VPN providers
hide.me privacy rating
VPN service from eVenture Ltd. in Malaysia with a free plan that needs no sign-up and paid plans. Apps support WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2 and SoftEther.
Summary
hide.me scores 67 out of 100 (grade C) on the VPN providers criteria. It meets 6 of 12 criteria: no ads or data sales, independent audit, transparency report, TLS configuration, audited no-logs policy and modern protocols. It partly meets open source, security headers, anonymous payment and open-source apps. It does not meet no trackers or telemetry and tells users about requests. It is based in Malaysia: Not in the Five, Nine or Fourteen Eyes. Automated tests: SSL Labs grade A+ and Mozilla HTTP Observatory grade B.
Score 67 out of 100. How scoring works
Criteria
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Partial
Open source Weight 3 of 3
Is all the source code needed to run the product public?
Only the Linux command-line client is open source, under GPL-2.0. The other apps and the servers are closed source.
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No
No trackers or telemetry Weight 3 of 3
Are the website and apps free of third-party trackers, with any analytics anonymous and any telemetry off by default?
The privacy policy allows third-party analytics cookies, and the Android app includes Sentry.
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Yes
No ads or data sales Weight 2 of 3
Is the product funded without advertising, ad targeting or selling user data?
Funded by paid plans. The free plan has no ads.
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Yes
Independent audit Weight 2 of 3
Has an independent security or privacy audit been published within the last three years?
Securitum's no-logs audit report is public.
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Yes
Transparency report Weight 2 of 3
Does the provider regularly publish how many government and legal requests it receives and how it responds?
Yearly report with counts of legal requests and DMCA complaints.
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No
Tells users about requests Weight 1 of 3
Does the provider promise to tell users about requests for their data, unless a court forbids it?
No published policy on notifying users about data requests.
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Yes
Audited no-logs policy Weight 3 of 3
Has an independent audit confirmed that activity and connection logs are not kept?
Securitum verified that no user activity or DNS logs are stored on the VPN servers.
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Partial
Anonymous payment Weight 2 of 3
Can an account be created and paid for without an email address, name or card?
Monero and other cryptocurrencies are accepted, but an email address is needed for paid plans.
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Partial
Open-source apps Weight 2 of 3
Are the apps for every platform open source?
Only the Linux command-line client is open source.
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Yes
Modern protocols Weight 1 of 3
Is WireGuard (or another modern audited protocol) supported?
WireGuard is supported.
Automated tests
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Yes
TLS configuration Weight 2 of 3
Does the website pass the Qualys SSL Labs test with a grade of A or better?
Grade A+
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Partial
Security headers Weight 1 of 3
Does the website pass the Mozilla HTTP Observatory test with a grade of A or better?
Grade B (70/100+)
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Not tested yet
Modern web standards Weight 1 of 3
Does the website score 90% or higher on the Internet.nl website test?
Not tested yet.