Hide My Ass Pro VPN Review - [Also known as HMA]

Hide My Ass is more than just a clever name. It is a full-service and comprehensive VPN client with a number of additional services, all with one goal in mind: online privacy, security, and anonymity. Hide My Ass (HMA), provides one of the best software clients you will find, coupled with customer service to match, making it the go to solution for many VPN users.

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The Hide My Ass VPN Service

Today HMA has a large customer base with over 600 VPN servers in over 70 countries providing over 77,500 IP addresses to hide behind. Not too shabby. Especially for those who want local access in a wide variety of countries.

Each time you connect you get a different IP Address, and HMA is an unlimited bandwidth VPN. Their custom built VPN client software is user- friendly, light on resources, and uses multiple VPN protocols, including OpenVPN and L2TP with 256bit security. They provide a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Plans and Pricing

If you shop around for a VPN, whether it is for private or more commercial use, you will find that many providers offer a dizzying array of options. These options usually lead to more confusion, instead of a direct path to solving a problem. Hide My Ass, on the other hand, offers one VPN package, HMA Pro VPN, eliminating the need to decide which option is best suited for your needs. This package, will satisfy the majority of people seeking anonymity on the internet through a virtual private network.

The only variance in the HMA pricing structure is how many months you pay for at a time. Their billing models are:

Monthly – $11.99/mo
6 Months – $7.99/mo – 33% savings
12 months – $6.99/mo – 42% savings

This is a very common model in any subscription industry, where they reward you for paying for a year upfront. Hide My Ass makes it worth your while to lock in their lower rate.

Refer-a-friend

One feature of HMA billing is that they offer a refer-a-friend program. For each person you refer, you will receive extra weeks added to the end of your billing. How much time depends on the type of account your referral signs up for.

If they sign up for the monthly plan you will receive one week of extra service, the six month plan will get you six weeks, and the 12 month plan will get you a full 12 weeks of extra service. It’s a nice perk for anyone who has a network of friends who can use the service.

Features

The main feature of Hide My Ass’s virtual private network client, and one of the main reason’s it is one of our top choices, is variety. Currently there are nearly 500 VPN servers available to connect to, housed in over 60 countries, with over 60,000 IP addresses to choose from. Those numbers are growing all the time. In 2009, there were over 30 countries and around 17,000 IP addresses available to users of HMA Pro VPN, which were still pretty staggering numbers.

Within this suite you have access to all the major VPN protocols, OpenVPN, L2TP, and PPTP, and you will find no bandwidth or server switch limitations on your use of the client.

Currently there is full client support for both Windows and Mac, as well as Linus. Linus use is currently limited to command-line based interaction, so it does require some user expertise. Of increasing importance is anonymity and security on mobile devices. With that in mind, Hide My Ass has full service for both iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

There is a load balancing feature, which allows you to use the least loaded server for maximum speed while connected. The user interface is fairly simple to grasp and very intuitive. There are a lot of extra options for the more advanced user, including anonymous email, privacy software, and a secure file uploader.

With HMA you can rest assured that anyone snooping around on the public Wi-Fi that you are connected to won’t get your information. Bypassing censorship and Internet restrictions is a snap with HMA which is routinely used be people at school, work, college, and in many countries. Their service works with all the top online TV, movie, and social websites so you can Facebook, twitter, and stream those videos in places that normally restrict such activities.

HMA Complaints

It is hard to find anything negative with using the client, but this would not be a fair review of Hide My Ass VPN if we did not mention that occasionally you may see performance suffer a bit. Rarely have we experience slowdowns, but it does happen from time to time. The good news is that we have found it to be 100% server based and is easily remedied by simply switching to new VPN server within Hide My Ass.

Some users have complained about HMA not being entirely transparent in their logging and data retention policy. As a company that operates in the UK, they also must adhere to laws and regulations set forth by the United Kingdom. If those things are of concern to you, you might want to look at one of our other recommended VPN providers.

What information does Hide My Ass VPN collect?

Here is what Hide My Ass VPN says in their privacy policy about information that they may collect.

On registration:

What data we collect: When you register we will collect your username, email address, password (encrypted) and IP address.

Payments:

What data we collect: We collect payment information, which will vary depending on the payment method chosen by you, but may include your name, address and credit card information. We never handle or store complete credit card numbers, as this is done on our behalf by our payment processors.

VPN SERVICE:

What data we collect: We will store a time stamp and IP address when you connect and disconnect to our VPN service, the amount of data transmitted (up- and download) during your session together with the IP address of the individual VPN server used by you. We do not store details of, or monitor, the websites you connect to when using our VPN service.

Will Hide My Ass VPN give out my information?

From their privacy policy

If we receive a report from any person or organization (including law enforcement) that leads us to suspect that your account has been used in connection with any wrong-doing, we may at our discretion suspend your account, but we will not disclose any personal information that may identify you unless we are legally compelled to do so.

Bottom line

HMA VPN does keep a little info on their clients. What they keep in obviously not a problem for most users. Depending on how you pay, what IP you connect from, and what email you use you can be a completely anonymous web surfer through their VPN services.

They do have great VPN client software that provides the best security. Their biggest strength is in the large number of countries in which they maintain VPN servers. If that is what you are looking for then this is the VPN service for you.

When it comes to some of those bad reviews on HMA, they are most likely fictitious, the product of people and other low end VPS services piling on trying to bring down one of the guys at the top. HideMyAss VPN would very quickly go out of business with the cost of all those VPN servers if they did not have a very large and loyal customer base.

We recommend Hide My Ass VPN service because of their large network of servers in so many countries.