Hide My IP Review - Best VPN Software for Privacy and Anonymity

Hide My IP VPN Software

$29.95

9.4

Support

9.4/10

Services

9.5/10

Performance

9.2/10

Editor Rating

9.5/10

Users Rating

9.2/10

Pros:

30 Day Money Back Guarantee
Anonymous and Encrypted Web Surfing
Cross Platform Support
Support 5 devices simultaneously.
One Time Fee

Cons:

Some Time Connection Problem

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Hide My IP Review: Everyday when you wake up in the morning and fire up your computer/cellphone to access your E-mails/chats/messages in this perfectly safe environment of your room, what if I told you someone was listening.

Listening and watching to your every move that you are making online, even though physically they might be thousands of miles apart?

That’s what the govt. is doing. We give up our privacy in the hope of security and safety, but what if we don’t want to? Or what if it’s not only the govt. who is listening? That’s a question I aim to solve in this Hide My IP Review.

We as the general consumers and subscribers of the Internet aren’t as “geeky” as we might be supposed to be, and hence our privacy seems to be at stake here, we don’t even understand the word “online privacy” to its full depth in the first place so how are we supposed to protect it?

That’s what I’ll try to answer throughout this article which will encompass a tool that already has a reputation and goes by the name Hide My IP which I’ll show how to use and what it does in this Hide My IP Review.

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What is Online Privacy?

Not everyone understands the concept of the phrase in its totality. For some, it’s just keeping their Facebook account’s password safe, and for others, it might have a totally different meaning.

So when I decided to scribble this Hide My IP Review, I decided not to make it just a “Please buy this awesome tool because I’m saying so” pitch-article, instead I want you to take some info with you when you leave this page regardless of you trying or not trying the tool.

Only when you understand what online privacy is, you’ll be able to truly decide for yourselves if this is the tool you need, if the features are enough and if you should go with it.

So basically Online Privacy is not just Facebook or Twitter passwords. It’s more of your “identity” in general, who you are, where you’re from, what you do on the Internet, that’s what comprises the major part of this phrase.

The irony about Online privacy is that it’s not exactly online. Meaning if you’re not protected good enough, someone might get access to who you are, your location, what you’re doing on the internet, and other details as such which needn’t all be online instead they are quite often offline and physical details.

Not just those. Online privacy also means the privacy of all the details of what you do on the internet, the websites you visit, whatever you do on the sites.

Now the govt. tries to control most of these details, it keeps a check on its citizens’ activities. In the later sections, you’ll figure out why you’d want to avoid that in detail.

So bottom line? In this Hide My IP review you’ll get to know how unprotected online privacy can affect and compromise your real life to a life-challenging extent (And no I’m not exaggerating), compromise your freedom, and how to protect yourselves on the Internet.

How Online Privacy is compromised?

You use the Internet to connect to the world. What you see on the surface is, you get a data plan, you download the Facebook/Whatsapp/ Internet Browser or any other app and you’re connected.

What actually happens is, each time you connect to the internet, you do so by using a IP address which is assigned to you by your ISP or your network.

This IP address is your footprint on the Internet. Just like cell phone numbers can be used to trace back to the owners of the numbers. Similarly, IP addresses can be used to trace them back to the subscribers or the users of the specific address.

So it’s clear that the “IP Address” is the root of it all. Now let’s take a look at why you’d want to hide it (apart from the obvious reasons!)

Perks of Hiding/Masking your IP Address

I’ve been screaming “Hide My IP Review” for quite some time now, but haven’t you asked what’s it all about? Why would you want to hide your IP address?

Of course, that was what I answered in the above section because your IP address is what determines your online privacy, doesn’t it? But there are other angles it as well.

1). Protecting your Identity:- This is the obvious reason. You don’t want the Govt. or any 12th-grade kid with good computer skills spying on who you are and what you’re doing, right?

2). Preventing Hacking Attempts:– The “IP address” plays a major role if someone tries to hijack your system, it’s the connecting node, if someone has access to your IP address, he is one step closer to overtaking your system, hearing your conversations, looking at your E-mail and what not.

3). Accessing Restricted Websites:- In many countries, certain websites are blocked. Because of political or social reasons, but being honest? I have a life of my own, I’m not into politics and no I don’t think all Muslims are terrorists, so hey why should the govt. decide for me which websites I visit and which I don’t, right?

