corporation to not own all of its servers. Hotspot Shield staff configure and operate the servers, according to company reps. To prevent manipulation, several VPN firms, such as ExpressVPN, have switched to RAM-only servers. To safeguard its Public Key Infrastructure, Hotspot Shield uses many levels of protection, including needing three people to open its Root Certificate Authority.
Many VPN providers have started providing third-party audits of their services in order to prove their security and privacy credentials. However, they aren't always beneficial. The results of an audit have yet to be released by Hotspot Shield VPN. The corporation also refuses to release a transparency report that would detail law enforcement inquiries and whether or not the company responded. While the firm is currently quite open about its operations, it should make a concerted effort to accomplish both and make them readily available to customers. While neither is a guarantee of safety, they do give a level of transparency.
With Hotspot Shield, two papers protect your privacy. The first is a more general guideline that applies to Pango's whole operation. The second is only concerned with the VPN service. I examined both of them. It's really rather difficult to reconcile the two, as the former seems lot more ominous and suspicious, while the latter sounds more rational and assured. I'm more concerned with the VPN policy, but Pango has to do some effort to ensure that the two papers coexist in a reasonable manner. To its credit, the company's paperwork are quite clear. Even if I don't always agree with what the corporation says it's doing, I understand what it's doing and why it's doing it.
According to the firm, it does not save any information on customers' surfing habits. Your IP address is collected in order to match you to the best VPN server, but it is encrypted during usage and erased at the conclusion of your VPN session. According to the corporation, it is not possible to link activity on a certain server to a single individual who is using that server. This is acceptable and standard.
In order to enforce its regulations, the corporation keeps track of how long each session lasts and how much data is consumed. It also records device hashes (i.e., anonymous identifiers), although they are unrelated to user behavior. According to the corporation, it is required to gather this information because the product does not need customers to register an account in order to use it. I understand the logic for these methods and the precautions in place, but other firms may provide services without them.
Hotspot Shield also logs the domains—not whole URLs—of sites browsed by each VPN server, along with a timestamp, according to company spokespeople. I'm informed there's no way to link this data to specific users, and it's just done to enhance service. Although several companies use similar procedures, I'd like to see Hotspot Shield come up with new ways to secure customer data.
The most challenging part of both documents is the free VPN provided by the firm. Representatives from the firm have emphasised in all of my talks with them over the years that they have a moral commitment to provide a free VPN product, but that they must pay for it with adverts on the Android version of their program. This is done through ad network SDKs and Google Ads, which both collect user data to target adverts. To its credit, the firm is quite transparent about how this works, and even includes features in the free version to block information sharing and de-target adverts.
The firm has gone to tremendous pains to mitigate the privacy risks that come with monetizing its free edition, but the choice to commercialize the free software in the first place was taken by the corporation. A far more straightforward option would be to just stop serving advertising.
You may argue that the free Hotspot Shield Android app's targeted advertising is no worse than any other ad-supported software or even surfing most websites, and that the privacy cost is fairly balanced against free VPN safety for everyone. However, this is less enticing when compared to ProtonVPN and TunnelBear, which both circumvent the problem by not employing advertisements in their free membership apps. Only one other product, Steganos Online Shield, featured adverts in its product among the firms that replied to my study. Because a VPN is designed to protect your privacy, I feel it should be held to a higher standard than your typical mobile game. Paying for the app is the simplest method to prevent this privacy issue.
I always suggest readers to review a company's policy and determine whether or not they are comfortable with it. Security businesses operate on trust, therefore if you don't believe you can trust them, you should look for someone who can.
Hotspot Shield in Action
On an Intel NUC Kit NUC8i7BEH (Bean Canyon) PC running the newest version of Windows 10, I had no issue installing Hotspot Shield.
Other VPN apps don't look as well on Windows 10 as the Hotspot Shield client does. It's a clean, dark blue window with cyan accents and a contemporary look. This is significant, in my opinion, since the appearance of a service will most likely influence how we feel about it. When you initially open up, you'll see a huge button to connect to the VPN, as well as a menu in the lower right corner that tells which server you'll be connected to. This method appeals to me since it provides clients a specific action to perform and makes it apparent what will happen.
The main screen displays upload and download rates, latency, the load on the server you're using, and your apparent IP address after you've joined. A stylised depiction of the world is depicted on a map in the top left. From the menu above, you may choose a new location. There are other panels that display how much data you consume on a daily basis and what network connection you're using. A Stop button at the bottom of the app is easy to overlook. The VPN will be disconnected as a result of this action.
You'll see a grid of available server locations with the flag of that area when you attempt to pick a new location. The different server locations are quickly found thanks to a search bar at the top. You'll be able to click in and pick where you'd want to connect if an area has more than one location. For example, the United States area has 20 cities. This is adequate, but I prefer services that allow you to select particular servers and that give statistics on the current use load of a server or area.
A left rail of icons grants access to account information, FAQs, and other information. Note that you can activate the other services in your Pango account from the Hotspot Shield app.
