Post by Bunter on Oct 13th, 2015 at 1:03pm
Ohhhhh Holo not sure I would go back to using that... :o
Although most users probably do not realize it, Hola works much like Tor. Every user of Hola also acts as a potential exit node for every other Hola user,
‘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.’
This is likely to be something many users will be very uncomfortable with, and exposes them to the same kinds of risks that a Tor exit node user is vulnerable to. Because the apparent IP address of any Hola user is the IP address of another user, that user can be held responsible for the actions (criminal, hacking, DDoS attacks etc.) of users. As Brennan observes,
‘On the other hand, with the Tor onion router, users must specifically opt in to be exit nodes and are aware that completely anonymous traffic can pass through their connections, which means they should be ready for abuse reports for child porn, spam, copyrighted content and other ills that come with the territory.’
Co-founder of Hola, Ofer Vilenski, has defended this setup. He explained that Hola has never hidden how the service works,
‘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.’
However… what was never made clear (until its FAQ was quickly updated last Wednesday as news spread of Brennan’s findings), is that Hola sells its users’ bandwidth through its sister company, Luminati
Tortosa_Hacker.jpg ( 10 KB | 206
Downloads )
Although most users probably do not realize it, Hola works much like Tor. Every user of Hola also acts as a potential exit node for every other Hola user,
‘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.’
This is likely to be something many users will be very uncomfortable with, and exposes them to the same kinds of risks that a Tor exit node user is vulnerable to. Because the apparent IP address of any Hola user is the IP address of another user, that user can be held responsible for the actions (criminal, hacking, DDoS attacks etc.) of users. As Brennan observes,
‘On the other hand, with the Tor onion router, users must specifically opt in to be exit nodes and are aware that completely anonymous traffic can pass through their connections, which means they should be ready for abuse reports for child porn, spam, copyrighted content and other ills that come with the territory.’
Co-founder of Hola, Ofer Vilenski, has defended this setup. He explained that Hola has never hidden how the service works,
‘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.’
However… what was never made clear (until its FAQ was quickly updated last Wednesday as news spread of Brennan’s findings), is that Hola sells its users’ bandwidth through its sister company, Luminati
Tortosa_Hacker.jpg ( 10 KB | 206
Downloads )
