HideMyAss Review 2020


hidemyass-review

Highlights of HideMyAss

In this HideMyAss Review, we bring you a summary of HideMyAss features

  • It offers 128-bit Blowfish encryption
  • Offers dynamic IPs of more than 120000
  • It supports PPTP, L2TP, OpenVPN (TCP or UDP)
  • It offers IP Binding feature for ultimate security
  • Automatic Wi-Fi Security
  • 2 Simultaneous Connection Option
  • It 760+ servers in 190+ country locations
  • Compatible with all major devices Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, etc.
  • Free Web Proxy
  • IP & Proxy List
  • Anonymous Email
  • Anonymous Referrer
  • Browser Extensions
  • Affordable pricing
  • User-friendly website design
  • Hassle-free Signup process
  • Free Chrome and Firefox extensions.
  • IP checker option.
  • Web proxy services.
  • Excellent protocol support.
  • Handshaking protocols for added security.
  • Live Chat facility.
  • Exclusive VPN for the Business option.
  • Easier Multiple VPN accounts setup.

Pros

  • 7-days free trial.
  • 30-days Money Back Guarantee.
  • Allows BitTorrents and P2P services.
  • Excellent customer support.
  • Multiple device support.

Cons

  • UK-based VPN provider.
  • Poor privacy policies.
  • Only 2 simultaneous connections.
  • Maintains usage logs.
  • No Money back guarantee for Google Play or iTunes orders.
  • No Bitcoin support.
  • Missing Industry-Standard AES-256 Encryption.

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Know HideMyAss

HideMyAss started its service by providing free proxy services, and it operates under Privacy LTD which is a UK-based company. Now, it excels in offering VPN services with its affordable prices and hassle-free sign-up processes. It just requires an email account for the sign-up, and it avoids the hectic forms to be filled before we open an account with them. Our HideMyAss review has identified few extra services that the VPN provider has exclusively designed for its users and that too free of cost. With its extraordinary services, it has grown to an immense popular network with 940 servers located worldwide. But it offers just two simultaneous connections which are actually lesser than so many VPN providers offer in the present time. Though it comes with a default OpenVPN protocol, we can change it to any from the vast list of supported protocols. It encrypts your data with an industry-standard cipher, the AES-256 bits. It also uses authentication mechanisms for added security purposes. It does maintain usage log for diagnostic purposes in the case of connection issues.

More Details of HideMyAss VPN

HideMyAss is a UK-based company that operates under Private LTD. It has started its business by providing free proxy services and later it has grown up to an extensive VPN service provider network. In the year 2015, the $60 million dollars worth Privax LTD was purchased by the company AVG Technologies. At the time of purchase, AVG Technologies had around 200 million users and more recently, the company itself is transferred to the hands of Avast Software. Now, it is in 350 locations around the globe, with a high reach among the people.  From our HideMyAss review, we could say that the exceptional free services that come with the VPN service at an affordable pricing are one of the primary reasons for its popularity. Even though it a UK-based company and the country is known for strict privacy policies, HideMyAss tries its best to offer quality services to its customers with a little compromise in the privacy.

Price & Unique Offers

HideMyAss has three different pricing plans as most of the VPN providers have for its customers. Out of them, the yearly package or the half-yearly package is best suited for those who are seeking VPN services on a longer-term basis. Apart from the packages for a regular user, it also has exclusive offers for business purposes. So, we can directly contact them for business accounts and can bag a good deal.

Monthly package: It costs $11.99 per month, and it has to be made prepaid to the usage. There are no much savings in this plan, but it can be great testing time span for new users who wish to try this VPN service.

Half-Yearly Package: It costs $7.99 per month, and it also comes with a 33% savings. The savings scheme may vary as per the time, and the charges come around $47.94 for a 6-months term. This is a good packaging scheme for the newbie of the VPN provider and who need it for a longer duration.

Yearly Package: It comes with a 42% savings and charges $6.99 per month. So all together for a year, we need to pay $83.88.  This scheme is worth getting for those regular VPN users who require better worldwide coverage. It is cheaper for those frequent overseas travellers to unblock geo-restricted contents.

30-Days Money Back Guarantee- Free Trial for a Month

Our HideMyAss review has identified the fact that it never takes your money for the trial period until you are satisfied with their service. So, this 30-days money back guarantee can even be taken as a trial period as it just gets your payment information and does not charges you anything. If we are not satisfied with its services, we can cancel it anytime during the 30 days trial, and HideMyAss never charges us. Also, it only charges when the 30-days get over, and we still did not cancel it. Upon completion of the 30 days duration, the service is considered as liked by the user and no money back guarantee is offered in such a case. If we are not satisfied with their service, we should have contacted them within the 30 days duration to apply for the money back guarantee. Also, the 30-days money back guarantee does not apply when the order is made through Google Play or iTunes.

Payment Options

It supports secure checkout with a variety of payment methods such as credit or debit cards,  Paypal, sofortbanking, Wire or bank transfers, Direct Debit, Diners Club, UnionPay, etc. The payment gateways are helpful as well for the worldwide customers. Unfortunately, it does not support the anonymous online payments, the BitCoins (know more about best Bitcoin VPN). Our HideMyAss review indeed considers this as one of the missing privacy measures that it has to concentrate to compete with the other VPN providers in the market.


