160 million people have been using an untrustworthy VPN – uninstall this app now

The court of public opinion isn't always right, but it is normally a pretty good indicator. Taylor Swift is a brilliant artist, the Barbie movie was fantastic, ice cream is delicious. But one area where people are flat out wrong is the Chrome Web Store reviews for Hola VPN.

With a 4.9 star rating on the platform, you'd think HolaVPN should be competing with the best VPNs , rather than being dubbed one of our VPNs to avoid but that's unfortunately not the case.

What is Hola VPN?

Around since 2008, Hola VPN is an Israel-based VPN that has had a whopping 250 million downloads worldwide and supposedly 160 million users.

There is both a free and premium version of the VPN (although we wouldn't recommend either) and it's available on PC, Mac, and iOS as well as the Samsung Galaxy Store (not the Google Play Store).

Prices for the premium version start at £2.99 per month for a three-year plan, but please do not use Hola VPN .

What's so bad about Hola VPN?

Hola VPN may be popular but it's simply not a true VPN. It styles itself as a Peer-to-Peer VPN that according to its own site "works by sharing the contributed resources of its users for the benefit of all and for business use by Bright Data."

What this basically means is that you are one node in a worldwide connection, you can use the bandwidth of others, but they can use yours too. You might just want to watch geo-restricted content on Netflix, but If you're paired with someone on the other side of the world who's up to no good, they can be using your connection to get you into all sorts of trouble .

Going back to the statement on Hola's own site, using Hola allows Bright Data, formerly Luminati, a company with a questionable record of data protection, to use your computer's own resources. It claims that "None of your personal information is accessed or collected except your IP address," but even if that's the case, a VPN provider openly passing your IP address to third parties is a massive red flag.

Further compromising the privacy credentials of Hola is its encryption protocol. It uses IKEv2 encryption, an outdated system that has been left in the past by the new WireGuard standard.

Hola VPN alternatives

In all honesty, pretty much any respectable VPN is better than using Hola, but why not swap a substandard service for one of our top choices?

Pretty much anybody will find something to like in NordVPN , it's fast, secure, and comes with leading anti-virus style tools. ExpressVPN is more expensive but also incredibly straightforward to use, while Surfshark is great value and super speedy. Importantly, all three of these providers have audited no-logging policies and leading encryption.