Although Hotspot Shield's desktop apps don't display ads directly, they open a page on the Hotspot Shield website every time you hit Connect or Disconnect, which quickly becomes annoying. A 'Manage' link takes you to an account dashboard, for instance, while a 'Support' link points to the website support center.Ĭonnection times are short, typically two or three seconds, but there's one small irritation. There's a sidebar with a few tabs, but even those mostly point you to pages on the Hotspot Shield site. You can ignore the location list, because the free plan only connects to the US – and there are no settings, at all. The main app window is little more than a sleek black frame with a Connect button. If simplicity comes top of your VPN app priority list, then you're going to love Hotspot Shield's Mac release. We'll talk about the Mac app in this review, and add our thoughts on the Windows build when it's finally rolled out.) (As we write this, Hotspot Shield's unlimited bandwidth Windows app hasn't yet been made available. The Mac app is highly streamlined – but overly so (Image credit: Hotspot Shield) Windows and Mac apps Never mind four audits, we'd be very happy if Hotspot Shield could manage just one. TunnelBear has put itself through four independent audits (one a year) of its apps, servers, website, infrastructure and more. That's good to hear, but we'd like some evidence to verify Hotspot Shield's claims. And the privacy policy explains that the service doesn't log anything at all that you do online. The company's Hydra protocol uses strong AES-256 encryption to shield your data from snoopers, for instance. How much of a problem is that? Just ask the well-known VPN authority, umm, Hotspot Shield, the firm which wrote an article (opens in new tab) entitled '3 reasons why a VPN kill switch is not optional' that includes the line 'if your VPN doesn’t have a kill switch, then it’s almost as bad as not using a VPN at all.' Unfortunately, Hotspot Shield doesn't seem to feel the same way, as its free plan doesn't include a kill switch (a feature which protects your traffic if the VPN connection drops). It's fair to expect limits and restrictions with a free VPN, but we don't think they should affect privacy.
Hotspot Shield's stance on privacy is generally laudable, but there are some caveats here (Image credit: Hotspot Shield) Privacy and logging
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