The Settings section is fairly light. Anyone looking to tweak their network connection may be better served by Private Internet Access. There are still some useful tools. You can designate which URL domains should be allowed to travel in the clear, making it easier to access services that frequently block VPN access. You can also specify which apps you'd like to send data outside the VPN tunnel.
You expect your IP address and DNS information to be kept private when you use a VPN. I use the DNS Leak Test program to make sure that's the case. My checks revealed that my IP address had been updated and that my DNS data was safe. It's important to note that I only tested one server. Other servers might be set up wrongly.
Netflix and Hotspot Shield
Even if you're connected to a VPN server in the United States, using a VPN often stops you from streaming Netflix. People who fake their location in order to get Netflix material that isn't accessible in a certain geographic region have been targeted heavily by the streaming service.
Fortunately, I experienced no problems watching Netflix videos when connecting to a server in the United States. Regrettably, this may not always be the case. When searching to buy a VPN, bear in mind that services that function one day may be restricted the next.
In addition to VPNs
Hotspot Shield claims to block over 50 million known dangerous URLs in addition to safeguarding your traffic. That's a nice touch, but it's a technique that your browser accomplishes just as well, if not better. I haven't put Hotspot Shield's site blocking to the test.
The services supplied by Pango are the main benefit that Hotspot Shield provides consumers in addition to VPN protection. It just dwarfs the competition—at least for the time being. RememBear, a standalone tracker blocker and password manager from TunnelBear, now available. NordVPN recently expanded its offering with NordLocker, a password manager and encrypted file manager. Almost majority of the other services, on the other hand, demand a separate subscription. Pango is a one-stop shop for all your needs.
Performance and Speed
VPNs function by adding extra distance to the way that your web traffic must travel, which has a detrimental impact on your surfing experience. I do a series of tests on the Ookla SpeedTest website to get a sense of the impact of using a VPN, and I notice a % difference between test results with and without the VPN. In the aptly called post How We Test VPNs, you may learn more about my testing, including its limitations.
Hotspot Shield is the quickest VPN accessible, according to my tests, and has the least influence on download speeds and latency. Its download performance, in particular, outperform the majority of the competitors. Surfshark VPN, on the other hand, is a close second to Hotspot Shield. Surfshark's download scores were only a hair below Hotspot Shield's, while Surfshark's upload score is much higher than any other provider.
The graphic below shows how the findings are broken out. This graph depicts the nine services whose scores in all areas were equal to or better than the median. A total of 40 items were evaluated.
In general, I don't think speed is the most significant consideration when selecting a VPN. A speedy download is significantly less valuable than price, privacy, and trustworthiness. It's also worth emphasizing that my experiments aren't intended to be the last word on the subject of speed. After all, network conditions may shift on a dime. My tests are more like a picture of a moment in time.
Other Platforms with Hotspot Shield
Apps for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows are available from Hotspot Shield. Hotspot shield applications are also supported by a number of streaming devices, including Android TV and Amazon Fire Stick. For Linux, there's also a command line application.
In addition, Hotspot Shield offers a Chrome browser extension. This simply protects your browser traffic and does not employ the same encryption as the Hotspot Shield desktop application.
You may also use the program instead of manually configuring your computer to use a Hotspot Shield VPN connection. However, this is a time-consuming operation that needs regular maintenance. It also won't offer you access to all of the paid-for features of the service. In general, I would advise against it.
The firm gives instructions on how to set up Hotspot Shield on your router. This has the benefit of safeguarding all of the devices on your network while not depleting your restricted number of concurrent connections. This method, however, does not strike me as particularly practical.
Is Your Hotspot Protected?
Hotspot Shield is exceptional in a variety of ways. Its client software is sleek and simple to operate. The service performed admirably in our speed testing, and it offers a large number of server locations in areas that are generally overlooked by the rest of the business. The integrated Pango account offers more features than its competitors, including a VPN, making it equivalent to antivirus software packages. The app's ability to define certain websites you want to load without a VPN connection is also incredibly handy.
However, the service is not cheap. While the Pango service makes a compelling value case to justify the price, it's easy to envision that not every consumer will find it enticing. A free membership to another password manager isn't much of an incentive if you already have one.
Hotspot Shield VPN, like our fellow Editors' Choice winners Mullvad VPN, ProtonVPN, and TunnelBear VPN, checks many of the criteria that would qualify it for an Editors' Choice title. However, the company's choice to commercialize its free VPN service on Android with adverts means it will fall short. We don't believe the firm is doing anything nefarious, and placing adverts in an app is routine practice, but a service that claims to prioritize your privacy must be held to a higher standard. Hotspot Shield's visibility is further lowered by the lack of audits and transparency reports.
Hotspot Shield is a fantastic product, especially if you subscribe to it. If you require a free VPN and can limit your bandwidth under 500MB per day, you can get by with their free Android app if you're ready to give up some privacy.