HideMyAss Review

Here is the information as it appears in HideMyAss’ privacy policy:

Excerpt from HMA’s updated no-logs privacy policy.

The limited amount of data that HMA does log is aggregated and not tied to any specific user.

HMA’s updated logging policy has been verified by reputable cybersecurity consulting firm VerSprite, following an audit of HMA’s systems.

VerSprite awarded HideMyAss a “low-risk user privacy impact rating” — the best possible classification. Third-party security audits provide real evidence of a VPN’s activities, so you’re not forced to rely on what a VPN service claims.

The only personal information HideMyAss retains is your email address and username, which is standard practice among VPNs.

The important thing is that HMA’s no-logs policy clearly states your internet activity will not be tracked or logged.

Despite the logging policy improvement, HMA is a VPN service with an extremely poor track record when it comes to safeguarding its customers’ anonymity. We’ll explain more about this below.

HMA is based in the United Kingdom

HideMyAss launched its first subscription-based VPN service in 2009 under the ownership of parent company Privax Ltd.

The VPN’s popularity led AVG, a Czech antivirus company, to acquire it for up to $60 million in 2015. AVG was in turn bought by Avast, another Czech antivirus firm, in 2016.

Despite the parent company, Avast, being based in the Czech Republic, Privax Ltd is still located in the UK.

The UK is a terrible base for a VPN provider, due to its intrusive data retention laws now codified through the UK Investigatory Powers Act, or the ‘Snooper’s Charter’ as it is popularly known.

HideMyAss is subject to all intelligence-sharing agreements contained within the Snoopers Charter. The company admits it will supply information to law enforcement if necessary.

The UK is also a member of the Five Eyes Alliance (FVEY), an international intelligence-sharing agreement designed to collect and share surveillance data among the world’s most powerful nations.

HideMyAss shared user logs with law enforcement

Sadly, HideMyAss has an extremely poor track record for logging.

In one instance, a member of the hacktivist group Anonymous was arrested after HMA provided the FBI access to connection logs, following a UK court order.

On another occasion, a Texas judge was arrested for stalking and harassment. He was a HideMyAss user whose identity was uncovered using connection timestamps.

HideMyAss went to some length to justify its behavior, but it was largely seen as a breach of trust for most VPN users.

It must be said that all instances of information sharing with law enforcement happened under the VPN’s old privacy policy. The VPN service previously logged sensitive data like user IP addresses and precise connection timestamps.

Such an intrusive policy made it easy for law enforcement to request personally-identifiable information from HMA to identify a specific user.

As we mentioned above, HMA’s new privacy policy prevents any repeat of user identities being compromised. As long as the VPN doesn’t keep user web logs, it doesn’t have sensitive information to pass on.

The company’s much improved no-logs policy somewhat offsets its privacy-unfriendly jurisdiction. However, real-world tests and third-party audits are necessary to restore our confidence in HMA.

How private is HideMyAss compared to other VPNs?

As we’ve discussed above, HMA compares fairly poorly to other VPNs in terms of privacy.

The table below compares the privacy features of HMA and four other VPN services.

We compared our internet download speeds before and after connecting to a nearby HideMyAss server. This allows us to see precisely how much HMA slows down our internet connection when connected to the nearest server location.

HMA’s speed performance was stable and capable of handling data-intensive tasks like HD streaming, gaming, and video conferencing without issues.

Here are our full local speed test results:

As shown above, our download speeds dropped just 3% when connected to HMA, from 99Mbps to 96Mbps. You can expect similar results when connecting to a server near you.

These speed test results are really impressive. Recently, HMA added 20Gbps servers to its network, which has helped it narrow the gap with the fastest VPNs on the market.

Global Speed Test Results

We also tested HMA’s long-distance performance by choosing a small group of test servers in the USA, Germany, Singapore, and Australia.

International speeds were some of the best we’ve seen and connection times were great, at around 70Mbps seconds for most locations.

Naturally, HideMyAss’ VPN speeds begin to fall when connecting to distant locations. This is due to the longer journey a VPN connection has to make.

Speed is clearly one of HMA’s strongest attributes. It’s one of the fastest VPNs we’ve tested, and challenges very quick VPNs like ExpressVPN and NordVPN.

How Fast is HideMyAss Compared to Other VPNs?

To ensure our speed test findings are as accurate as possible, we also tested HideMyAss and other popular VPNs using our bespoke VPN speed testing tool.

Our automated tests run every six hours, and we report the results as we find them, eliminating the possibility of any bias.

The graph below compares HideMyAss’ average loss of internet speed to other popular VPNs while running on our New York server.

Compare HMA’s speeds around the world

The graph above shows how HideMyAss is one of the fastest VPNs available. On New York to New York connections, HideMyAss is registering a speed loss of less than 10%.

However, speeds dropped more evidently on some international connections. For example, connecting to London from New York resulted in a 40% speed loss. Depending on your internet speed, this could result in buffering and lag on your video streams.

HideMyAss has dedicated servers exclusively for the most popular streaming services, for quicker and easier access.

HMA’s dedicated streaming server for BBC iPlayer worked in our tests.

These dedicated streaming servers are very fast and mostly reliable. Most of the time you’ll be able to access your favorite streaming sites without issues.

They are also really easy to find in the app and are always available through the sidebar. This makes switching between US, UK, and German Netflix libraries very easy.

These streaming servers aren’t obviously labeled, though, so we’ve identified them for you.

However, HMA VPN only unblocks the American Netflix library. This is better than nothing, but can’t compete with the top Netflix VPNs, which can stream up to 32 regions.

