Review # HMA Pro opinion
Introduction
HideMyAss is best vpn service provider on Internet. owned by UK based Privax Ltd. the company is registered for more than 3 years and claims to have more than 20 million unique website visitors worldwide every month and over 400,000 active paying subscribers, with a handling team of around 50 people, Privax don't have their separate website and seems to be operating entirely in the name of HMA. Privax is located at 7 Moor St, London, London W1D5NB, UK. According to UK based Company check, HideMyAss owner Privax currently has a net worth of £496,023, assets worth £2,068,800 and liabilities worth £1,573,681. As a pioneer in the provision of commercial VPN services, HMA is a king in the VPN industry! But HMA seems to believe that nobody cares about anything else but service quality; and that it is ok to fall short on other perimeters as long as service quality remains unparalleled. While I can appreciate that there is a method to this madness: a single-focused consistency to HMA's somewhat bullish attitude to the rest of the VPN using community; this HideMyAss review is going to take a twist and give HMA credit only where it is due – meaning that there will be merciless demerits where there are weaknesses!
Pricing & Features (Pro VPN)
Pricing is little on the high side compared to other similar services, but the option to choose between 340 servers in 53 countries (providing a possible 40,000+ IP addresses) is very impressive. Users may freely choose between OpenVPN, L2PT and PPTP protocols (where supported by an individual server) with no bandwidth restrictions, and can also connect up to two devices simultaneously (with no restrictions on how many devices HMA software can be installed on).
Unified (multi-protocol) software clients are provided for Windows and OSX, and tutorials are available for configuring Android, Linux, iOS and hardware routers.
Bulk Customers
HideMyAss does not have any specific prices quoted for corporate customers. Corporate customers can access a specific quote request form by clicking on 'Business and bulk account customer? Enquire here' located under the pricing plan display for regular HideMyAss customers.
HideMyAss asks for your name, email address, company name and the number of computers on which you wish to run (in addition to any additional comments you may have).
Bulk/Corporate customers are given discounts based on the number of accounts they wish to buy and the time length for which the VPN accounts are required. However, HideMyAss requires bulk customers to purchase at least 5 accounts (or 10 connections) before the special discounts can be applied.
Servers
HideMyAss has a separate tab on the home page totting 'Servers'. Not a lot of VPN service providers can do that, but HideMyAss does it with pride. I'm talking 537 VPN servers spread out across in 129 locations in 63 countries. That gives HideMyAss the power to make 65197 IP addresses available for its VPN users.
A very large concentration of HideMyAss's servers is positioned in the United States. The second largest concentration of HideMyAss's servers is located in European countries, followed by server counts in the UK region and the North American/Canadian regions. Asian, South American, Central American and African regions have no more than one server in each country.
The server locator on the website is pretty nifty but I somehow feel that it would have been better if HideMyAss had presented a server-load distribution instead of a simple list boasting the server count. I already know that HideMyAss offers OpenVPN, PPTP and L2TP on all servers – and I’m very impressed with the IP count listing as well, but all of that information is useless for me if I don't know how much load which server is currently experience. All that jazz does not really add more than a cursory utility to my user experience.
Customer Support
Customer support can be accessed through the 'Contact' button located at the top of the website. This HideMyAss review chose to put aside the highly generic FAQ section on the website and considered the interactive ends of HideMyAss's customer support system as those that count. In this perspective, the VPN service provider uses a three pillared customer support system:
- Email (Support Tickets)
- Live Chat
- Community (Forum)
Email (Support Ticket)
I decided to test HMA's customer support with two tickets – both placed within minutes of each other.
The first support ticket was opened on Saturday, January 11, 2014, at 8:25 AM.
This is what I wrote:
I've been using VPN for some time now, but I like what you guys have to offer but I wanna know if you guys offer split tunneling. Because I can't see it any of your screen shots or the pages on your website.
I received no response for my support ticket and I was more surprised than disappointed at the apparent negligence. I thought my ticket would remain unattended and eventually go down the list so far that no sane person would scroll down to search for unresolved tickets that old. Boy was I wrong.
Little did I know that HMA would reply to both my support tickets in one response.
My second support ticket was opened on Saturday, January 11, 2014 at 8:27 AM.
This is what I wrote:
Your support forum only shows instructions on setting up HMA VPN on XBOX via ICS on Mac. I have a PC with Windows XP, not a Mac.
