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| Specs | Info |
|---|---|
| ⭐ Rating: | 4.4 ★★★★☆ |
| 🥇 Overall rank: | #24 out of #29 |
| 📖 No logs policy: | No logs |
| 💵 Price: | $4.16/month |
| 🖥️ Servers: | 90+ |
| 🍿 Streaming services: | Netflix, Hulu |
If you are searching for the best Hide My Ass review at the internet? No problem, we got you covered at ProXPN. The last couple of years, we saw an enormous growth in the amount of VPN providers at the market, which is quite logical since an estimated 35% of internet users have been using VPN services the past year. Choosing the right one can be quite a task, but don't worry about it because we are here to help you out. Read our in-depth Hide My Ass guide and learn everything about this service, we are quite sure that once you’re done with reading you will know if this service suits you best.
Ben Grindlow is the founder of ProXPN, a company that provides reviews about VPN products and services. Ben's interest in cybersecurity and privacy led him to start ProXPN, which has become one of the most well-respected VPN providers in the world. Ben is passionate about his work, and he is constantly exploring new ways to improve ProXPN's in-depth guides.
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My favorite part of the HMA VPN service is that it has a huge choice of servers and server locations compared to other VPN services. The service boasts a VPN server in almost every country. HMA VPN also has nice Windows, iOS and Android apps.
Unfortunately, if you use HMA VPN for private internet access, customer service can be difficult to reach and slow to respond. This is an important factor in making a VPN service pleasant for users, so it is disappointing.
Read the rest of this HMA VPN review for lots more details on the pros and cons of using HMA for your VPN connection.
HMA VPN scores a 7.4 for its ease and enjoyability of use.
Subscriptions, prices and information are clearly available on HMA VPN's website. Creating an account for my VPN connection and downloading the HMA VPN software on my PC, tablet and smartphone were all trouble free.
Once past that point, though, I ran into some problems with my Windows client. I repeatedly got a message about an unknown error when logging into the Windows app. Aggravatingly, my subscription had not been activated, while my payment had already gone through on my credit card. As mentioned above, there was also no way to find anyone to help me with this on live chat.
While conducting this HMA VPN review, my account was suddenly activated only after a delay of about 20 minutes, and then I could log in and activate HMA's VPN services. The entire experience was less than ideal, and I think HMA VPN needs to improve its communications in general.
VPN apps are a crucial part of the experience with a VPN provider. My testing of HMA's VPN apps started with the Windows app, which works well, has a clear interface, and gets you online very easily and quickly.
You can renew your IP address using the unique button in the main screen. This can be useful, for example, if for some reason you do not have direct access to a certain website and you want to change your apparent location.
Testing the Android app went smoothly, too. The user interface is very professional and at the same time enjoyable designed to feature an easel.
Those with lots of devices will be happy to know that HMA VOB can be installed on an unlimited number of devices, although the company permits no more than 5 or 10 connections at the same time, depending on your type of account. The account type that offers 10 simultaneous connections is more expensive, naturally.
The great thing is that you can set up HMA on many types of devices, including:
The options offered in this respect are perfectly fine.
Installing HMA can be done using a browser extension in Google Chrome so that you can use HMA VPN for a free and private internet connection.
You can always contact HMA support if you run into any trouble.
Payments accepted at HMA VPN include:
Unfortunately, it is not possible to pay in Bitcoin, an option that I would like to see for the sake of anonymity.
Let's hope that HMA expands its payment options.
HMA customer service can only be reached by email. It would be better if they offered a live chat option on the website.
In addition to this, the responsiveness of HMA VPN's customer service is unsatisfactory. I was still waiting for a response to my question when I wrote this article.
HMA scores a 6.5 for its privacy and security features which we tested as part of this HMA VPN review.
When you connect to the Internet via a VPN, the VPN app on your device (also called a VPN client) establishes a secure connection to a VPN server. Your traffic still goes past your internet provider, but they can no longer read it or see its final destination.
The websites you visit can no longer see your original IP address, only the IP address of the VPN server which is shared with many other users and changes regularly.
ProXPN Expert Score
Hide My Ass's privacy policy states that no logs are kept of original IP addresses. Furthermore, the company saves no timestamps, DNS queries or browser data.
It is especially reassuring that HMA's pleasing statements on logging have been checked by a security agency called VerSprite. VerSprite analyzed the no-logging policy and prepared a report that assigned HMA VPN a passing score for privacy and security. This is good news, except that the report in question is not available to the public.
The only thing HMA VPN does store is anonymous user data, such as when the service is turned on and off. It also measures how much data users upload and download on average. Strictly speaking, we cannot call this a 100 percent zero logs policy, but this is more than sufficient.
HMA VPN was founded in the United Kingdom in 2005 and is still headquartered there. The company merged with the cybersecurity company Avast in 2016. Before that, HMA VPN belonged to the famous virus scanner company AVG for a time.
