Is Hola VPN safe to use? If you are unfamiliar with the famously free VPN or just going online to read reviews, our advice is that Hola VPN is unsafe and you should stay away from Hola VPN.
Hola VPN claims to have over 177 million users and it is free forever. Does not that make Hola VPN possibly the best VPN service that we can ask for? Don't we all want a free VPN that just works? Unfortunately the answer to "Is Hola VPN safe to use", s a big and surprising - 'NO'.
Hola VPN is consistently rated as one of the worst VPNs and this is not surprising to us. Under its hood, are many Hola VPN issues that regular internet users like yourself may be completely unaware of. Some of these issues make Hola VPN extremely unsafe and even outright dangerous.
Here are 5 reasons why Hola VPN is unsafe to use:
Reason 1: Hola VPN uses peer to peer routing
Hola VPN is not a traditional VPN service where VPN servers are used to help encrypt and protect your internet traffic.
Instead, unknowing to most of its users, it is running a P2P network where each user is used as proxy server to forward someone else's traffic that does not belong to them.
From the Hola VPN website: "When your device is not in use, other packets of information from other people may be routed through your device. Hola does this securely, not allowing any access to any of your information. Your device is used only as a router"
Another detailed excerpt from Hola.org is here below:
Why is this an issue? Why does this many Hola VPN unsafe to use? This is actually a HUGE issue that is unknowing to most casual users. Using P2P routed network means that whenever someone else uses Hola VPN to conduct illegal activity or look at something illegal or unsafe, your computer may be helping to reroute this illegal traffic and you may be accessing illegal content on behalf of another user. When it comes to law enforcement, your IP address and computer MAC Addresses will show up, leading to a good chance that you may be implicated by law.
Reason 2: Hola VPN collects and logs A LOT of your internet activity
Most secure, reliable, premium VPN services have a no-log policy, which means that none of your internet activity is ever recorded or stored.
Is Hola VPN safe and does it log and store your traffic? Most free VPN companies log and store your information. You can make a guess from there.
Here is the answer. In Hola VPN's case, it is an extremely unsafe VPN because it keeps full-logs of your internet history.
Looking closer into Hola VPN's Privacy Policy:
- Hola VPN collects almost every piece of information you can think of. What web sites you have visited, how long and at what time did you access it etc.
2. Hola VPN has your personal information as well as billing information
3. Hola VPN shares your information with unknown "subsidiaries, affiliated companies"
If you need a no-logs policy, VPN Proxy by Appsverse strictly collects and logs zero information about you and your internet activity.
Reason 3: Vola VPN has NO encryption
Hola VPN breaks all the rules of what a VPN does, in nothing less than an extremely dangerous way. Hola VPN is not safe to use at all because it does not encrypt your traffic. Hola VPN safe and does it encrypt your traffic?
Good and reliable VPNs encrypt your traffic to hide your internet activity and your personal information.
Hola VPN however, does not use any encryption protocols and simply uses its P2P nodes as regular proxy servers.
In other words, other users in the network can see your sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers, names addresses etc as it passes through their computer completely unhidden.
Reason 4: Hola VPN sells your traffic to their affiliated business
Of all the reasons of why we think Hola VPN is unsafe, this would be the absurd, the worst and the most unacceptable one of them all.
In order to make money, Hola VPN sells your device bandwidth to its paid service.
Remember how every user is a proxy server for another user in its P2P network?
On top of that, every user acts as an exit node for their paid, commercial offering called Luminati.
That opens the doors to hacking and misconduct. Any paid user could practically use your computer for their own commercial and illegal purposes, supported by Hola VPN themselves.
Reason 4: Hola VPN has history of misconduct and hacking
Reason #5 is actually a follow-up from Reason#4- As Hola VPN sells its user's traffic and bandwidth and access to its paid commercial users, history of misconduct has actually happened before.
In 2015, Hola VPN was used for a Botnet Attack on website 8Chan.
According to Frederick Brennan, founder of message board website 8Chan, his site faced "multiple DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks this week, which originated from the Luminati / Hola network."
Mr. Brennan accounted that he found out more than a thousand new accounts were created on his site within a very short span of time, driving a huge spike in traffic. On his blog, he wrote, "An attacker used the Luminati network to send thousands of legitimate-looking POST requests to 8chan's post.php in 30 seconds, representing a 100x spike over peak traffic and crashing PHP-FPM."
Hola VPN safe to use? I don't think so.
Our verdict: Stay away from free VPNs, use paid options
Hola VPN safe to use? The 5 reasons why Hola VPN is not safe to use should clearly show that you should avoid Hola VPN at all costs.
As far as VPNs are concerned, there are plenty of more reliable and secure options to choose from.
VPN Proxy by Appsverse for example, gives you unlimited access with complete full privacy features like AES Encryption, no-logs, for only a few dollars a month.
Oh, VPN Proxy by Appsverse also supports Netflix too.