Hola VPN Sells Users’ Bandwidth, Founder Confirms

[shamu726]

The operator of 8chan says the bandwidth of millions of Hola users is being sold for reuse, with some of it even being used to attack his site. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Hola founder Ofer Vilenski says that users' idle resources are indeed utilized for commercial sale, but that has been the agreement all along.

Faced with increasing local website censorship and Internet services that restrict access depending on where a user is based, more and more people are turning to specialist services designed to overcome such limitations.

With prices plummeting to just a few dollars a month in recent years, VPNs are now within the budgets of most people. However, there are always those who prefer to get such services for free, without giving much consideration to how that might be economically viable.

One of the most popular free VPN/geo-unblocking solutions on the planet is operated by Israel-based Hola. It can be added to most popular browsers in seconds and has an impressive seven million users on Chrome alone. Overall the company boasts 46 million users of its service.

Now, however, the company is facing accusations from 8chan message board operator Fredrick Brennan. He claims that Hola users’ computers were used to attack his website without their knowledge, and that was made possible by the way Hola is setup.

“When a user installs Hola, he becomes a VPN endpoint, and other users of the Hola network may exit through his internet connection and take on his IP. This is what makes it free: Hola does not pay for the bandwidth that its VPN uses at all, and there is no user opt out for this,” Brennan says.

This means that rather than having their IP addresses cloaked behind a private server, free Hola users are regularly exposing their IP addresses to the world but associated with other people’s traffic – no matter what that might contain.

While this will come as a surprise to many, Hola says it has never tried to hide the methods it employs to offer a free service.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Hola founder Ofer Vilenski says that his company offers two tiers of service – the free option (which sees traffic routed between Hola users) and a premium service, which operates like a traditional VPN.

However, Brennan says that Hola goes a step further, by selling Hola users’ bandwidth to another company.

“Hola has gotten greedy. They recently (late 2014) realized that they basically have a 9 million IP strong botnet on their hands, and they began selling access to this botnet (right now, for HTTP requests only) at https://luminati.io,” the 8chan owner says.

TorrentFreak asked Vilenski about Brennan’s claims. Again, there was no denial.

“We have always made it clear that Hola is built for the user and with the user in mind. We’ve explained the technical aspects of it in our FAQ and have always advertised in our FAQ the ability to pay for non-commercial use,” Vilenski says.

And this is how it works.

Hola generates revenue by selling a premium service to customers through its Luminati brand. The resources and bandwidth for the Luminati product are provided by Hola users’ computers when they are sitting idle. In basic terms, Hola users get their service for free as long as they’re prepared to let Hola hand their resources to Luminati for resale. Any users who don’t want this to happen can buy Hola for $5 per month.

Fair enough perhaps – but how does Luminati feature in Brennan’s problems? It appears his interest in the service was piqued after 8chan was hit by multiple denial of service attacks this week which originated from the Luminati / Hola network.

“An attacker used the Luminati network to send thousands of legitimate-looking POST requests to 8chan’s post.php in 30 seconds, representing a 100x spike over peak traffic and crashing PHP-FPM,” Brennan says.

Again, TorrentFreak asked Vilenski for his input. Again, there was no denial.

“8chan was hit with an attack from a hacker with the handle of BUI. This person then wrote about how he used the Luminati commercial VPN network to hack 8chan. He could have used any commercial VPN network, but chose to do so with ours,” Vilenski explains.

“If 8chan was harmed, then a reasonable course of action would be to obtain a court order for information and we can release the contact information of this user so that they can further pursue the damages with him.”

Vilenski says that Hola screens users of its “commercial network” (Luminati) prior to them being allowed to use it but in this case “BUI” slipped through the net. “Adjustments” have been made, Hola’s founder says.

“We have communicated directly with the founder of 8Chan to make sure that once we terminated BUI’s account they’ve had no further problems, and it seems that this is the case,” Vilenski says.

It is likely the majority of Hola’s users have no idea how the company’s business model operates, even though it is made fairly clear in its extensive FAQ/ToS. Installing a browser extension takes seconds and if it works as advertised, most people will be happy.

Whether this episode will affect Hola’s business moving forward is open to question but for those with a few dollars to spend there are plenty of options in the market. Until then, however, those looking for free options should read the small print before clicking install.

Source: TorrentFreak

[steven36]

This goes to show you millions of people will install anything with out reading the fine print . But also people install stuff everyday even after they been told ..fact is like 75% dont care about there privacy as long as it does what they want it to do . I knew about this ages ago it was always in the red tape . If people cared about there privacy free vpn and privacy invading softwares would be not be the most download programs like they are today. The world is so messed up that back in the early 2000s millions of people use to install programs that would hijack your pc with spyware to download songs and other media . People never learn or do they really care.