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Core Features of HideMyAss

hidemyass-features

Excellent connectivity with widespread server networks

HideMyAss review is extremely favorable for the VPN provider, as it better covers the globe with several servers placed at optimal distances. They are specifically designed to allow dynamic IPs of more than 120000 at a time.

P2P and Bittorrent

Though it did not explicitly mention that it supports P2P downloads and BitTorrent activities, our HideMyAss review could check and identify that it supports both by not blocking them. This is an yet another interesting feature that the VPN provider can advertise to attract still more customers. Just because it has enough customer base, it might not have been interested in concentrating on its features it seems (get the best VPN for Torrenting).

Google Chrome and Firefox extensions

It supports the extensions of Google Chrome and the Firefox and it comes with exciting free features as well. Some of them are IP checker, Proxy services and the availability of Panic Button in those extensions. Our HideMyAss review has identified that the VPN provider excels in offering a row of free additional services to its customers with the underlying nature of customer support by the provider.

Security & Privacy features

Logging Policy

As HideMyAss is a UK-based company, it has to comply with the government rules of maintaining the logs. It stores information such as the connection duration, time at which the connection was established and the time at which it was disconnected, server location, bandwidth usage, etc for diagnostic purposes. Though it is not a potential threat to the privacy of the users, the policy of storing information is not a desirable act by most of the VPN users. Therefore, this VPN provider is not providing a logless VPN service (read more about best anonymous VPN). It can even be counted as a drawback for HideMyAss when the privacy of the users is concerned.

Data Encryption

Our HideMyAss review has identified the fact that it uses just the 128-bit Blowfish encryption and not the industry-standard AES 256-bit. This is really surprising that it has a hole for the hackers to get into their network with such an encryption technique. Anyhow, Blowfish by itself is not a lower quality encryption technique and it can safeguard our data to a greater extent. But our concern is that still there are chances for the hackers to get space in the VPN channels and to track the user’s information. It uses SHA1-160 Hash authentication and RSA-1024 for handshaking purposes. The authentication mechanisms are followed perfectly to ensure that the data goes to the right IPs and not to the fraudulent ones.


Allows BitTorrents and P2P services

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VPN Protocols

It supports a variety of protocols such as PPTP, L2TP, and OpenVPN. Even in the OpenVPN protocol, we can go for either the TCP or the UDP. By default, HideMyAss sets the OpenVPN as the basic protocol and we can change it anytime to the one from the above-supported list.

Secure IP Binding feature

There are chances that we may get disconnected from the network mainly due to network issues or connection failures. In that case, if we leave our applications as such then there is a possibility of letting our original IP to others through those applications. Here comes the usefulness of this secure IP binding feature. With that, we can specify the applications that are allowed to work even when the VPN connection fails and the rest of the Apps are stopped from its work. So, we can place only those Apps that would not let our identity and we need not compromise on the security even during the connection failures.

Automatic Wi-Fi Security

From our HideMyAss review, we could not identify any such automatic Wi-Fi Security by the VPN provider and they might have reflected the feature in the secure IP Binding feature. But IP Binding can just stop the working of certain Apps and not safeguard our entire sessions during connection failures. It would be better if the VPN provider explicitly provides this feature as well.

Dedicated IPs

It has more than 120,000 dedicated IPs allocated dynamically and the servers are widespread across the globe. With this vast count, we can easily bypass the geo-restrictions of any country and can access the worldwide contents with ease.

Internet Kill Switch

This feature is not provided as such but its functionality is partly covered by the secure IP Binding feature. During connection failures, the IP Binding feature closes all Apps that has the potential IP leaking threat and allows only the Apps that does not cause such problems.

NAT Firewall

Though it has a number security features, Our HideMyAss review could not track the traces of NAT Firewall usage in the VPN network. It could have been better if it has used it as well.

DDoS Protection

Our HideMyAss review has identified that there is no DDoS protection but it does maintain a lot of servers to overcome the overloading issues. Anyhow, such attacks are unexpected and might have been created wontedly by someone or by a team. Therefore, it is better to have such protection than worrying after getting attacked.

Fast & Secure Browsing

HideMyAss has an exclusive Speed Test feature that allows us to identify the speedy servers with respect to our geographic location (know more about fastest VPN services). With which we can test our ping speed, and also we can go for an express test or a full test as well. Apart from these, the VPN provider also supports P2P and BitTorrents for faster downloads.

DNS and WebRTC Leak protection

HideMyAss is free of DNS leaks and WebRTC leaks that most VPN providers lack in providing this feature. Fortunately, it guards us against such issues even though it has few drawbacks with respect to the privacy policies. We can always double check for the DNS leaks in the websites available for that purpose.


Web proxy services

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Simultaneous Connections

It allows two devices concurrently to connect to the same VPN account. Indeed this is a lesser count when we compare it to the other VPN service providers.