The response came on the same day (which is great), at 06:03 PM (which is not so great). So zero points for timing!
The response was quite detailed, and the cherry on top was that HMA support chose to respond to BOTH my questions in ONE reply.
HideMyAss’s Response (I decided to copy-paste a screen-shot for authenticity):
The response quality was not so bad, but could have been better. And don't even remind me that HMA responded to both my queries in one email – if there was a law on support ticket response ethic, I would have made sure HMA got penalized. Not happy!!
Ok maybe the response was ok if you consider the question, but I can't seem to get my head around the fact that they left me to figure out that both my support tickets had been responded to in one email.
The LEAST they could have done was to indicate a combination of both support tickets in the subject line! Honestly is it that difficult!?
Live Chat
For all my readers who will not be fortunate enough to be up during the 12 hours when HideMyAss live chat support is available, I took the liberty of taking a screen shot of how the HideMyAss live chat icon will look. When the live chat staff decides to grace the live website visitors with its blessings, you will be able to see the following graphic in the lower right corner of your screen.
Community (Forum)
The HideMyAss Forum is very active with customers and customer support technicians exchanging knowledge every day. The highly active Forum has taken on the form of a knowledge base for new customers. This HideMyAss review gives full marks for excellent Forum management.
Sign-Up Process
The sign-up process begins with creating your account at HideMyAss. You will land at the 'Account creation' page no matter which subscription plan you click on.
Once you have created your account with your desired user name and password, the next stage is to select a payment plan and a payment method.
Payment Methods
HideMyAss offers four payment methods:
· Credit Card
· Paypal
· Bitcoin
· Bank & Wire Transfer
HideMyAss will provide you the option to Auto-Renew your subscription if you select either 'Credit Card' or 'Paypal' as a payment method.
Also, it merits highlighting that HideMyAss is not a big one for expansion where payment methods are associated. The three traditional methods of 'Bank & Wire Transfer' and 'Credit Card' have only –increased with the popular 'Paypal' option and the more recent 'Bitcoin' adding on in the recent past.
Depending on which one of the four payment methods you choose to select, the HideMyAss website will forward you to the gateway for that payment method.
Selecting 'Credit Card' or 'Paypal' will forward you to forms where you will be required to enter in your credentials so that the transfer can be made.
Selecting 'Bitcoin' will forward you to a different screen where the website will convert the price of the selected subscription plan into Bitcoin. You will be provided a QR code that you will be required to scan with your smart-phone to open with a Bitcoin URI-compatible wallet. This screen will remain active (valid) for only 15 minutes though so don't waste too much time. If you delay it beyond 15 minutes, the QR code will disappear from your screen and be replaced by a message stating: 'This invoice has expired'.
Selecting ‘Wire Transfer’ will bring you to a form where you will be required to fill in your credentials, after which point your information will be forwarded to HideMyAss for processing. If your information is verified in processing, HideMyAss then process the order and notifies you via email.
Compatibility
This HideMyAss review boldly declares HideMyAss's apps as extremely user friendly. In the classic yellow/green theme, the HideMyAss apps offer a wide variety of features and are really easy to navigate.
HideMyAss offers VPN clients for Windows and Mac, platforms as well as Apple & Android devices. There is not client available for the Linux platform. Users wishing to configure HideMyAss on a Linux OS can download the interface-based HideMyAss client for Linux on request.
In the smart phone category, HideMyAss smart phone apps are also available (for the iPhone and iPad) on iTunes and you can expect a HideMyAss app for android to come out soon.
In the mean time, Android users can make use of free VPN apps (such as OpenVPN app or FeatVPN app) that are available in the market. These can be configured to run the HideMyAss VPN.
Setting up HideMyAss on a router can get slightly complicated. The HideMyAss website has a webpage with a list of recommended routers.
For more details and updates on HMA compatibility and support, visit the HideMyAss support page.
Tutorials Provided
HideMyAss has loads of information available to help users setup and trouble shoot their HideMyAss VPN accounts. However, dare I say it, it’s a mess! Information is spread out across the website and the support page.
Tutorials are available for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, Android and iOS. In addition, there setup tutorials are also available for HideMyAss VPN on Routers, Open DNS and a variety of access options.
