HideMyAss (HMA)VPN: A Avast’s Own VPN

HideMyAss (HMA) has been a well-liked independent provider of VPN services since 2005, but is now owned by security giant Avast.

The company offers a massive network of 1000+ servers in 290+ locations across 190+ countries. That’s fewer servers than a number of the highest providers, but more locations and countries (NordVPN has 5,700+ servers across 60 countries, ExpressVPN has 3,000+ servers across 160 locations and 94 countries).

HMA VPN! It offers its own No Log DNS, which not only prevents DNS leaks but also blocks the users from accessing malicious and phishing sites.

The HideMyAss VPN website proudly proclaims that it works on all of your devices, and it just may need some extent. Not only are there custom apps for Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, and Linux. But there’s installation advice to assist you manually found out the service on many other platforms, which includes the power to configure some routers, which in theory should allow you to use the service with all of your smart devices, too.

Do you want to try HideMyAss VPN? Visit the website here.

New features packed includes a system-wide kill switch for Windows and Mac (no got to specify apps to shut, anymore manually.) The network has grown, website unblocking is more reliable, and therefore the privacy policy has been extended to form it very clear what’s logged and what isn’t.

HideMyAss VPN! It doesn’t have a monthly plan, but you are doing get three other options: $6.99 per month paid annually, an efficient $5.99 on the two-year plan, or $4.99 over three years.

That’s an proficient price rise since last year, once you were ready to get two years of VPN service for $4.99, and makes HideMyAss VPN! A touch is costlier than average Windscribe, Ivacy, VPN Unlimited, Zenmate, TunnelBear, and Private Internet Access. All the VPN offer annual plans for $5 or under, and if you’re willing to buy three years up-front, many companies charge under $3.

Bitcoin isn’t accepted, whatever plan you select, but HideMyAss VPN! It supports cards, PayPal, and Skrill.

A 7-day free trial gives you a reasonable amount of your time to undertake out the service. You want to fork over your payment details, and you’re automatically billed for the annual plan when the trial ends unless you cancel (which is straightforward to try to online).

If you buy, then run into problems, you’re secure with a 30-day money-back guarantee option. HideMyAss VPN! Has lifted the old restrictions (it was only valid (for customers who used but 10GB of knowledge and made fewer than 100 connections), which may be a positive impact. Overall, the new guarantee policy is now less restrictive than most competitors, which allows you to request a refund every six months. (Many providers will allow just one refund, ever.)

Privacy And Logging

HideMyAss VPN! has such a lot small print that the Legal section features a sidebar with no but ten separate sections, and lots of these also are very lengthy (the privacy policy alone has quite 3,500 words).

This isn’t quite as bad because it first sounds. The most reason for the cluster of documents is that HideMyAss VPN! Has to shift the key sections into separate articles, making them easier to seek out, and most of those are clearly structured and well written.

The Privacy Policy explains that there is no logging of originating IP addresses (a possible thanks to identifying you), DNS queries, or any details on the websites you’re visiting or what you’re doing online.

There is some session logging, though. The service records the timestamp of each session connect and disconnect, a subnet of the IP address you wont to hook up with the service (if you connect from 92.145.233.343, 92.145.233.0 is logged), the IP address of the VPN server assigned to you. Therefore the amount of knowledge uploaded and downloaded.

Although this is often more logging than you will see with some providers, the absence of a full IP means there are no thanks to connecting any internet action back to your account definitively. HideMyAss VPN! Removed this data automatically after 30 days, too, further limiting any exposure! This is great.

While this sounds positive, potential customers haven’t any thanks to confirming these logging promises tell the entire story. VPN providers like VyprVPN, Express, TunnelBear and NordVPN have allowed independent companies to audit their systems for logging, privacy, and security, and publish the results. That is the only thanks to beginning to reassure users about what a VPN is basically doing, and that we hope HMA VPN! And therefore, the remainder of the industry will soon imitate.

Apps

Signing up for a HideMyAss VPN! The trial works very similarly to the other web service you have ever used. Choose an idea, select a payment method – there’s support for the card, PayPal, Skrill, UnionPay, and Neteller – and fork over your money within the usual way.

A Download page pointed us on to the right app for our Windows device, while also giving us links to Mac, Android, and iOS build. This is not as well-presented as high-end competitors like ExpressVPN – you do not get an equivalent number of tutorials on setting the service up manually. And there is no link to download the Android APK file for manual installation elsewhere – but it covers the fundamentals well.

The Windows app opened with a straightforward interface containing only three tabs and three buttons. The

‘Instant Mode’ enables you to get connected to your nearest server for secure browsing. Then ‘Location Mode’ enables the user to choose a selected location. And ‘Freedom Mode’ helps you to connect from a restricted country (Iran, China) to a less fixed location to unblock websites and news.

A well-designed Location Picker enables finding and selecting the servers you would like. By default, There are seven sensibly chosen displayed ‘Recommended’ servers but could also prefer to view streaming or P2P-optimized servers, our Favorites, or the complete list. There are not any ping times or server load figures to spotlight the fastest or slowest locations, but otherwise, the system does an inexpensive job.

You’re not prevented from choosing a replacement location while you’re connected to a different, unlike some more restrictive apps. If you would like to modify from the US to the united kingdom, just choose that location within the list, and therefore the customer needs to reconnect instantly.

The Preferences dialog doesn’t include some standard features (there’s no support for any protocol beyond the default OpenVPN), but there are some pluses.

The client now includes a system-wide also because of the previous app-specific kill switch, as an example, making it easier to secure your online activities if there’s a poor connection.