4). Hiding your Internet Activity:- There are certain things which the govt. doesn’t want us doing, accessing the deep web per say, so they’ve classified it under “illicit” activities, but if you’re still curious of what secrets it holds, in that case, you’re going to need to mask your IP address.

I already wrote various other privacy-oriented based article, If you didn’t understand the concept of the privacy or anonymity and looking more information, check out below links that can help you to understand, What privacy is? How can you protect your self from various type spying? and what online tools can help you?

But this article dedicated to Hide my IP VPN software, that’s why let’s come to the point and check out the detailed review about the Hide My IP Software.

Hide My IP Review Introduction

So as you might’ve guessed by now, HideMyIP is the tool (a VPN) which lets you Mask your IP address.

I’m writing this HideMyIP review for the reason that Hide My IP isn’t the only VPN of its kind. And by now I’ve been with over 50 VPNs in my lifetime, but not all of them were worth writing about.

Nope, I’m not saying Hide My IP is the best VPN on the planet, what I’m saying is it’s one of the bests I’ve been with, in addition to a perfect mix of the “required” features, and an affordable and logical pricing. If you like a one-time fee-based program where you need to pay fee single, not every month then HideMyIP is the best alternative for you.

So I said it’s a VPN, right? What exactly is a VPN? A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. In simple English, it’s third-party software that acts as an intermediary between you and your internet connection.

When you connect to the Internet with HideMyIP, you get a set of private IPs from Hide My IP you can use, and you instantly get to be “virtually” present at the location of this new address.

So your real IP address is masked/hidden with this new set of IP from Hide My IP. And it’s not permanent; you can change it to any different set of address whenever you wish.

Hide My IP Features

So okay by now you know what the tool is, let’s look at what makes this Hide My IP review special, unique, and worth reading about.

I like to review tools in real-time. Meaning I’ll download the tool right now and walk you through it so as to create an updated review, and a better and strong connection plus understanding between us, sounds fair? Let’s get started.

So once you go to the Hide My IP download page, the first thing you’ll notice is its Operating Systems Support! Meaning it doesn’t matter which OS you’re using, they’ve got it covered. So I’ll just download the Windows version. (You can also download the Android Version!)

So okay the second thing I already love about it is its light-weight. It’s just around 5mbs and took me less than 3 seconds to download. (Meaning, it’ll eat up the least possible resources on your system no matter how low-config it is.)

Now have a look at the startup interface, which looks something like this:-

We need a closer look at the features. The quick-settings are pretty straight-forward, like the Clear cookies on Startup option, what it does is whenever you visit a site, most of them store some data of yours to make your browsing experience better and faster.

But Cookies are footprints of a kind (not as traceable as IP address, but they’re footprints) so if you select that option, every time you change your IP address, your cookies would be cleared hence giving you a fresh start.

I do have to mention that, if I remember correctly, none of the last 5-6 VPNs I tried had this feature, so yeah it’s an edge you get with Hide My IP.

1. Selecting Locations

As you can see a clearly placed button saying “select desired locations” is there for you. This is the button you’ve got to use to change your IP address to any location of your choice.

Here again I’m in a bit of dilemma. This being a Hide My IP review sounds a bit fishy if I just go on speaking why the tool is awesome, but I can’t help it. It offers over 120+ different locations you can choose from.

See? Now the thing is, if you’ve used any VPN in the past, you probably already know that this is a H-U-G-E number, most other VPNs offer 5-10 or max 30-35 locations.

But Hide My IP seriously seduced me with its offers. I can’t name all the locations of course but just download even the absolutely free version of the application if you think I’m exaggerating and you’ll get to see for yourselves.

2. Connecting Speed

Well once I hit the connect button, it took me around 5 seconds to connect to my new IP. So I would say that’s pretty impressive too. (Considering I’ve been with VPNs which need minutes!)

3. Advanced Browser Settings

This is the section where you get to set your preferences for various browser choices. If I’ve to put it bluntly, this is the first time I’ve ever seen these features with ANY VPN I’ve ever come across. I mean the Hide Referrer Header thing & the Mask User Agent option.

