Privacy researchers have accused Hotspot Shield VPN of logging user data and selling it to advertisers. In a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) requests a government investigation into the data security and data sharing practices of Hotspot Shield.The CDT goes on to accuse Hotspot Shield of injecting Javascript code into users' browsers for advertising and tracking purposes. AnchorFree has flat-out denied the CDT's complaint.
With all the talk about how VPNs are nearly required nowadays, this goes to show that a free VPN may not be the best choise for protecting your personal information. It really won't surprise me if more and more of these complaints start popping up in the future as VPN use rises, and more companies get into the field.
It also charges the VPN with selling customer data to advertisers, using multiple third-party tracking libraries, "redirecting e-commerce traffic to partnering domains," transmitting Mobile Carrier data over a non-HTTPS web connection, and mishandling customers' payment information, as evidenced by some users' claims of credit card fraud resulting from their purchase of the Elite version of the VPN.
With all the talk about how VPNs are nearly required nowadays, this goes to show that a free VPN may not be the best choise for protecting your personal information. It really won't surprise me if more and more of these complaints start popping up in the future as VPN use rises, and more companies get into the field.
It also charges the VPN with selling customer data to advertisers, using multiple third-party tracking libraries, "redirecting e-commerce traffic to partnering domains," transmitting Mobile Carrier data over a non-HTTPS web connection, and mishandling customers' payment information, as evidenced by some users' claims of credit card fraud resulting from their purchase of the Elite version of the VPN.