Compatibility

Platform Compatibility

It has particular software clients for Windows, iOS, MAC, and Android platforms. All of them provide a similar kind of functionality and looks similar in their design as well. It supports Windows 7, 8.1, 10, Windows XP, & Windows Vista and Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra of MAC OS and 10.5 & other higher versions of OSX. Also, it supports iOS 8+, Linux, and Android 4.0+. The Windows VPN client supports OpenVPN, L2TP, and PPTP protocols. The rest of the software clients also extend its supports to almost all of the protocols mentioned above and the interesting feature that we have noticed with these Apps is that they launch very quickly. They occupy a space of around 11 MB, but it never consumes much of your time for the start-up or the in between processes.

Device Compatibility

It works on a variety of devices including Televisions and game consoles that have internet connections. It has excellent installation guides and tutorials for each of the supported devices, and it ranges for the devices such as Tablets, Desktops, Windows Phone, Android devices, etc.

Other Services of HideMyAss

It offers a list other free services that are extremely useful to its users. They are not just offered to increase its customer base, but each of its features excels in its functionality.

Proxy Service

This is mainly to bypass the geo-restrictions and to gain access to contents of any country. We can select country of our choice and HideMyAss has servers all over the world to unblock the contents. But this is not at all an alternative for a VPN as it never encrypts our data and does not allow us to stream contents. Also, the gaming experience is not supported with proxy service.

Anonymous Emailing Service

It allows us to create an anonymous email and we can use it for further sign-up processes such in the HideMyAss VPN service Sign-up. We also have the option to enable the email to be deleted automatically after a specified time period.


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Anonymous Referrer service

With this service, we can send traffic to a website anonymously and the website owner by no mean can trace our identity. So, all they can get is the IP address of the HideMyAss servers and not our original IP address.

Server Locations

HideMyAss has 760+ servers in 190+ country locations around the globe. Also, it offers 120,000+ dynamic IP addresses to hide our original IP from the eyes of others. The vast network coverage is one of the main reasons for the growing customer base of the VPN service provider. Let’s take a look at the servers of HideMyAss we summed up below in this HideMyAss review.

hidemyass-server-locations   

Windows VPN Client Feature of HideMyAss

The Windows VPN Client of HideMyAss is user-friendly in design and also in its functionality. It supports PPTP, L2TP, and OpenVPN protocols and almost all of the Windows platforms (read more about best VPN for Windows). It provides us three different options to connect to the VPN servers and they are Instant, Location, and Freedom. The Instant feature is designed to offer the highest possible speed by connecting to the nearest VPN server. Under the Locations option, we can choose a VPN server from the wide list. The Freedom option helps us to identify and to connect to the nearest country that allows freedom of speech to a greater extent. Apart from these options, it just has an IP changing feature to change our IP address as and when needed. HideMyAss can add a lot of interesting features to the Client software as it looks very simple as of now.

Android VPN App Features of HideMyAss

The VPN Client software supports 4.0+ versions of Android and is much similar in design to the Windows client. The installation guides are specifically designed for Android in the VPN provider’s website. Read more about best VPN for Android.

iOS VPN App Features of HideMyAss

The Client software supports iOS 8.0+ versions and perfectly presents all the functionalities that we avail in the Windows VPN client. Well-written manuals are also provided in the setup instructions section to guide the users through the setup process. Know the features of iOS VPN Apps in our article best VPN for iPhone.

Customer Support Response

HideMyAss provides a good customer response through the following supporting mechanisms.

  • Email: Exclusive contact email has been given on the website and the VPN provider responds well to our queries or concerns through the email.
  • Live Chat: There is a Live Chat facility as well and we can contact their staff as when needed. To avail this chat facility, we need to login to our account and only then we get a full-fledged access to the chat facility. But being a customer of HideMyAss VPN services, we get quick and proper answers to our queries from the technical as well as from the non-technical staff members.
  • Phone Support: In the Client software, we have the option to schedule a call to speak to the staff members of the HideMyAss at a specific time as per our wish. This is really a fantastic option to reach the staff and to clear our issues as and when it arises. Also, it is apt for those who dislike writing pages of information to convey our problem to the support staff and in turn wasting time for those redundant back and forth emails or chats.

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Conclusion of HideMyAss review

Our HideMyAss review has come up with the notes that it works well except for few privacy issues like the logging policy and the lack of Bitcoin payments. It allows two simultaneous connections at a time and also supports a broad range of devices as well. Though it supports a variety of protocols including the OpenVPN, it just extends it support to 128-bit encryption. The present day VPN providers exceed it by providing the industry-standard 256-bit encryption and hence it is better that it can improve its cipher techniques. Despite these facts, HideMyAss VPN has a good customer base with its server presence in 190+ countries. When we consider the pricing packages, although the monthly package is slightly on the higher side we can always go for the half-yearly or yearly plan to save more. Altogether, there are still better VPN providers in the market to offer anonymity, security, and privacy in a more synchronized form. But the presence of 350+ servers with 120,000+ dynamic IPs has made the VPN provider a great reach among the people and it is serving them with what it has promised.