Hola selling bandwith?

Watermelondrea · Oct 25, 2015

So Hola is an extension that allows you to watch streams and such that would originally be geoblocked where you live.

I read somewhere that Hola sells your bandwith. Is it true? Also, since I live on University and use university wi-fi, should I stop using Hola? Are there any good substitutes?

Thanks!!

dorispulaski · Oct 25, 2015

Forbes says so:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2015/05/29/hola-vpn-selling-users-broadband/

More importantly, Hola admits to it:
http://hola.org/faq#in_whatis_pvp_vpn

What is a community powered (Peer-to-Peer) VPN?
Hola is the first community powered (Peer-to-Peer) VPN, where users help other users to make the web world-wide again. This means that Hola routes your traffic through other nodes (peers) in the Hola network, as opposed to routing through power-hungry costly servers. This allows Hola to provide you with a superior VPN service with minimal underlying costs. Since it uses real peers to route your traffic and not proxy servers, it makes you more anonymous and more secure than regular VPN services. This also means that Hola is harder to detect and block.Currently, Hola runs in a hybrid mode - combining traditional VPN architecture and peer-to-peer technology. Chrome browser extension and Opera browser add-on operate as a standard VPN service and are not part of the Hola peer-to-peer network

sabinfire · Oct 25, 2015

No, they sell your IP address, and you become an exit node for others who want to proxy into another location/country.

For instance, someone from Asia could use Hola to switch to the USA (or wherever you're from), do something illegal, and it would be traced right back to you as if you did it.

dorispulaski · Oct 25, 2015

In any case, by avoiding geoblocking, you are already complicit in violating someone's copyright.

I would not use it on a university or business network.

And I would not use it myself.

NaVi · Oct 25, 2015

I have a separate chrome settings folder with Hola installed so I can do my main browsing without the extension running.

chromium-browser --user-data-dir=.config/chromium-hola

I'm using linux so where the config files are put will be very different depending on your Operating System... and I'm using Chromium instead of Chrome.

sabinfire · Oct 25, 2015

dorispulaski said:
In any case, by avoiding geoblocking, you are already complicit in violating someone's copyright.

I would not use it on a university or business network.

And I would not use it myself.

I agree, for the free version of Hola, absolutely.

Hola Premium isn't supposed to have these concerns (but the free version is enough to make you leery overall.)

Better to pay for a premium VPN than risk the freebies.

karne · Oct 25, 2015

dorispulaski said:
In any case, by avoiding geoblocking, you are already complicit in violating someone's copyright.

I understand that. However, can you then please explain to me, as an Australian, how I was supposed to watch another Australian compete at this event without my unblocky friend?

In this case, because Eurosport bought the rights, and Eurosport has an Australian channel on which they have not shown any skating in many years, I was geoblocked from even the ISU's live stream. Australian Eurosport does not show skating, it hasn't in years, and I've been right through the TV guide this week and they're not showing Skate America. How is this fair? If I am prepared to pay the $50 for IceNetwork (and it's more than $50 because of the yikes conversion from AUD to USD), if I am prepared to use legitimate streams and provide to their revenue, am I really doing anything so wrong?

The ISU really needs to get into this and fix it. It is WRONG that Eurosport can prevent me from using the ISU stream even when they clearly have zero intention of showing it here.

sabinfire · Oct 25, 2015

They bought it so you can't see it. Cute, huh?

I expect corporate BS at work, but not on my free time.

dorispulaski · Oct 26, 2015

karne, I wholly understand your use of hola, but the point I am making is that the whole enterprise of hola is skeevy because a significant part of its users are doing something of questionable legality, and hola knows that.

btw, you paid IN to use its service, AFAIR, so it is not clear to me what your particular legal issues might be in Australia. I am not a lawyer, let alone an Australian lawyer. It might be that the party at fault for copyright violation, if anyone, is IN for not denying hola access. Or not.

But, such users doing questionable things can hardly go to the cops to complain about hola for internet fraud or various kinds of viruses, malware and ransomware, and unauthorized bandwidth sales that hola might infect them with.

Whatever the legal status of using IN in a country it is not authorized to broadcast to, using it on a business or college network is a risk, IMO. If some kind of crooked activity is committed using hola stolen/sold bandwidth is traced to your employer or school's IP, all hola users at the school or businesss are likely to be fired or expelled or otherwise punished.

I would do it at home. And I would keep my personal data and important files on another machine entirely than the one I used for hola.