The United Kingdom isn't exactly an ideal location for most VPN services. Although companies in the UK must comply with the GDPR, VPN providers are obliged to cough up records if the court demands it.
In addition, the UK is part of the Five Eyes alliance, which in theory means that it is willing to share user data with intelligence services from other countries. Fortunately, this is only possible if the data has been stored and the court explicitly demands this data, for example in the event of suspicion of terrorism.
Invisibler says that HMA VPN has allegedly cooperated with authorities in the US in the past. For example, log files have been handed over to them.
The story goes that the FBI were looking into a hacking incident and traced it back to an IP address owned by HMA VPN. Next the FBI got a UK court order demanding logs from HMA's server location to investigate an incident referred to as the “LulzSec fiasco” on HMA's blog.
We do not support any illegal activities, but this FBI investigation is proof that HMA VPN can and will share customer data with third parties.
So, is HMA VPN safe? Hide My Ass VPN only works with the OpenVPN protocol and OpenSSL 256-bit encryption with algorithms 3DES, AES 256 and RC5, so, everything this VPN company is doing with encryption is acceptable.
Sadly, HMA VPN does not offer other protocols like IKEv2, which often works better than OpenVPN on mobile devices. Also, the relatively new protocol WireGuard is not yet supported.
HMA's VPN servers score a 9.4 for speed in this review.
When browsing or watching movies, HMA VPN serves up acceptable speeds with no glitches. The websites and applications I tried out loaded right away. No problems to report here with respect to speed.
ProXPN Expert Tip
I tested the speed of responses from HMA's VPN server. I found great speeds on HMA when using speedtest.net:
Ping Download Upload Theory speed over my fiber connectionN/A100 Mbps100 Mbps Zero (without VPN)3 ms93.87 Mbps94.70 MbpsSpeed via US VPN server3 ms96.03 Mbps90.92 Mbps
HMA VPN'S American VPN server does not provide as fast speeds as one could wish, but the ping is low enough for multiplayer gaming. Its upload speeds are also acceptable.
Here are the speed results I got using the zero measurement:
In contrast, these are the speed results with HMA VPN enabled:
HMA scores a 7.9 for the options it offers its VPN users.
Impressively, HMA is equipped with VPN servers in almost every country. This can be very useful, for example if you want to search locally or take an IP address from a specific country. As another example, this can also work to your advantage if you are seeking out cheaper prices for plane, hotels or rental cars.
The Hide My Ass website says that HMA VPN boasts servers in 210 countries and 290 server locations, adding up to almost 1,100 servers in all, which is quite respectable.
Our testing with HMA VPN got great results with Netflix and Disney+.
Unfortunately, Amazon Prime turned out not to work, but this is not unique to HMA VPN; a number of other VPN services have this issue, too. Netflix in the United States did not grant me access, either.
One advantage we would like to point out for those who like to download torrents is that HMA VPN has dedicated P2P servers optimized for peer-to-peer file transfers.
| Streaming platform | Working |
|---|---|
| Netflix | No |
| BBC iPlayer | No |
| YouTube | Yes |
| DAZN | No |
HMA claims a number of useful security features, such as:
Unfortunately, there is no option for a dedicated IP address.
Many VPN providers do not target companies. An advantage here is that HMA VPN has a special business department that can customize subscriptions for business users. One example is that an account with 30 simultaneous connections cost approximately 26 euros per month in 2021.
You can test HMA using a 7 day free trial, but carefulness and punctuality are important with the free trial, as you must first provide your payment details. If you don't cancel before the 7 day free trial ends, HMA VPN automatically charges you for an annual subscription.
If you miss the deadline, there is still an out. If you become a subscriber after your 7 day free trial, you still have a 30 day money back guarantee. Keep in mind that this guarantee does have some requirements, for example, that you have not transferred more than 10 GB of data over the network and that you have not had more than 100 sessions.
What do you think after reading this HMA VPN review? Do you use HMA VPN already, or do you think you may give it a go? Sign up for a free trial and have HMA VPN work on your device. With a 30 day money back guarantee, what have you got to lose?
HideMyAss is a reliable VPN service. It encrypts your IP address and DNS queries with 256-bit AES encryption and first-party DNS servers. HMA, on the other hand, failed security inspections on iOS and macOS, and it's one of the few significant VPNs that doesn't support WireGuard.
If you have any firewall or antivirus software installed, temporarily turn them off and try connecting again. The most common reason for a VPN connection to fail is due to firewalls and antivirus software, but they can be reactivated after the connection has been established.
HMA may be installed on as many devices as you like, but only five of them can be linked to a single server.
HMA VPN is a good VPN service with strong security measures. It uses military-grade encryption, has a large number of servers, and allows torrenting. Additionally, its no-logs policy has been independently verified.
HMA has an audited No-Log VPN: What exactly does that imply? HMA VPN can better protect your privacy and anonymity thanks to HMA's no-logging policy. However, this is just the beginning of HMA VPN's mission to be the ultimate advocate for online anonymity.
