Hola VPN, free browser extension is a voluntary botnet

[alani123]

If you don't know what Hola is, think of it as an easy way to bypass geoblocking. It's basically a free VPN in a browser extension.

Well, turns out that the extension took advantage of its users by using their IP's and internet connections to lend them to other users as well as sell them to users of their subsidiary company Luminati.io, which is advertised as an anonymizing network.

So while Hola is a free extension, its users are quite literally the product that is being sold.

Article on the topic from Vice's Motherboard:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/your-tool-to-access-netflix-content-abroad-is-hijacking-your-internet-connection

What's funnier is that a 15-year-old hacked into Hola's service. Here's his own post on this:
http://milankragujevic.com/post.php?id=72

If this is not the best board for this post, feel free to give me a hint on where I should move it at.

[mishax1]

They did warn its customers in their FAQ section.. but they surely need to improve their service or compensate their users for extended traffic.

[alani123]

Here's something more ridiculous about this story. A team got together and created http://adios-hola.org/

In this website, they were able to successfully exploit hola to run programs at the other end, at the computers of those that had it installed.

Demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yh07wCBGuw

Some days after that, hola pushed a silent update. 

[Amph]

i did find hola suspicious since i used it, fortunately there are free alternatives like dotvpn and browsec, and another one which i don't remember right now, just search for vpn in the extension store

[alani123]

i did find hola suspicious since i used it, fortunately there are free alternatives like dotvpn and browsec, and another one which i don't remember right now, just search for vpn in the extension store

Should we really trust 'free VPNs'? After seeing how much an extension like hola can expose its users I'm probably going to stay away from 'free VPN extensions'.

[altcoinhosting]

It always sounds strange to me when people are serious about becoming anonymous, but still use a free service to become "anonymous".
This while a service like earthvpn costs $40/year...

[Amph]

i did find hola suspicious since i used it, fortunately there are free alternatives like dotvpn and browsec, and another one which i don't remember right now, just search for vpn in the extension store

Should we really trust 'free VPNs'? After seeing how much an extension like hola can expose its users I'm probably going to stay away from 'free VPN extensions'.

something like tunnelbear(they do offer a free pla up to 1.5 giiga with twitter) seems trustable to me, you can run that as your main vpn, and then use the extention, at worst they will do the exact play of Hola with the ip from tunnelbear

[mishax1]

It always sounds strange to me when people are serious about becoming anonymous, but still use a free service to become "anonymous".
This while a service like earthvpn costs $40/year...

When people have the ability to get a free service they will use is instead of paying similar services even tho the consequences are much worse than the benefit..

[aikunsatu]

I did not use hola since it's always can't connect, 
I prefer use socks5 or premium vpn, I think that's trusted enough...

[jdebunt]

When people have the ability to get a free service they will use is instead of paying similar services even tho the consequences are much worse than the benefit..

Convenience trumps everything else for the average consumer unfortunately

[futurebit640]

Damn I'm using it all the time for Netflix Thanks for the heads up OP!

[klm bitcoin]

In other words, if you are a Hola user, your bandwidth and internet connection can be sold to others.

[yslyung]

thx for the info, just uninstalled it !

[ajw7989]

that is crazy. thanks for the post good to know. I heard about the extension and was curious about it but now I know to stay away lol

[zenitzz]

thank you for info free vpn, because im search apps free vpn.

[micjustin33]

Hola is terrible as you can also get the instance of being unlucky if one of those IPs has been filtered as spam and you browse on here while waiting for netflix.. you get shadowbanned (speaking from experience).
If people are looking for free alternatives I'm currently using Zenmate, which works fairly well for everything.