I’d like to start the review of Hide My Ass with a little background on the company. Hide My Ass has been helping members secure their online privacy since 2005. They were one of the first to offer personal VPN and have grown into one of the largest VPN services in the world. Hide My Ass is owned and operated by Privax LTD which is headquartered in London.
Pricing and Special Offers
Hide My Ass isn’t the cheapest VPN service on the market but they are fairly priced. Especially when you sign up for one of their discounted term accounts. With prices as low as $6.55 a month for annual sign ups. HMA Pro VPN accounts include unlimited bandwidth and full access to their network.
Hide My Ass is currently offering a special promotion with up to 43% off annual VPN accounts. They offer monthly, six month and yearly terms. Annual sign ups are the best value. You won’t need a coupon or promo code to take advantage of the discount. Visit the Hide My Ass special page to save.
Payment options include PayPal, Bitcoin and major credit cards like Visa, MasterCard and American Express. HMA also accepts wire transfer, iDEAL, WebMoney and Onebip SMS payments. As you can see they offer a wide range of payment options.
Risk Free Trial Period
You need to be able to test a VPN service to really see if they meet your needs. Hide My Ass understands that. To help they offer a 30 day money back guarantee with up to 10 GB of usage. Whether you sign up for a monthly or yearly term you have the opportunity to cancel during the first 30 days for a full refund.
Hide My Ass Network and Server Locations
The Hide My Ass network is massive. They have the largest selection of server locations that we’ve seen offered. With servers around the world they can cater to those who travel internationally or want to access content in other locations.
Countries
Locations
Servers
IP's
Protocols
172
290
831
111,000
OpenVPN, PPTP, L2TP
As you can see in the image below the HMA team stays very busy on the network side. We’ve used the service since 2010 and they have continually expanded ever since then. Network size is an area where they rise above the competition.
Hide My Ass VPN server locations:
Africa – Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’lvoire, Djibouti, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Seychelles, South Africa, Tunisia, and Uganda.
Asia – Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen.
Central America – Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama.
Europe – Aland Islands, Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and United Kingdom.
North America – Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Greenland, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Montserrat, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, and United States.
Oceania – Australia, Christmas Island, Cook Islands, Kiribati, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Palau, Pitcairn Islands, Tokelau, and Vanuatu.
South America – Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Falkland Islands, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Privacy and Security
From the technical side the Hide My Ass team has you covered. They have years of experience managing a large online privacy network. They support multiple protocols including OpenVPN, PPTP and L2TP. You can access all three protocols across all of HMA’s server locations.
It is well known that Hide My Ass turned in a Lulzsec hacker, Cody Kretsinger (known online as “recursion”), after he used the service to hack into Sony Pictures and access the personal information of its users. The Privax team was presented with a UK court order to turn over logs related to the IP address linked to the hack. They complied with the courts order.
Here’s a partial statement from HMA on the issue:
Our VPN service and VPN services in general are not designed to be used to commit illegal activity. It is very naive to think that by paying a subscription fee to a VPN service you are free to break the law without any consequences.
That sums it up well. If you plan to commit a crime then you shouldn’t be using Hide My Ass. I would also argue that you shouldn’t be using any commercial VPN service. Like any company they are required to adhere to the law.
Hide My Ass clearly states their logging and privacy policies on the site. Here’s a list of information they collect:
a time stamp when you connect and disconnect to our VPN service;
the amount of data transmitted (upload and download) during your session;
the IP address used by you to connect to our VPN;
and the IP address of the individual VPN server used by you.
The information is typically held for 2 to 3 months and deleted on a monthly basis. There are circumstances such as spam and fraud where they may keep the logs for an extended period of time. You can read the full details on their site.
Hands-On Testing
Hide My Ass is one of the VPNs I use on a regular basis so I can cover the advantages and limitations of the service. You’ll find that they have one of the best Windows clients around. It let’s you easily connect to any server. Switching between server locations and protocols is very simple.
Connecting with the Windows VPN Client
Let’s jump right into the Hide My Ass Windows VPN client:
As you can see the HMA software gives you a dropdown to select a server. They list those server locations closest to you at the top. From there you can select any server around the world with a single click. You can also choose OpenVPN, PPTP or L2TP.
Here are just a few of the client’s advanced features:
Schedule IP address change – you can set the client to change IP addresses at a set interval.
Secure IP bind – set an application to only work when the VPN is connected. If you disconnect from HMA for any reason the selected apps will stop until you reconnect.
Speed guide – helps you find the fastest server.
Connect with the Mac VPN Client
In addition to their popular windows software, Hide My Ass also has a Mac client. You can download the latest version from the members area of their site. Use the Mac client to connect to any of HMA’s servers around the world.
Connect from iPhone or iPad
Hide My Ass offers a free iOS app for VPN members. You can download it from the Apple iTunes app store. They mobile app requires iOS 5 or later. It supports iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The app is optimized for iPhone 5.
When you install the Hide My Ass iOS app on you iPhone or iPad it will let you choose the desired server location. From there it will configure a profile on your device to connect to that server. Saving you the time required to manually set it up.
Connect from an Android Device
Hide My Ass is beta testing an app for Android users. You can join their beta group to access the app. Otherwise it will be available soon. In the meantime they have a guide to walk you through manually setting up any server on your Android phone or tablet.
Hide My Ass Speed Test
You’ll read mixed reviews of HMA’s performance. We’ve learned the trick to getting the best possible speed. When you launch the HMA Pro client go into to the “Settings” tab at the top right of the screen. Once there check the “Enabled” for the Auto Path feature. It will run OpenVPN UDP rather than TCP. Giving you much better performance. As you can see below I nearly maxed our my Internet connection on the HMA network.
Conclusion
You’ll be hard pressed to find a VPN company who is growing their network as fast as the HMA team. They have a reputation for having servers in remote locations. Regardless of where you live or travel HMA likely has a VPN server nearby. With discounts you can enjoy unlimited VPN from just $6.55 a month.
What I liked most about the service:
Unlimited access to a large network of servers
Client features like secure IP bind and IP change
Support for OpenVPN, PPTP and L2TP protocols
Shared dynamic IP’s for better privacy
Lots of payment options including bitcoin
Ideas to improve the service:
Continue to improve network performance
Make it easier to enable OpenVPN (UDP) in the client
Consider dedicated IP as an add-on
As with any VPN you’ll want to test Hide My Ass for yourself. You can visit their special offer page for the best pricing. Feeling assured that you’re protected by their 30 day money back guarantee. You can learn more about the company and their full range of privacy services by visiting the HMA site.
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