There is a tutorial available for just about everything, and if you don’t manage to find a tutorial through the HideMyAss support page, there is sure to be a discussion on the subject in the HideMyAss forum.
Protocols and Encryption
HideMyAss provides users PPTP, L2TP and OpenVPN protocols. Encryption levels for each protocol differ. I took the liberty of making sure that this HideMyAss review provides specifics on the encryption levels that each protocol provides.
PPTP: For encryption PPTP uses MPPE 128bit cipher with compression and MS-CHAPv2 authentication.
L2TP: L2TP is using IPSec for encryption with 256 bit key for encryption, 3DES/AES algorithm
OpenVPN-TCP: For encryption the cipher in use is CBC mode of Blowfish with encryption strength of 128bit, hash algorithm is 160bit SHA1, and the control channel is same TLSv1/SSLv3 DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA, 1024 bit RSA.
OpenVPN-UDP: Same encryption and security as OpenVPN-TCP, but working via UDP protocol. This allows better speeds and bypasses more restrictions.
Free Trial
HideMyAss does not offer any free or paid trial. You will have to derive consolation from the fact that HideMyAss offers a 30 day money back guarantee on all purchases. While nothing can possibly make up for the absence of a free trial, the 30 day money back guarantee comes pretty close when considered in addition to the constant availability of HideMyAss’s Free Web Proxy.
Privacy
From a technical standpoint the 160-bit or 256-bit OpenVPN encryption, and 128-bit PPTP encryption is perfectly satisfactory. Also, although we will discuss it in more detail later, Hide My Ass’s dedication to providing free tools for protecting the public’s anonymity is to be praised, and deserves mention before bringing up the following issue.
In October 2011 a rather heated row broke out after a member of the LulzSec hacking group, who had used Hide My Ass to hide his identity, was arrested after HMA handed over information to UK law enforcement authorities. While this can be seen as a total fail by Hide My Ass, it must be understood that HMA is a UK company and as such, in a similar fashion to US based VPN providers, is required by law to hand over user’s details when issued with a Court Order (similar to a US subpoena) to this effect.
It is therefore unfair to blame Hide My Ass for what happened or for the current legal situation, but VPN users who are very concerned about their privacy should look to VPN providers based outside the UK or even Europe for their needs.
The HMA website
The website is fairly attractive, and well laid out with lots of information available and plenty of blog and community forum posts to explore.
The Process
Signing Up
To sign up, you are only asked for an email address and payment method, along with your choice of username and password. A decent range of payment options is available and the whole process is extremely simple. once you have signed up you will receive a confirmation email and be taken to a screen where you can choose how you will connect to the HMA servers.
The Windows VPN Client
Severs can be sorted through by country, or the fastest random server can be connected to within either a specified country (e.g. the server with the fastest Ping in the UK) or other custom setting. A groovy feature is built in server load balancing, which will inform you if a server is busy while other servers are not, and offer to connect you to a less busy server instead.
Once connected you are provided with relevant information and can instantly change IP address, schedule regular IP address changes, and verify your IP address and apparent location.
One feature we really liked was Secure IP bind, which forces application to only work behind an encrypted VPN connnection. If the connection drops for any reason, the application will stop working and unencrypted connections will be terminated. This is a fantastic idea as it means that programs will not give away your IP details if the connection goes down when you are out the house.
The client lets you test all connections (filterable by area and VPN protocol), so you can easily check which is the fastest server based on Ping or download speed.
It is also possible to manage proxy settings and account details from within the software, and all in all we found this to be one of the best VPN clients we have encountered to date. It is intuitive to use, and loaded with functionality and information that make connecting to a VPN server a joy.
Speedtest.net Results
We used the VPN client’s Country Selection tool to connect to a random UK server with the fastest download/upload speed using our 10 megabyte UK broadband internet connection, and aceived the following results:
Connection without VPN
Connection with VPN (OpenVPN)
Other Platforms
In addition to providing a dedicated multi-protocol client for Windows and OSX, and download instructions for using the openvpn client for Linux, Hide My Ass provides guides on setting up PPTP on Windows XP, Windows 7, iOS and Android.
Android
As usual, we tried out the guides and PPTP service using my trusty Android phone. After typing in a random IP address from the supplied PPTP server list and only receiving timeout warnings, we used the HMA Windows client Speed Guide tests to decide on a suitable server. This worked a treat, and on typing the winning server’s IP address into the Android VPN tool we connected instantly. It should be noted however that the encryption used was the less secure PPTP rather than L2TP.
