Hola VPN sells users' bandwidth

[nosh]

When a user installs Hola, he becomes a VPN endpoint, and other users of the Hola network may exit through his internet connection and take on his IP. This is what makes it free: Hola does not pay for the bandwidth that its VPN uses at all, and there is no user opt out for this.

Here's the part I find most disturbing:

rather than having their IP addresses cloaked behind a private server, free Hola users are regularly exposing their IP addresses to the world but associated with other people’s traffic – no matter what that might contain.

I wonder if there's some way for users to prove their IP was used by someone else on Hola and not directly by them. If not, you'd have to be out of your frikking mind to use this service, or... really, really like free shit. Hola claims to have 46m users.

http://torrentfreak.com/hola-vpn-sells-users-bandwidth-150528/

[Deozaan]

I installed Hola as a Chrome extension some time ago (within the past year) when I first heard about it from someone who is less technologically inclined than I am asking me if it was safe to use. (In fact, I still have it installed (disabled) as I write this--something I'll fix right away!) It seemed to do what it said, but I also didn't like the idea that all the traffic was being routed through who knows where.

I said that it looked like it was probably safe to use if you really needed to, but I recommended to always disable the extension when she didn't need the VPN features so that she could be sure it wasn't "spying" on her (gathering her information or using her services) in any way.

Looks like I was right to do that.

Thanks for sharing this.