It’s recently come to my attention that Hola does some shady stuff with my bandwidth that I wasn’t aware of. Which is a damn shame, I thoroughly enjoyed the service. Netflix is simply better when not region locked.
So as the title suggests, how bad is what Hola is doing? Is it so bad that I should drop every thing and purge it or is it just mildly shady? Also what would be some more safe alternatives (specifically for video watching), both paid and free?
Hm… The thread says it has 6 comments but only 2 are visible to me. Not sure if a bug or shadowbanned posts are to blame.
My advice is to stop using hola altogether even if you pay for it, mostly because researchers have concluded the way their system and software is designed makes it vulnerable and attractive for attackers to gain control of the exit nodes (aka free hola users), and mount attacks or even mitm attacks with a malicious exit node. This is ignoring their questionable practice of selling bandwidth that’s not theirs in the first place or that the vulnerabilities have been known to attackers for a while and some viruses have been coded to use the hola protocol according to virustotal.
Some more reading if you want.
http://www.reddit.com/r/VPN/search?q=hola&restrict_sr=on&t=month
Try to avoid “free” alternatives, there is always a price, you just might not be aware of it initially like hola.
What Hola is doing and what i read from the report published by the researchers that exposed Hola was that your internet traffic is directed through other Hola users network, and their traffic through your network.
A VPN usually has different servers and when u connect to them, your traffic is routed through those servers - that’s how a VPN should work.
But in Hola’s case, there are no specific servers owned by Hola itself. Instead each user is used as a Node in the network. So, for instance, if anyone downloads a torrent or does some shady activity and all that traffic passes through your network; copyright authorities and other agencies will trace it back to you.
There are other free VPN extensions like Zenmate and TunnelBear, but I would say use a paid VPN (perhaps IPVanihs, PureVPN, etc.).
How bad is Hola?
Well, it really couldn’t be any worse. It’s malware that is designed to bypass all security on your computer and allow other people to install whatever programs they like on your system, do whatever they want, all without you receiving any warnings.
I made this post which is a summary of great article by a company that investigated Hola. There is a link to the article, or you can just read the summary.
How bad is Hola? You won’t even believe it. It shouldn’t be possible that it’s not illegal.
Did you find an alternative yet?
I need to buy games from Nuuvem again and without Hola that’s not possible anymore… It looks like there’s no comparable service that offers free VPN in every country of the world 
Netflix and stuff isn’t a problem, you can just use a Smart DNS (they are rather cheap) and you’re good to go, but I can’t seem to find a free / cheap alternative for VPN services…
I have been wondering the same things I am by no means a VPN expert so some advice from the community here would be great. I tried Zenmate a bit but didn’t really like it.
From what i read Hola was using a company called Luminati to do some shady illegal shit they released a statement on their website here I still have some faith in Hola myself because if there is no other alternatives out there as good I’m considering adding it back to chrome and using it which probably sounds very stupid to some but when there is no options out there I would rather take a risk.
agree IMO though this vpn is the most solid
Yeah the comment thing is throwing me off too.
Yup. The whole “nothing is ever free” saying, if only hola was an exception.
Sigh It was a fun ride while it lasted.
I guess I’ve either got to accept that I have to pay for VPN’s or settle for localised content only.
Honestly haven been looking into it that hard, so no. Though I might look into Smart DNS if that fixes netflix (basically what I used Hola for anyway). Sorry I cant be of more help.
From what I heard, it is basically setting up a botnet using each computer that has Hola installed, even though they say they aren’t.
IMO, true or not, that is more than enough reason to avoid using it.
While I’d love to believe their statement about the whole “The reality is that we have a record of the real identification and traffic of the Luminati users, such that if a crime is committed, we can report this to the authorities, and thus the criminal is immediately identified.” statement. Just how much can you trust the company that hid this shit from us in the first place?
Damn I really liked Hola too.
Yes i guess so, Hola worked brilliantly for me but since i got to know how it worked, i have deleted it from my system.
If I may suggest, check out few review sites like bestvpnprovider[dot]com / bestvpnservices[dot]com / vpnreviewz / etc., that could help you pick the VPN that works best for you.
I also did hear that. either way Hola done fucked up.