Buy a VPN service and you are sure to look forward to accessing a carefully managed network of powerful servers, intelligently connected via highly secure protocols to block unauthorized access to your traffic.
Hello it is not this way in the least.
The Israeli company describes its offering as a "community-driven (P2P) VPN." You'll be able to select a destination country from a list of forty-one options, but Hola routes your traffic through other users' computers, somewhere in your network.
The service is considerably more limited than normal VPNs: there is no Peer to Peer support, no dedicated IP addresses, and no port forwarding, and their technology has all sorts of potential performance drawbacks, but there are some potential advantages. For example, since your traffic will always and at all times take different paths, depending on the free systems, this should complicate the detection and the blocking of the service.
An obvious concern about the free edition is that while it can use the bandwidth of other Hola nodes, they can also use yours. Mas Hola points out that their requests are low, no more than three MB a day from mobile devices, one hundred MB from desktop computers.
Also, Hola only uses a system as a pair if it is fully idle and not running on battery power, ensuring that this shouldn't make a noticeable difference to the performance of your device.
There is still room for drawbacks with Hola Free. If your system becomes the exit node for another Hola user who hacks, sends spam or downloads something illegal, for example, your IP address can be registered as a criminal.
Uncomfortable with that? Then you may want to upgrade to Hola Premium. The service is compatible with Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices, and can be configured to run on routers, game consoles, smart TVs, and more. It also unblocks other sites, including Netflix. Hola VPN Premium lets you connect up to ten of these devices simultaneously, and since you are a customer of the payment service, absolutely no one else is going to be able to use your bandwidth.
Hola VPN Premium rates
The Hola VPN Premium monthly plan costs € fourteen and ninety-nine to secure up to ten simultaneous connections. Pay a year in advance and it goes down to € seven sixty-nine (still expensive), but if you're ready to sign up over 3 years, it goes down to € two ninety-nine.
Hola also has an Ultra plan, which offers faster servers and accepts up to twenty simultaneous connections. However, it is so expensive that it is quite difficult for us to take it for real (€ twenty-nine and ninety-nine billed monthly, € nineteen and ninety-nine monthly over a year, € seven and ninety-nine in the 3-year plan ), and we don't, so we won't examine it here.
There is no option to pay through Bitcoin, but Hola accepts payments by card, Paypal, Google Pay, Alipay, Sofort and more. A thirty-day money-back guarantee protects you in case something goes wrong.
Your account is set up to renew automatically, and there is no option to change this either, but you can manually cancel online.
Hello, you still have free browser extensions for Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Edge (more on Google Chrome in an instant), but they are not as recommended as they used to be. Employment is now limited to a maximum of thirty minutes per hour, for example. It doesn't take long for him to become truly listless.
You also can't settle for the extension. Hello's Mozilla Firefox add-on would not work until the moment we installed the desktop application, which is also somewhat annoying.
Google and hello
Google removed the Hello extension from the Google Chrome store in September XNUMX. We haven't seen any official statement from Google as to why this happened, and even Hola says it has "no idea" what caused it. Google Chrome store noting that it contained "malicious program". '.
Hello replied: “Make no mistake, the Hello extension does NOT contain malware, it does not display ads, and most importantly, it respects user privacy. In truth, as far as we know, it meets or exceeds each and every one of the policies and instructions of the Google Chrome store. We make sure of that.
The Hola Android app is also not free on the Google Play Store right now. The place of Hello lies, but does not explain it.
Clearly, that has to be a concern, but since Google has not accused Hola of anything, much less gave evidence, we will not consider it a privacy or security problem in this review.
However, we will be keeping an eye on this and will update this review as new details emerge.
Confidentiality and registration
Most VPNs route your traffic through their servers, which theoretically gives them the ability to log some of what you do. Hola's model of routing data through your users may seem like a better way to protect your privacy, but it is not that simple.
Here's an interesting section of the usual Hello questions:
“Hola VPN regularly monitors the consumer's network for signs of abuse or security breaches. In addition to this, the changes in the architecture allow Hola VPN to see the origin of each request, so that if a cybercriminal uses the Hola VPN network, the cybercriminal's information could be passed on to the authorities. This causes Hola VPN to be unattractive to attackers. Certain VPNs do not see both ends of the connection and are therefore considerably more attractive for these uses.
The company says it monitors some of users' internet activity and can trace the origin of any request it considers "misuse" or part of a "security breach." It's great for catching hackers, but it also requires more monitoring and logging than you'll see with standard VPNs.
Hola's privacy policy explains how users sign up for free. The company claims it can collect data, including "your browser type, the pages you visit, the time you spend on those pages, the times and data accessed."
The personal data that Hola 'may collect and store includes your IP address, name and email address, screen name, payment and billing information or other information that we may request from time to time, such as this, will be accurate for the process of integration and provision of services. This applies to both free and paid users.
It also digests "details of apps installed on the user's device" which you might not expect.
If you register with a social media account, Hola gives you access to information such as your name, address, email address, date of birth, profile picture, friends list, your personal description, as well as any other information you have. made public. free on this account or agreed to share with us.
Therefore, there are many possibilities for registration here, and when you bear in mind the lack of details in other vital areas of the service, such as how your traffic is encrypted and protected (we have no idea), it should be a concern. If anonymity is your top priority and you are looking to reduce even the possibility of surveillance, Hola is clearly not for you.
But if you can live with any and all uncertainties in protocol, there is good news. Our latest privacy tests passed Hello, no signs of DNS, WebRTC, or other leaks.
Windows application
Hola's Chromium-based Windows app opened with a simple location selector, allowing us to either connect to the US or browse all forty-one countries. This is just a basic menu with a list of countries, and it has no city-wide locations, no server load, no ping time, and no preferred system for storing your most popular servers.
The application does not use desktop notifications to inform you when you have logged in or closed. The icon in the systray updates to show the flag for your current connection, and if you open the application window, you can also see your new IP address.
Connection times were found to be somewhat slower than average by 2-XNUMX seconds, even with our closest UK servers. The fastest VPNs can connect in seconds through IKEvXNUMX or WireGuard.
Once connected, Hola Premium works like any other VPN. In other words, it not only protects your browser, like the free product; Your Internet traffic is routed through Hola's encrypted tunnel.
The application only has 3 primary settings, but each and every one is valuable. An auto-connect feature automatically connects you to a specific location when Hello starts, and an application kill switch reduces the risk of identity leaks by removing specific applications if the VPN connection is interrupted. Lastly, a security panel gives specialists precise control over Hola's encryption methods (you can select AES-128/192 / two hundred and fifty-six encryption, SHA-1/256-three hundred and eighty-six integrity check). four and more).
IOS app
The iOS application is very similar to the Windows version, but it is even more basic. You get a list of locations, an on / off button, and that's it.
Until you use such a simple app, you won't realize how much you are getting with certain of the contenders. There are no city-level locations, for example. No server load time or ping to assist you in selecting. You cannot mark locations as preferred. There is no kill switch in the entire system, you cannot change or adjust your protocol, and there is no automatic connection alternative to guard against untrusted networks.
Hola's target user audience probably doesn't care much about all of this. In truth, they will surely be glad that there is practically nothing to learn. But if you have used other VPNs, it is very possible that you will find Hola underpowered.
Support
Hello, it's very simple, but if that doesn't work for you, the company's support site has multiple articles that can assist you with any inconvenience.
These are neatly organized by category (general information, troubleshooting, billing and payments, etc.) and...