That's just speculation, but there's also real-world evidence of Hotspot Shield taking some tracking-related liberties. For example, the company could keep a record of the time and date of every session, the device used, your approximate location, and how much data you transferred. And even if it doesn't log your browsing, there's still scope for building fairly detailed profiles on how you use the service. Anonymising URLs is more difficult than it sounds, and we just have to hope that Hotspot Shield is doing it properly. Device hashes are not linked to VPN browsing activity.' 'device hashes, which are used to identify devices and associate them with other data we collect. 'The domains that have been accessed by our users, but on an anonymized basis such that we do not know which user accessed which domain (we also aggregate this information on an approximately monthly basis). 'The duration of VPN sessions and the bandwidth consumed. There is still some logging, the policy explains, including: There's no record of your browsing history, and although it logs your IP address when you connect, this is deleted at the end of the session. Hotspot Shield's Privacy Policy begins with some reassuring details on the company's logging practices. Hotspot Shield allows you to choose your preferred VPN protocol from its Settings menu (Image credit: Hotspot Shield) Privacy There's no Bitcoin payment option, unfortunately, but you can use a card or PayPal, and if anything goes wrong later you're protected by an unusually generous 45-day money-back guarantee. If you'll use all those licenses, that translates to $2.40 per user per month. Hotspot Shield does have a handy option in the Family plan, which gets you coverage for five people, with five devices each, for only $19.99 billed monthly, or $11.99 on the annual plan.

Most providers charge around $3 to $5 per month for annual products and even less for longer-term contracts ( Private Internet Access offers a three-year plan covering up to 10 devices for an initial $2.03 a month). That's at the high end of the normal VPN price range. The paid VPN starts at $12.99 billed monthly and supports up to ten devices, dropping to $7.99 on the annual plan. You can use it as much as you like, but unless you really have no VPN budget at all, it's hard to recommend. There is one big plus to the free plan: there are no annoying 'per month' bandwidth limits. Hotspot Shield's free VPN plan offers just one US location, almost no features, support for one device only, no email or live chat support, and a host of annoying ads on the mobile apps.

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