
Hotspot Shield does not disclose how many individual IP addresses it maintains, but it’s able to offer IP addresses in various parts of the globe because it uses virtual servers. Hotspot Shield has a large and diverse server network.

We’d like to see Hotspot Shield bolster its security and privacy credentials. Although, you should be aware that it’s not switched on by default. Thankfully, the kill switch works perfectly on other apps. We tested it with our kill switch test tool and found that our real IP address was exposed whenever we changed servers or caused an unexpected internet disconnection.

Hotspot Shield does not have a kill switch for macOS – not even an automatic one running in the background. We caution against using Hotspot Shield’s browser extensions. This means that your ISP can still see the websites you visit when connected to the Chrome extension, and your true IP address and location is exposed when using the Firefox extension. Hotspot Shield’s browser extension leaks WebRTC. However, as you can see in the image below, our test found that all ingoing and outgoing network packets were encrypted, and none of the websites we visited were decipherable.

If Hotspot Shield did not encrypt our data, Wireshark would show the websites we visited. We tested to see whether Hotspot Shield actually encrypts your traffic by running it through the packet-sniffing tool, Wireshark. Hotspot Shield Passed Our Encryption Test But Hotspot Shield does not include OpenVPN in its list of protocols, preferring to push its Hydra protocol. We typically recommend WireGuard or OpenVPN, as they are secure and open-source. If you trust this, you should use Hydra without concern.
#Hotspotshield free trial code
Hotspot Shield claims the code is assessed by experts from cybersecurity firms like BitDefender and McAfee. However, the problem with closed-source proprietary technology like Hydra is that there’s no way for independent experts to examine it. Hotspot Shield offers three protocols: Hydra, IKEv2 & WireGuard.
