Hotspot Shield creates a virtual private network (VPN) between your laptop and AnchorFree's Internet gateway. Standard antivirus software protects your computer, but not your web activities. Secure your entire web session and ensure your privacy online your passwords, credit card numbers, and all of your data is secured with Hotspot Shield. Hotspot Shield enables access to all information online, providing freedom to access all web content freely and securely. We love the web because of the freedom that it creates to explore, organize, and communicate. Unless you choose to sign into a certain site, you will be anonymous for your entire web session with Hotspot Shield. Hotspot Shield also makes you private online making your identity invisible to third party websites and ISP?s. Hotspot Shield protects your identity by ensuring that all web transactions (shopping, filling out forms, downloads) are secured through HTTPS. The CDT wants the FTC to start an investigation into what the Hotspot Shield's 'unfair and deceptive trade practices' and to order the company to stop mispresenting privacy and security promises while marketing its app.Hotspot Shield protects your entire web surfing session securing your connection at both your home Internet network & Public Internet networks (both wired and wireless). 'For example, when a user connects through the VPN to access specific commercial web domains, including major online retailers like and application can intercept and redirect HTTP requests to partner websites that include online advertising companies,' the complaint reads. If users try to visit any commercial website, the VPN app redirects that traffic to partner sites, including ad companies, to generate revenue. The CDT also claims that the VPN service sometimes 'redirects e-commerce traffic to partnering domains.' Researchers also found that the VPN app discloses sensitive data, including names of wireless networks (via SSID/BSSID info), along with unique identifiers such as Media Access Control addresses, and device IMEI numbers.Īlso Read: Secure VPN Services - Get Up to 91% Discount On Lifetime Subscriptions Reverse engineering of the apps source code also revealed that the VPN uses more than five different third-party tracking libraries. Hotspot Shield also found injecting Javascript code using iframes for advertising and tracking purposes. 'Consumers who employ Hotspot Shield VPN do so to protect their privacy, and Hotspot Shield's use of aggressive logging practices and third-party partnerships harm its consumers' declared privacy interests.' 'It is thusly unfair for Hotspot Shield to present itself as a 48 mechanism for protecting the privacy and security of consumer information while profiting off of that information by collecting and sharing access to it with undisclosed third parties,' the CDT complaint reads. However, according to research conducted by the CDT along with Carnegie Mellon University, the Hotspot Shield app fails to live up to all promises and instead logs connections, monitors users' browsing habits, and redirects online traffic and sells customer data to advertisers. The Hotspot Shield VPN app promises to 'secure all online activities,' hide users' IP addresses and their identities, protect them from tracking, and keep no connections logs while protecting its user's internet traffic using an encrypted channel. Hotspot Shield does just Opposite of What All it Promises

The VPN services are mostly used by privacy advocates, journalists, digital activists and protesters to bypass censorship and geo-blocking of content. VPN is a set of networks conjugated together to establish secure connections over the Internet and encrypts your data, thereby securing your identity on the Internet and improving your online security and privacy.

The 14-page-long complaint filed Monday morning by the Centre for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a US non-profit advocacy group for digital rights, accused Hotspot Shield of allegedly tracking, intercepting and collecting its customers' data.ĭeveloped by Anchorfree GmbH, Hotspot Shield is a VPN service available for free on Google Play Store and Apple Mac App Store with an estimated 500 million users around the world.Īlso Read: Secure VPNs (Get Lifetime Subscription) To Prevent ISPs From Spying On You

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