HideMyAss VPN - Review

HideMyAss!, for some time known as HMA, is one of the best known brands in the VPN industry, with over 15 years of honored career dedicated to protecting user privacy.






Speaking of the protocols offered, however, HMA only supports OpenVPN, since IKEv2 has been abandoned. In any case, OpenVPN has the advantage of being very secure, with AES-256-GCM, RSA-4096 (handshake) and SHA-256 (data authentication) data encryption, with two kill switches that interrupt the Internet connection in case of VPN failures.

Surely, one advantage of HMA is that it is a truly cross-platform service: in addition to the apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux, it is possible to manually set the service on various devices , including Apple TV, Android TV, PlayStation, Xbox and so on, all well documented on the company's website.| ); }

Read also: The best VPNs of 2022

HideMyAss plans and prices

An interesting aspect of HMA is that, unlike other services, it offers four paid plans, with an unlimited number of installations and 5 simultaneous connections. Of course, the longer the period chosen, the cheaper the subscription will cost, even going below 3 euros per month with the three-year plan.




1 month | € 10.99 per month 12 months | € 4.39 per month 36 months | € 2.99 per month (limited offer) Of course, 5 devices could be few, depending on your needs, considering that there are providers such as Private Internet Access that allow you to use up to 10 devices at the same time, or even better Windscribe whose annual plan there are no limits.


Speaking of payments, HMA allows you to use several methods, although not all are available in all geographic areas of the world. In any case, in addition to the usual PayPal, Apple Pay and cards, you can pay via Alipay or in Bitcoin.

If you don't want to commit immediately, however, you can take advantage of a free 7-day trial, enough to realize if whether or not the service is for you. But even by purchasing one of the plans, you will always have the canonical 30-day money back guarantee. Be careful, however, in fact the company will not refund a purchase made within six months of the previous one.

Click here to subscribe to one of HideMyAss

Privacy

plans HMA presents several legal documents, with a particularly substantial privacy legislation, the positive aspect, however, is that everything is very well organized, among other things with excellent writing. The legal aspects are described in great detail, but if you are looking for a summary, there is also a great summary post on the company's blog, which explains in relatively few words why HMA calls itself a "No Log" company.





As can be seen from the aforementioned documentation, HMA does not store source IP addresses, date and time indications, DNS queries, browsing history and subject data to transfer.

However, the company declares to register some indicative data relating to times and quantities of data transferred, but these are small information that does not identify users in any way and is only used for customer support, troubleshooting and network capacity detection reasons.

HMA underwent a security audit in August 2020. The chosen company was VerSprite, which positively judged the service offered. Unfortunately the final report is not publicly available and 2 years have passed since this audit. It would be desirable for the company to undergo new audits in the future, possibly sharing the results in a more open way.

Performance

As we said, HideMyAss! VPN relies on the OpenVPN protocol which, in our tests, returned average or slightly lower speeds, for example about 223 Mbps with connections to the UK, but rising to just under 400 Mbps with connections to the USA.

Unfortunately, the absence of faster protocols such as WireGuard is noticeable. The hope remains that the company will decide to adopt it sooner or later.

It remains to be said, however, that if your connection barely reaches 100 Mbps, these data are of little interest to you, but if performance are an important factor, HMA may not be for you.





Moving on to unblocking streaming content, HMA offers some dedicated servers, although they are not numerous ( just like those for p2p we were talking about at the beginning). Unfortunately, the results were somewhat unsatisfactory as we were unable to unblock Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney Plus. If you are looking for a good VPN that allows you to access the international catalogs of streaming services, HMA should not be among your candidates, unfortunately.

The strength of HMA is to be found elsewhere, namely security. AES-256-GCM, RSA-4096 and SHA-256 data encryption, together with the two available kill switches, will allow you to browse without too many worries.

App and installation

L The Windows app is very simple, both from a graphic and functional point of view. The options are well listed and easy to reach, with an On / Off button, the settings window and the list of locations from which to choose the server. The latter shines particularly, thanks to the possibility of filtering by continent or type (p2P, streaming), doing text searches and saving the most used positions in the Favorites.

Unfortunately there are no indications on latency or server load , however, you can do a Speed ​​Test to detect the closest servers and calculate download speed and latency.

The apps for Mac and mobile devices are identical to their Windows counterpart, with some differences especially in the settings: on Mac you will not be able to use the kill switch at the app level but only for the entire system and the only option available is OpenVPN UDP (no TCP).

The iOS and Android versions have an interface more suitable for screens of smartphones, however on iOS there seem to be fewer locations available, as well as very few options to choose from.

In any case, all the apps stand out for their extreme ease of use

Other functions

HMA allows you to automatically connect to the VPN when accessing the Internet. In addition, the client offers two kill switches. In the event of a VPN outage, the system-wide kill switch will protect you by blocking Internet access altogether, while the optional second allows you to close only selected processes, such as the torrent client or browser.

Unfortunately, the apps associated with this kill switch will cause it to automatically connect to the VPN in case of startup - it would have been better to have more control, however the kill switches work as they should, without any problems.

A ' another interesting feature is IP Shuffle, which allows you to dynamically change the IP address automatically or manually. This further reduces the chances of being monitored and helps to access sites with IP block lists. Just click on Update or set an automatic update interval.

The only drawback is that IP Shuffle requires you to close the connection and then make it again. Sure, it's a quick operation, but you need to make sure that the kill switch is active so as not to expose traffic.

In any case, the app's IP Shuffle interface itself will warn the user about the situation, so you just need to be a little careful to make the most of this function.

Verdict

HideMyAss! VPN can be an interesting service, both for the geographical distribution of the servers and for the ease of use. The prices are tempting too, and if encryption is your priority, it might be worth giving it a shot.

However, sub-par connection speeds and very poor unblocking capabilities of streaming services make HMA less attractive for those looking for a good VPN for Netflix.

We do not know if HMA will decide to adopt WireGuard, so the only advice we would like to give is to carry out the free 7-day trial and test the potential of the service. From the point of view of anonymity and privacy, you may be more than satisfied.