The Pango group also owned a few different VPN apps including Betternet, Hexatech, and TouchVPN, which are not part of the main Pango subscription service. Pango provided an all-in-one subscription service to a number of online security and privacy products including Hotspot Shield Elite, 1Password, Robo Shield, and Identity Guard. However, the company hasn’t released another transparency report to account for the time that has passed since then, so there’s no way of knowing whether it has given up user data to any third parties. The report shows the number of data requests Hotspot Shield received from authorities around the world since 2016 (227) – crucially, it also showed that Hotspot Shield didn’t hand over any data. In January 2019, Hotspot Shield released its annual Transparency Report. Invasive jurisdictions like the US can compel supposedly privacy-focused companies like Aura to retain and share user information. These countries work together to collect, share, and analyze mass surveillance data – this alone is a red flag. It’s also one of the founding members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. But as of July 2020 it has been acquired by a security company called Aura.Īura is based in the US, which has very intrusive privacy laws. Until recently Hotspot Shield was owned by Pango, formerly known as AnchorFree. If you want a VPN that doesn’t log web activity, read our PIA VPN review. Combined with a worrisome past concerning user privacy, we can’t recommend the service for users seeking high-level anonymity online. This is unlikely to happen, but we would rather Hotspot Shield didn’t log this information for three years.Īt the very least, Hotspot Shield VPN monitors your IP address and website requests, even if in aggregate form.
As always, it’s best to stay away from ad-supported services when trying to stay private online.Ĭonnection timestamps could potentially be used – alongside other data points – to prove that you have visited a certain website.
ANCHORFREE HOTSPOT SHIELD NETFLIX FREE
If you use the free version, you’ll also be sharing personally identifying information with advertisers. If you’re using Hotspot Shield Elite, the company monitors “ the nature of the requests that you make to our servers (such as what is being requested, information about the device and app used to make the request, timestamps, and referring URLs)” along with a whole host of other information. While it’s encouraging that Hotspot Shield isn’t able to link any behavior to your specific account, this level of data collection is still far too invasive for any user concerned about privacy or anonymity. …Even if a government agency physically seizes one of our VPN servers and succeeds in breaking disk encryption on those servers, they would not find any logs or information that would reveal what any individual user was browsing, viewing, or doing online via a VPN connection.” If you’re looking for reassurance, the company states that: If you use Hotspot Shield Free, the service can also share even more data with third-party advertisers:
While the VPN doesn’t keep any logs of your browsing history or online activity, it does collect plenty of other information and its privacy policy is often vague or misleading.Īccording to its terms and conditions, Hotspot Shield Elite collects the following data: Hotspot Shield has a questionable logging policy.
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