WTOTW: Hotspot Shield

I share a web tip on my podcast every week. For #LOLshow Episode 14, the featured tip is Hotspot Shield.

Hotspot Shield is a free VPN service that helps protect your privacy and anonymity when surfing the web.

Why would you need such privacy and anonymity? Here are some reasons:

  • Protect yourself from identity theft online.
  • Hide your IP address for your privacy online.
  • Access all content privately without censorship; bypass firewalls.

Access Blocked Content

To expand a little on the last point, you could use the service to access not only censored content but also sites blocked by your office or content not available to our geographic region. You could view Facebook and YouTube if your office blocks those, for example.

I use Hotspot Shield to purchase digital items from Amazon.com, since they don’t sell it to customers outside of the US. And occasionally when I want to view videos from Hulu or ABC, Hotspot Shield allows me to bypass their filters. With a high speed broadband connection, you can even stream the videos without buffering.

Hotspot Shield is a free service, so they make up for it by showing you lots of ads. Sometimes they even modify the page you’re viewing by inserting ads at the top. That’s annoying, but I’m not complaining ‘coz it’s free. Also, be aware that the service works by redirecting all your traffic to the VPN server in the US before it goes to your destination. This will slow down your browsing speed, but that’s the price you have to pay for your privacy and anonymity.

Try it out – http://hotspotshield.com


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