If you have made your way here you probably know exactly what a VPN and a VPN service is, if not I shall give you a brief explanation. A VPN is a virtual private network and what that boils down to is a secure network link over the internet. There are many reasons why you would need this but some of the more 'practical uses' for this is anonymity and a handy tool to bypass pesky geotargeting systems.
Hide My Ass VPN is a premium service offered at a good price. I for one bought 6 months and it works out to $8.40 (£5.14) per month. This is a small price tag for something which has massive potential. To make the connection possible they have a handy, easy to install client using openVPN. This can be set to connect to any server or to the server with the least amount of active users. It normally connects first time and speeds are normally ok. I am on Virgin Media 10Mbps line and I normally get around 60Kbps-100Kbps on torrents and a simple speedtest gets me around 1Mbps.
Now why would you want to use a VPN service? For one, with all the news buzz about piracy and getting cut off because you downloaded a torrent, you can get around that. You are not bound to your IP anymore and I would hope that Hide My Ass keeps no logs of what goes on while you are connected. Your actual ISP will can not tell if you are checking your mail, or downloading the latest movie as all traffic between you and the VPN is encrypted through a tunnel.
Ever wanted to watch hulu.com but are geotargeted out because you are outside USA. A VPN will get you into the country unlike a proxy which fails at kulu.com. NBC, Yahoo and various other TV services all work through HMA! VPN so just that is worth the meager monthly cost plus you are not 'pirating' so you can watch your favourite shows for free legally.
A very important note however is all ports are unblocked and free for you to use. This is awesome but opens all those ports back up to you so I would definitely recommend using an after market Firewall like PC Tools Firewall and not the standard inept windows firewall.
So in conclusion, if you would like to watch hulu.com from outside the USA, download whatever you want with anonymity and don't mind it making your connection a bit sluggish while you do said things, I say go for it, it is definitely worth every penny and more. They are always adding new servers so this is a great sign for a company to watch out for.
