
This prompted a team of security researchers to set up the Adios, Hola! website, which describes Hola VPN as a “poorly secured botnet” and encourages everyone to uninstall it.

This means it’s not just other Hola Free VPN users you’re letting use your IP address and bandwidth.įor just $20.00 per GB, Luminati customers can buy their way onto your device (Luminati has recently rebranded to Bright Data, but the same business model is still in place). Luminati: In 2014, it was revealed that Hola sells access to the VPN’s P2P network through its sister company, Luminati.Hola Has A Controversial & Untrustworthy Historyīecause Hola VPN gives other users access to your device’s idle resources, the software is repeatedly at the center of events that highlight the company’s lack of transparency, security and care for its users’ privacy: Users were still subject to the company’s intrusive logging policy, though. There are no extra details to evidence this claim, but if accurate it suggests the Hola VPN Chrome extension was not susceptible to the risks associated with Hola’s P2P architecture.

NOTE: Hola’s FAQ section states that the Chrome extension “operate as a standard VPN service, and not part of the Hola VPN peer-to-peer network”. Your traffic takes on their IP address, allowing you to access websites that are available in their location, but not yours. This means the websites you visit see your connection originating from the location of the VPN server, and not from your true location.īy contrast, Hola VPN uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) network which routes your connection through another Hola users’ device on its way to the internet. When you turn on the VPN, your traffic is routed through one of these private servers. Usually, VPN services will own or rent a network of servers located around the world. Hola Free VPN does not work like a normal VPN service.

It is one of the primary reasons why we advise readers to remove Hola VPN from their device. There is simply no need to use a VPN with this level of disregard for your online privacy. We found that Touch VPN’s Chrome extension logs your data and shares it with advertisers and law enforcement agencies. It’s very likely that they’re sharing your data with third-parties, too. This is an excessive amount of data for a VPN service to collect from users, especially given that they retain the information for “ as long as necessary”. Your birth date, profile picture and friends list (if you register or sign in via a social network).The time and date you visited those websites.