Without VPN
With VPN
The results were somewhat disappointing.
Hide My Ass Free Services
Web Proxy
This free web proxy service allows anyone to surf the internet anonymously from a secure SSL connection.
Traffic is not encrypted, there is a choice of only three servers, geo-locked online TV services are not available, and it would not be difficult to block, but this is nevertheless a great service that lets any casual user protect their identity online.
This is definitely not the UK address we access the website from! Websites visited in this way are displayed as frame within the HMA web proxy window.
We did try testing how fast this service was using speedtest.net, but the Flash test would not load. We then tried loading a YouTube clip for a subjective test, but this also did not work (despite claims on the HMA website that it would). For performing anonymous Google searches and casual web browsing however, the service did seem to work fine, and while pages subjectively took a little longer to load, as long as there was no Flash, Java or overly complex HTML arrangement, things went fairly smoothly. We were, for example able to access The Pirate Bay, a website that has been blocked (at a DNS level) in the UK.
At the end of the day, it is not a perfect service, and is no replacement a proper VPN account, but for casual anonymous web searches, and for checking out websites that might otherwise be blocked , it is a useful tool that is great to have for free.
Free IP:Port Proxy Lists
Another way to access the web anonymously without paying anything, is to use a public proxy server. Almost all web browsers can be easily configured to use one of these, with the traditional problem being that they tend to be very slow due to massive public demand, and tend to go off and on line at seemly random intervals.However, Hide My Ass keep their list updated in real time, reporting server speed, connection time, whether secure HHTPS is used, and providing an assessment of the server’s anonymity, making it easy to find a reliable proxy server that suits your needs.
Using the list, we quickly configured our Chrome browser and connected effortlessly to the internet through a server in the Ukraine:
How good any individual server is can vary greatly, but the HMA list helped to yielded positive results. For a one-off fee of $25 fee, Hide My Ass will send you a daily .txt based ‘premium’ list of servers but as we did not try this feature we cannot comment on how useful it is.
Free Disposable Email Addresses
A very useful service provided by HMA is free anonymous email addresses for you to give out to people you don’t trust, and from whom you wish to keep your identity.
These email addresses can be set to automatically self-destruct after a set time period (from 24 hours to 12 months), and emails can be forwarded a real email address or accessed from the HMA website.
Other services
Hide my Ass also provide a number of software tools you can download to help maintain your privacy.In addition to this, they provide a secure file upload facility, so that users can transfer large sensitive files (up to 400MB) without the need to store them on unsecured servers where anybody can download them.
Conclusion (free privacy services)
Hide My Ass is to be lauded both for the number of tools it provides free to the general public in order to help them maintain their privacy on-line, and also on the overall effectiveness of these tools which do give a very positive impression of HMA’s dedication to the concept of web anonymity. However, it must also be remembered that the Hide My Ass are a UK company, and the reservations expressed about their Pro VPN service remain just a valid and relevant to the various free services they provide.
Conclusion (Pro VPN service)
We liked
- 30 day money back guarantee
- 340 servers in 53 countries
- No bandwidth restrictions
- Choice of VPN protocols
- Fantastic, fully featured unified VPN client
- Well laid out and entertaining web site
- Lots and lots of freebies to help web anonymity
We weren’t so sure about
- Not much
We hated
- UK legal requirements (logs kept and user information may be handed to authorities upon demand)
- PTPP connection speeds were poor
Hide My Ass have put a lot of work into creating a very comprehensive suite of services. The premium VPN service covers all the important bases (except for the somewhat poor speed results when tested on a mobile phone), and it provided the by far the best VPN client we have yet seen. In addition to this, while this review is primarily concerned with HMA’s premium service, the raft of freebies available is difficult to ignore, and many of them (such as the anonymous email addresses and secure file transfer) will likely be useful to Pro VPN customers as well as to the general public. It is therefore something of a shame that by nature of being a UK company their promises of complete customer anonymity must be taken with a pinch of salt.
I hope this Review will help you finding best VPN.
I missed a whole season of “how I met your mother’ due to the geo logical restrictions but thanks to Hidemyass VPN , I can now easily watch any show with ultimate freedom!
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