Hotspot Shield Mac Free: Is Your Privacy at Risk?

While it's encouraging that Hotspot Shield isn't able to link any behavior to your specific account, this level of data collection is still far too invasive for any user concerned about privacy or anonymity. The VPN service collects a significant amount of data, even if you use the free version.

One of the main concerns with Hotspot Shield Mac Free is the company's logging policy. While they claim that they don't keep logs of your browsing history or online activity, they do collect other information. This includes non-personal logs of websites visited via their VPN servers, aggregated on a monthly basis. Additionally, they collect device-specific information such as device identifiers, browser types, device types and settings, operating system versions, mobile, wireless, and other network information.

Hotspot Shield also collects bandwidth used per user, per session, which is used to monitor, support, and optimize VPN services. These data are stored for three years. Furthermore, they collect connection timestamps, which are also used to monitor, support, and optimize VPN services, and stored for the same period of time. The company also derives your approximate geographical location from your IP address and uses this information to connect you to the nearest VPN server.

It's worth noting that even if a government agency physically seizes one of their VPN servers and succeeds in breaking disk encryption on those servers, they would not find any logs or information that would reveal what any individual user was browsing, viewing, or doing online via a VPN connection. However, this does little to alleviate concerns about the company's data collection practices.

If you use Hotspot Shield Free, the service can also share even more data with third-party advertisers. This includes your IP address, which is encrypted only for the duration of your session and not linked with your activity while using the VPN.

In conclusion, while Hotspot Shield Mac Free may offer some level of anonymity, its logging policy raises significant concerns about privacy. If you're looking for a reliable and private VPN service, you may want to consider alternative options that prioritize user privacy.

Hotspot shield mac free