But I am a paranoid old lady..

alebi · Oct 28, 2015

does it happen only if you have a static IP or in any circumstances?

dorispulaski · Oct 28, 2015

What is a community powered (Peer-to-Peer) VPN?
Hola is the first community powered (Peer-to-Peer) VPN, where users help other users to make the web world-wide again. This means that Hola routes your traffic through other nodes (peers) in the Hola network, as opposed to routing through power-hungry costly servers. This allows Hola to provide you with a superior VPN service with minimal underlying costs. Since it uses real peers to route your traffic and not proxy servers, it makes you more anonymous and more secure than regular VPN services. This also means that Hola is harder to detect and block.Currently, Hola runs in a hybrid mode - combining traditional VPN architecture and peer-to-peer technology. Chrome browser extension and Opera browser add-on operate as a standard VPN service and are not part of the Hola peer-to-peer network

Here again is what hola says about it. I always feel I really know nothing about how something really works unless I wrote the code...and given this, not even then.
http://www.kaner.com/pdfs/imposs.pdf

But it sounds to me that as long as you are actively running hola, at least hola free version, you are treated as a node in the hola network. And they will route traffic through your bandwidth. So they will still be doing it, regardless of whether you are using a temporary IP or not.

Now if you are logging on using something like a proxy server, the IP will be different when you sign on and off and on again, but it will still be part of a block of IPs owned by the service you use. It should be harder to trace activity to you personally, but given the kind of stuff the US developed to track terrorists' activity, I bet a cookie that if they want to badly enough, the feds could find you.

Princessroja · Oct 28, 2015

I'd bet a lot more than a cookie.

Aren't there other services like hola that are more secure, like tor and such?

dorispulaski · Oct 28, 2015

I doubt anyone would bother for Eurosport copyright violation :laugh:

but if hola was being used for something like this:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...UoDaE&usg=AFQjCNGwwdkK3U438YjzM6l-oQei3_v6_QQ

or even this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoLocker

oh yeah, absolutely.

Sorrento · Oct 28, 2015

Did anyone had problems watching any streams from the official ISU channel lately with the help of Hola? I've tried it and it did not work at all. It happened last year at the end of the season and this year it repeated. So Hola does not provide what it claims anymore, at least for me. I did not buy their special service and I am not going to. Reading about the problems this service might cause makes me really uncomfortable to use Hola ever again.

Too bad Eurosport doesn't cover all events live and when they go recorded they omit all participants, they show only top 8 (or even less) in each discipline and that is not satisfying. I have only Eurosport available on TV to watch figure skating and that's it. I hate when they cut figure skating for other sports events (especially for recorded events).

I wish ISU channel was free to watch for everyone. Because even if we get TV coverage- it is not full and sometimes even not that informative at all. Also- they could make it a subscription channel for everyone- they could easily win money for it and invest in it for better quality. Let users choose what they want to see- TV or qualitative on-line stream. Seriously- why not?!

Sorrento · Oct 28, 2015

Princessroja said:
I'd bet a lot more than a cookie. Aren't there other services like hola that are more secure, like tor and such?

How do you use Tor for geo-blocked streams?

xibsuarz · Oct 28, 2015

Sorrento said:
Did anyone had problems watching any streams from the official ISU channel lately with the help of Hola? I've tried it and it did not work at all. It happened last year at the end of the season and this year it repeated. So Hola does not provide what it claims anymore, at least for me. I did not buy their special service and I am not going to. Reading about the problems this service might cause makes me really uncomfortable to use Hola ever again.

Too bad Eurosport doesn't cover all events live and when they go recorded they omit all participants, they show only top 8 (or even less) in each discipline and that is not satisfying. I have only Eurosport available on TV to watch figure skating and that's it. I hate when they cut figure skating for other sports events (especially for recorded events).

I wish ISU channel was free to watch for everyone. Because even if we get TV coverage- it is not full and sometimes even not that informative at all. Also- they could make it a subscription channel for everyone- they could easily win money for it and invest in it for better quality. Let users choose what they want to see- TV or qualitative on-line stream. Seriously- why not?!

I had the same problem: the ISU stream didn't work for me even with VPN. Since I get no coverage, I still use Hola to watch the CBC stream, it's pretty good if you ask me as they broadcast the whole events and the gala, no commentary. It makes me uneasy to read all that trouble that Hola is causing, but I really don't have another choice to watch it live, there are no official live streams here (that's why I found it odd that the ISU stream geoblocked me) and the stream from Russia never loaded. I just install Hola when I need it, and as soon as the Gala finishes it, I uninstall it again. It's very quick, anyway.

Hola selling bandwith?

Watermelondrea

dorispulaski

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sabinfire

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dorispulaski

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NaVi

sabinfire

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karne

in Emergency Backup Mode

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dorispulaski

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alebi

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dorispulaski

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Sorrento

Sorrento

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