published 24 August 2016

Hide My Ass (HMA) offers a huge number of servers, spanning 221 territories at the time of our review. It's owned by UK limited company Privax, which is reassuring in some ways, although the UK is a member of the five-eyes surveillance group of countries. Subscribers can use two devices or a supported router. There's no free trial, but there is a free browser-based version.

HMA's Windows client isn't especially attractive, but it does present you with a lot of information and options. You can quickly select country and server, choose OpenVPN or PPTP protocols, and view the session output as you connect.

Advanced options include scheduled IP address changes to help mask your activity further, and secure IP binding to prevent critical apps connecting outside of the VPN. The load-balancing feature connects to the less busy servers in your chosen location.

We measured packet loss of about 3%, but there was no noticeable performance impact, and in most sessions HMA made little dent in our bandwidth. Whoer.net detected a possible VPN connection through WebRTC, but no other issues, while DNSleaktest.com showed that the service was using OpenDNS rather than its own servers.

Bandwidth is unlimited and P2P traffic is not blocked, but despite the range of servers, we couldn't find one that worked with Netflix US or iPlayer content. Overall this is a well-specified, but pricey service, and at the time of our review its geo-unblocking performance was poor.

After a brief career in corporate IT, Simon Handby combined his love of technology and writing when he made the move to Computer Shopper magazine. As a technology reviewer he's since tested everything from routers and switches, to smart air fryers and doorbells, and covered technology such as EVs, TVs, solar power and the singularity.

During more than 15 years as Shopper's long-time printer reviewer, Simon tried, tested and wrote up literally hundreds of home, small office and workgroup printers. He continues reviewing smart products and printers for a variety of publications, and has been an IT Pro contributor since 2010. Simon is almost never happier than when surrounded by printers and paper, applying his stopwatch and a seasoned eye to find the best performing, best value products for business users.