We tested the kill switch option by forcibly closing the openvpn.exe software process and its TCP connection, and monitoring IP leaks once we switched servers. Altogether cases, the client correctly blocked all leaks, preventing our real IP from reaching the surface world.

Elsewhere, an unoften IP Shuffle feature changes your IP address at an outlined interval (30 minutes, an hour, a day, whatever you like), making it even harder for others to trace what you’re doing. You’ll have the system automatically hook up with the VPN once you access an insecure Wi-Fi network either from the bar or railway station. And a simple Diagnostics screen displays the OpenVPN connection log, potentially very useful in troubleshooting connection issues.

The Android app features a near-identical interface to its Windows cousin, with an equivalent design, equivalent simple connection modes, and (mostly) the power to attach with a few taps. The situation Picker doesn’t list P2P servers, but that’s not exactly an enormous deal for a mobile app, and overall it does an inexpensive job.

The app’s Preferences dialog is more essential than the desktop edition, with as an example no built-in kill switch. You continue to get the power to shuffle your IP address at regular intervals, though, alongside the option to automatically protect you when using untrusted networks. The app also adds a simple feature of its own, split tunneling, which enables routing only your selection of apps through the VPN (video streaming, but not your browser, say).

Performance

We began our HideMyAss VPN! performance checks by choosing a little group of test servers: three within the US, three within the UK, two in Europe, and locations in Australia, Hong Kong, and South Korea to represent the remainder of the planet.

(This required downloading OpenVPN configuration files, so we were happy to seek out that HideMyAss VPN! provides a good selection, sensibly named and right up to date– our data had been created only 18 days before the review.)

Our tests began by connecting to every server successively, recording the connection time, running a ping check to seem for latency issues, and using geolocation to verify that the server is within the location advertising.

There was positive news in every area. All servers seemed to be where HMA VPN! Claimed they might be. Connection times were reasonable at around four to 5 seconds, even for the first distant locations (some VPNs are twice that), and ping times lengthened for far-away servers, but no quite we expected, and that they didn’t give any problems.

While checking the download speeds, connecting to our nearest server from US, Germany, Australia, and UK locations, and monitoring download performance using Ookla’s SpeedTest and TestMy, The UK speeds were capable offered 64-66Mbps on our test 75Mbps connection, only 4% down on our performance while switching off the VPN.

The US servers are offering from a super-fast 475Mbps connection, allowing us to ascertain what level of performance the HMA VPN servers can maintain. Yet, Another test shows the speeds plummet to around 70Mbps, a 90% drop. However, The others were a much more capable 140-200Mbps. we have seen better – ExpressVPN managed quite 400Mbps – but it’ll be quite enough for many reasons. (And if your internet connection is significantly faster than 200Mbps, of course, you will not even notice there’s a problem .)

Checking distant locations doesn’t tell you quite the maximum amount about the VPN as there are more factors involved, but again, HideMyAss VPN! Performed well. European speeds barely changed from the united kingdom, for example, and connections to the US averaged 60-65Mbps.

Staying long-distance saw HMA VPN speeds finally begin to drop, but even then, they were generally very usable (Hong Kong was a surprisingly consistent 32-36Mbps, for instance, The Australian server managed 20-25Mbps.) Even South Korea – offer 1Mbps in our last review – exceeded expectations at a creditable 12Mpbs, this point round.

Netflix

Point your browser at the HideMyAss! Website, and you will read that the service allows you to “stream your favorite TV shows from wherever you’re within the world using one among our dedicated streaming servers.” It really sounds good, but is it true?

The HideMyAss VPN! Windows client enables to filtering of its location list to display only streaming servers, and immediately there are just five of these: two in NY, one in Florida, one in London, and another in Frankfurt (a new addition since our last review.) That’s not precisely tons of choice, and that we wondered whether that might cause the streaming websites to detect and block them easily.

We needn’t have worried, though. HMA VPN! UK server offered instant access to BBC iPlayer, and therefore the US servers allowed us to look at US-only YouTube clips and got us into the far more heavily protected Netflix. Finally, the German server ends the story, bypassing Netflix protection, and allow us freely to browse whatever content we liked.

Support

The HideMyAss! support site offers a good range of resources, including setup guides, a searchable knowledgebase, FAQs, an internet forum, and 24/7 live chat for love or money urgent.

The web content isn’t as in-depth or well-presented as a number of the competition. ExpressVPN features a host of detailed setup guides, all easily accessible during a few clicks from the support page. HideMyAss! It doesn’t organize its articles quite as neatly, and once you do find them, there’s less information and infrequently some moot points.

(For instance, the Windows setup tutorial starts by talking about downloading the newest version of the .NET Framework, as an example, before saying there’s nothing out of the standard about warnings that the faucet driver isn’t signed, and suggesting you fix this by disabling driver signing checks. This is not necessarily bad advice if you know what you’re doing. Still, it is also seriously advanced stuff with implications for your security, and that we wouldn’t expect it to seem during a general installation tutorial for all levels of user.)

The HMA VPN! site forum isn’t a busy place, but post an issue there, and a staffer usually answers it within a couple of hours. Replies from other members are generally helpful, and if the problem isn’t solved on the forum, the support team will often create a ticket for you or send you an immediate email to debate the difficulty further.

If you cannot wait, live chat is available for near-instant support. We sent a Windows installation issue, and within minutes, a support agent began giving us a helpful and accurate solution. That works for us, and overall, we expect HideMyAss! We should be ready to assist you in solving the common VPN issues.

Final verdict

This service’s data collection policies might be a drag for the privacy-conscious. Great, speeds are good, it unblocked everything we tried, and you are doing get one among the essential VPN networks around if these are your priorities, HMA VPN! It could be worth a try.