[ugurano]

better uninstall now

[SnakeMasteR]

March 25

May 27

May 29

As you can see, the FAQ has been updated between 27 and 29 May, so they tried to cover their intransparent and vague asses. They never lost a single word about how your connection/router und thus the IP is going to be used from others. Like hiring a profi-killer, buying weapons on a blackmarket or hacking into NSA/CIA servers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9615441

https://archive.is/tgujS

https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/603178141650026498

https://8ch.net/hola.html

hola.org botnet command and control hacked by a 15 year old. :lol:

http://milankragujevic.com/post.php?id=72

Visit this website: http://adios-hola.org/

[software182]

Thank god i never use this crap

[steven36]

It was not always like that ... They didn't start doing it tell late 2014

In late 2014, Hola Networks began selling access to its huge userbase as exit nodes, under the name Luminati. They charge $20 per gigabyte for bandwidth that is actually coming from their VPN users -- they do not pay for the bandwidth at all. Every Hola user is actually functioning as an exit node in a huge botnet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hola_(VPN)

I tested it once very little back around 2011 i didn't like it at all so i uninstalled it .

Article from Jan 2014

PSA: Do Not Use Hola Unblocker

It has come to my attention quite a lot of people seem to be recommending Hola, I'm just writing here to say YOU SHOULD NOT USE IT.
Hola turns your connection into an exit node which allows people to use your internet connection and potentially access illegal material.

Source :https://forums.hummingbird.me/t/psa-do-not-use-hola-unblocker/4432


Its been clear they been doing it since 2014 it took the general public over a year catch on that they was doing it :P


9 months ago

Be aware that Hola will use you as a exit node or as an intermediate node if you're not paying for premium. If somebody does something malicious and you're the exit node then you may be liable for it depending on your country of residence. If you're just an intermediate node in their P2P network then you'll have some of your upstream/downstream used up by Hola when it is running.

Source : https://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/2ckpiv/not_too_long_ago_reddit_taught_me_about_hola_just/

Review from 2014

Snail-like Streaming with Hola Unblocker
Believe it or not, streaming is the last thing you would want to do with Hola Unblocker. The speed is slow, bandwidths are awful and the never ending buffering is too painful for a user to bear. Imagine streaming a three minute video in 15 minutes.

nvm god bless hola unblocker it’s just slow
— = (@kakspls) November 21, 2014

Hola Unblocked Puts Your Online Security at Great Risk
Have you ever questioned your choice of using Hola Proxy server? If not, may be its time to do so now. If you think we are only blabbering about it, see the picture below (taken from Android Google Play) and read down all the comments.

A user claims that her Netflix account was hacked soon after she used Hola Unblocker. Now imagine using a service that could potentially expose you to the cyber goons. While we understand that bypassing the geo-restrictions has its own charm but when it comes to compromising on the online security, we advise our readers to stay away from such services.

Connectivity Issues
The ordeal of using Hola Unblocker Extension only ends once one uninstalls it from his or her PC or any other device. Like many other free proxy servers, Hola also falls on its knees when it comes to fulfilling even half the promises. If the streaming and privacy concerns are not worthy enough of your attention, may be connectivity issues will make you think twice.
The initial idea behind getting a proxy server is to bypass the geo-restrictions. But what if it doesn’t provide you with the same? What if it does while tearing apart your online security? So there are quite a few things to keep in mind while installing the said extension in your browser.

@sabrinaidk hola unblocked doesn’t work!!
— Ikram (@Ikramashkir) December 31, 2014

Alternatives to Hola
This Hola VPN review may seem a bit biased to you and we do not blame you for that. We were also impressed with its services initially until we decided to dig deeper into it. This review is solely based on thorough research and feedbacks from the Hola users only.
As far as the alternatives are concerned, is there any other better online privacy tool than a VPN? It gives you “ads-free” access to ALL the blocked websites and streaming channels and encrypts your data to keep it safe from the likes of hackers and malwares.
We have pointed out the main differences between the two and have left it up to you to decide which one is better than the other.

Source http://www.vpnranks.com/hola-unblocker-security-and-alternatives/

This is why i didn't like it in 2011 it was junk really there's no benefit from using it people will install anything if think it hides there ip . :rolleyes:

[Karamjit]

...........Stopping Posting Updates For This Program.

..........Please wait For A Second

..........Stopped.

[CODYQX4]

This goes to show you millions of people will install anything with out reading the fine print . But also people install stuff everyday even after they been told ..fact is like 75% dont care about there privacy as long as it does what they want it to do . I knew about this ages ago it was always in the red tape . If people cared about there privacy free vpn and privacy invading softwares would be not be the most download programs like they are today. The world is so messed up that back in the early 2000s millions of people use to install programs that would hijack your pc with spyware to download songs and other media . People never learn or do they really care.

Sadly so many people are so far from privacy, live-tweeting their lives and letting everyone know that they won't be home so please steal my stuff.

Then say if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear and that anyone seeking privacy on the internet is paranoid.