Hotspot Shield for open wifi

Has anyone used Hotspot Shield for protection when connecting to open wifi, such as Starbucks AT&T? Can you describe how this works? Any third party reviews confirming it's effectiveness?

 

You use their VPN services...it creates a VPN tunnel between your laptop, and their VPN server..and your internet traffic goes out through their gateway.

For those worried about their wireless activities at public hotspots being sniffed...this is a good security measure. It's a legit service, has been around for a while.

Because its free..it does come with minor ad-ware..however..it is not intrusive adware, you'll get a banner once in a while.

For those who don't have a PC running at home 24x7 or at their office to make their own VPN service with..yet they want security at public hot-spots..it's good.

 

Thanks for the reply. Do you know if HSS creates a proxy server entry in Control Panel/Internet Options/Connetions/Lan Settings? I'm trying to understand how HSS inserts itself between the client and the open wifi service.

 

What kind of encryption does hotspot shield use? Is there any kind of slowdown?

 

You get a HUGE slowdown with hotspot shield, thats why i stopped using it. You get a max of 512 connection and can download maximum of 3-5gb/month.

 

If I recall (it was a while ago)...it was just a "use remote gateway" entry in the VPN dialer. Just like if you built your own PPTP VPN setup...you can use your local gateway, or the remote VPN hosts gateway.

I don't recall much slowdown..but that was a while ago...I supposed more recently they may have substantially more users. VPN itself will drop your throughput a little bit....and your web surfing will depend on the bandwidth of the VPN host. Right now I'm VPN'd into a client doing work on their servers...so my surfing is going through the VPN..and out their internet connection.

The basics of VPN itself is how HSS inserts itself between the client and open wifi.

 

I'd say that for ocasional use of a public hotspot this should be enough...