Despite the pullout of fellow VPN vendors, HideMyAss continues its VPN server operation in Russia.įile-sharing is officially supported on HideMyAss servers. Some VPN vendors have recently decommissioned their servers in Russia because of the passing of a law that requires all VPN vendors, domestic and foreign, which have a presence in Russia, to retain detailed subscriber activity logs. Having a physical presence in a country, in the form of a deployed VPN server, has privacy implications.
If your objective is to stream regionally-censored sports programming from a foreign website, it is safe to say that if HideMyAss does not support that foreign country, probably no other VPN vendor does either. With respect to the country count, HideMyAss is definitely top-notch. 80% of all servers are distributed between US and Europe. HideMyAss operates a global VPN of 940+ VPN servers spanning 350+ locations in 190+ countries. to any member of the AVG Group.' Buyer beware. According to the Privacy Policy document, they 'may disclose your data. However, one has to be mindful of where subscriber information may flow among business units within the conglomerate. A large company typically brings more stability. HideMyAss, however, does not publish a warrant canary.īeing a part of the multinational conglomerate AVG Technologies can be a double-edged sword.
If the VPN vendor does not update the warrant canary with the current date, or removes it completely from the website, the subscribers can infer that a subpoena has been served. A warrant canary is an official statement by a VPN vendor that it has not received a subpoena during a specific time period. To get around the gag order, some VPN vendors publish a warrant canary on their websites. If a subpoena is served during the time period, the VPN vendor has no choice but to hand over the logs to the authorities.Ī gag order usually comes with a subpoena, meaning that the VPN vendor cannot inform any third-party that it has been served a subpoena. Keeping logs for months with subscribers' source IP address is generally considered very bad for privacy and anonymity protection.
HideMyAss stores logs for 3 months, and possibly longer at their discretion, before they are deleted.
The same Logging Policy lists the information that HideMyAss logs from its VPN service, including: prevent and detect abuse of their network, such as spamming, file sharing or other illicit activity.' The above excerpt makes it abundantly clear that HideMyAss monitors what you are doing online. HideMyAss explicitly states in its Logging Policy that it does 'collect and use VPN data for the operation of their business to. The truthfulness of the claim, however, cannot be independently verified by subscribers. Most VPN vendors claim that they don't monitor or log their subscribers' Internet activities. With the UK's Brexit decision, there is some degree of uncertainty as to its impact on privacy protection laws. Being a UK corporate citizen, HideMyAss must obey the local regulations. The UK is generally regarded as a country that has privacy-unfriendly surveillance and data retention laws. Second, it is a subsidiary of the Internet security giant AVG Technologies. First, the company is registered in England.
Its corporate structure is relevant in 2 ways with respect to privacy protection. HideMyAss is operated by a company named Privax Limited. We will evaluate its service features as well as its operations to see if that indeed is the case. With a name like HideMyAss, the VPN service provider we review below should make privacy protection its top priority. How well does HideMyAss protect your online privacy?