HMA struggles to unblock Disney+

However, we do wish HideMyAss was able to unblock Disney+ more often, like the best Disney+ VPNs can.

In our latest streaming tests, we had to switch between several HMA servers until we found one that works with Disney+.

HMA doesn’t work with Hulu or HBO Max

Unfortunately, HMA’s streaming capabilities have worsened recently. So much so, the VPN no longer works with Hulu and HBO Max.

Using a VPN with HBO Max and Hulu have become popular activities among VPN users. We tested NordVPN with both platforms, and it worked without a hitch.

HMA’s streaming performance compared to other VPNs

We grouped our latest VPN streaming test data in the table below to compare HideMyAss to other popular streaming VPNs.

You can see how many Netflix libraries each VPN works with, whether it has Smart DNS funcionality, and how often it works with popular streaming platforms.

We can’t recommend HideMyAss for secure torrenting because of its previous mistreatment of user privacy, and its history of cooperating with law enforcement.

In the past, HMA users reported accounts suspensions for violating Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) laws, too.

A HMA representative confirmed that HMA “have no mechanism of identifying individual users following a DMCA report.”

But, HMA’s stance on torrenting is muddled and confused. A different HideMyAss support agent stated torrenting copyrighted material is against the VPN terms of service, and threatened this would result in an account suspension.

HideMyAss needs to provide much more clarity here. As things stand, and given the commpany’s past logging controversies, we advise not to use HMA for torrenting.

It’s a shame because HMA’s fast torrent speeds and dedicated P2P servers would have made for a very good torrenting VPN.

HMA VPN’s advanced security features

HMA’s apps include split tunneling and the Refresh IP tool, which assigns you a new IP address in the same location if your current IP is suddenly blocked.

There is a system-wide kill switch available for the Windows, Android, and Mac clients too. This prevents your data leaking if your VPN connection drops.

HMA’s kill switch is not available on iOS devices, and it does not work with macOS.

HMA VPN’s encryption and security

We found that HMA’s security is very strong. HideMyAss implements its encryption as follows:

• Connection is established via a secure RSA-2048 handshake.
• Perfect Forward Secrecy is provided via an Elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key exchange.
• Integrity of the data is authenticated using an SHA-384 hash.
• Data transmitted during the session is encrypted using the AES-256 cipher.

Using Wireshark (packet-capturing software), we ran tests to ensure the VPN’s traffic is truly encrypted. We can happily confirm the VPN securely encrypted our data transfers.

HideMyAss securely encrypted our network traffic.

Our internet data was rendered as random strings of text and not plain text. Information like your passwords, email address, and credit card details, are therfore invisible to hackers and snoopers on public WiFi networks.

HMA VPN leak test results

IP address leaks allow advertisers, governments, and websites to see your true location and match your identity back to your activity.

Like most popular VPN services, HideMyAss includes built-in protection against IPv4 and IPv6 leaks.

We ran HideMyAss through a series of leak tests and unfortunately found it leaked our IP address on iOS (due to our VPN connection dropping).

HMA’s other software didn’t suffer IP or DNS leaks, though. The screenshot below shows how the Windows app hid our real IP address:

HMA’s Windows app did not leak our IP address.

HideMyAss also owns and operates its own no-log DNS servers, which resolve all DNS requests as you browse the web. But, these servers are owned by Avast, which was caught in a data-harvesting scandal.

HMA’s security shortfalls on Mac and iOS

Although HMA’s application security is relatively strong, HMA’s macOS and iOS software has a concerning history of security flaws and missing features.

In 2017, several security vulnerabilities were found in the HideMyAss Mac app. These vulnerabilities allowed for malware to be installed on the root of the device if a hacker had physical access.

On top of this, HMA’s VPN kill switch does not work on macOS. We reported this big to HMA in December 2019, but it still hasn’t fixed it.

HMA leaked our true IP address through its broken kill switch on macOS.

Running HMA on macOS Ventura, our true location in the United Kingdom leaked when our VPN connection failed. This happened despite being connected to a Mexican VPN server with the VPN kill switch enabled.

Mmoreover, the HideMyAss iOS app does not have a VPN kill switch at all.

Both the iOS and Mac apps use the IKEv2/IPsec protocol. IPSec is an older VPN protocol, generally less secure and more prone to vulnerabilities than OpenVPN and patched WireGuard protocols.

We test HideMyAss every week using a remote connection into Shanghai. sadly, the VPN has never worked. In fact, we’ve always been blocked from even signing in.

The best VPNs for China use obfuscation technology, which lets them bypass China’s VPN ban. Sadly, HMA doesn’t possess any obfuscation tools.

Despite these limitations, we found that HideMyAss works in countries with less strict VPN restrictions. In recent tests, HMA worked in the UAE, Russia and Turkey.

HideMyAss is easy to use and install on all platforms, but you may still run into a few issues.

Thankfully, HMA is backed by an extensive online knowledge base, which includes detailed guides, FAQs, and even video walkthroughs.

But for those times when you absolutely need to get in touch with a human, HideMyAss’ customer support is no longer among the best.

HMA’s recently demoted the availability of their live chat feature from 24/7 availability to CET 9am to 11pm.

For a VPN provider that prides itself on its global server network, HideMyAss’ lack of 24/7 availability is really disappointing.

HMA’s live chat support is only available 8am – 11pm CET.

For example, for Los Angeles VPN users, live chat is only available from 11pm to 2pm. And for those in Sydney, Australia, the hours are 6pm to 9am.

However, when it is available, HMA’s live chat support team is extremely quick to respond and often very helpful.

If you’re still stuck, you can contact HideMyAss’ support by submitting a request ticket through email, by contacting their social media team, or by posting on the HMA community forum.