Referrer Header hiding basically is a simple feature which prevents websites from learning which website you came from. So it’s like you’ll reach on a website fresh, without any footprints, that’s just as clean as it gets.

While the Mask User Agent option is again an added security layer for you which prevents websites from knowing what kind of browser you’re using.

4. Simultaneous Connections

The VPN offers a generous number of simultaneous connections. Up to 5 devices can be used on a single account of the VPN.

I doubt any average household today owns less than 2-3 devices in the least. And this isn’t just limited to “phones”, there are personal computers as well. All in all, 5 is a good number by the industry standards.

5. Smart DNS Included

Most quality VPNs offer Smart DNS, not all do. Fortunately, Hide My IP belongs to the former category. This clearly means Hide My IP is a good choice if you need to stream blocked/geo-restricted content.

Note that smart DNS won’t encrypt your connection. It wouldn’t change your IP Address either. Because there’s no encryption involved it’s much faster than a VPN connection. But because it doesn’t change/mask your IP address, it’s a lot less secure or not secure at all.

Fortunately, Hide My IP includes Smart DNS with its VPN plans. So you can choose what you wish to use manually. Hence, you can opt for the more secure VPN connections, or the less-secure but faster Smart DNS.

4. Other Advanced Settings Worth Mentioning

a). DNS Leak Protection: This article was intended to be a Hide My IP review so I won’t make it a “complicated phrase explanation” piece and bore you with the details, all you need to know is there’s a substantial amount of DNS leak that can happen when you’re connecting to the internet. This option prevents that from happening.

b). SSL Encryption: You already know what SSL is, don’t you? Those sites with the green lock icon on the URL bar? Those are secure sites using a SSL certificate; similarly SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption for your connection too makes it a bit more secure than the general connection.

The rest of the options like “Do not start on Startup” etc. are just general options which I won’t boast about.

5. Pricing

Now to the final section of this hide My IP review, the pricing. You must be thinking that if the application does so much, it must cost a fortune, right?

Well it doesn’t! In fact it costs less than your monthly cup of coffee probably. ~~It goes for just $29.95~~. Before you make any decisions let me tell you that I’ve paid 10-15x times this amount for a lot less features with other VPNs.

Since the last update on this Hide My IP review, there has been a pricing-change. The price remains the same when paid yearly, i.e. USD $34.95/month. By this calculation, it’s USD $2.91/month.

hide my ip review

But, if you opt to pay monthly, the price almost doubles and you’d be paying USD $4.91/month. It’s still not much when compared to the other VPNs in the industry, it just was cheaper in its initial days.

Cons:

This Hide My IP review can’t be 100% complete without the honest bringing out of the cons of the product, right? So I’m listing here the only two cons I could find with Hide My IP.

1). The Available IPs aren’t always connected to specific locations. Meaning if you choose United States, you might not get connected to the location you chose due to heavy server load and it will automatically connect you to a slightly different server in the U.S

2). Slight Negative Effect on Browsing/Downloading Speed:- A common misconception around VPNs is that, they slow your internet speed down. Well to verify the statement in this Hide My IP review, I ran a speed-test and here are the results. (And you can check my location in the screenshot to verify that I’m using the VPN)

So I’d say yes the speed does get affected a little bit, not that it matters because it’s still great but I’m just pointing out a fact here.

Final Verdict:

So now it’s my turn to say something, isn’t it? Okay so I’ll also conclude this Hide My IP review here, I’ll just say that the features you get are more than enough. As I’ve already mentioned, some features were totally unique and exclusive to this application.

Talking about the pricing, do you seriously think $29 matters when it comes to your privacy and protection? You lock your doors and safety vaults with all the latest technology and bio-metric scanners; don’t you think your digital life too needs some kind of protection?

One thing is very good with HideMyIP, which is this is not per month based service, here you need to pay one-time fee for lifetime protection. $29 is not the big amount for lifetime privacy protection, either if you will get any premium VPN services then you need to pay min $8/Month and approx $100/Year. which is very high as compared to HideMyIP VPN software.

Well, this is a Hide My IP review so I get that you might be a bit skeptical towards it even now, so hey why don’t you go and try the free version of the application right now? You get access to all the features for 14 days, and that should be more than enough for you to help come to a decision.

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Do let me know your decisions in the comments section.