Hola VPN review: A dangerous P2P network, not a real VPN in 2025

Let’s be perfectly clear: This is not a typical review. This is a security warning. If you are considering using Hola VPN, I urge you to stop and read this first. Our in-depth Hola VPN review is designed to explain why this service is not a true VPN, but a dangerous peer-to-peer (P2P) network that puts your security and legal standing at severe risk.

Unlike a genuine VPN that shields you with private, encrypted servers, Hola’s free service dangerously turns your computer into an ‘exit node’. This means complete strangers can use your internet connection and IP address for their own activities, which could be anything from accessing geo-blocked content to committing cybercrime.

In my years analyzing cybersecurity threats for Safelyo, I’ve seen few services that operate with such a fundamentally flawed and exploitative model. We will delve into its documented history as a botnet-for-hire and expose the critical privacy features it completely lacks.

Your online safety is non-negotiable. Let me show you why ‘free’ can come at the highest possible cost.

1. The final verdict: Do not use Hola VPN under any circumstances

Let’s get straight to the point. In my career of testing and analyzing dozens of cybersecurity tools, some are good, some are mediocre, and a few are actively dangerous. Hola VPN falls firmly into that last category. After a thorough analysis of its technology and a review of its history, my verdict is absolute and unwavering.

The primary risks include:

•  Your IP can be used for illegal activities. Think of your IP address like your home address online. Hola, let strangers borrow it, and you have no idea what they’ll do.
•  Your personal data is logged and shared. The service records your browsing activity, which defeats the entire purpose of a privacy tool.
•  Your device’s resources are sold to third parties. Hola’s business model is built on selling your internet connection to other people without your explicit, informed consent.
•  It lacks basic security. There is no real encryption or a functional kill switch, which are the absolute minimum requirements for any legitimate VPN service.

2. How Hola works: The dangerous p2p model explained

To understand the danger of Hola, we need to forget everything we know about how real VPNs work.

Imagine giving a complete stranger the keys to your house, a copy of your ID, and your wifi password. You then let them leave through your front door to do whatever they want. If they commit a crime down the street, the police will come knocking on your door first.

Using Hola VPN is the digital equivalent of this. You’re not just a user of a service; you’re an active, and unknowing, accomplice in a high-risk network.

This is the core of the P2P VPN explained: It’s a system of mutual exchange, not protection. Here’s how it works in simple terms:

1. You join the network: When you install the free version of Hola, your device becomes a “peer” or “node” in their massive network. You are donating your device’s resources – specifically your bandwidth and your IP address – to a giant pool.
2. You “borrow” a connection: When you want to unblock a website in the UK, your internet traffic is routed through a random Hola user’s device in the UK. For that moment, you appear to be browsing from their location.
3. Someone “borrows” your connection: This is the critical danger. In return, another Hola user somewhere in the world – a complete stranger – can route their traffic through your device and use your IP address to do whatever they please.

From a cybersecurity standpoint, I find this model fundamentally reckless. It’s built on a foundation of forced, blind trust in millions of anonymous users. The answer to the question “Is Hola VPN safe?” is a definitive no, precisely because of this architecture. You have zero control over who uses your digital identity or for what purpose.

What could a stranger do with your IP address?

This isn’t just a theoretical risk. Here are real-world scenarios that can happen when someone else uses your internet connection:

• Posting illegal content: They could post hateful comments, credible threats, or extremist propaganda on social media. To Facebook, Twitter, and law enforcement, it will look like it came from you.
• Downloading illicit materials: They could use your connection to illegally torrent copyrighted movies or, far worse, download and share child abuse material. The legal notice or police inquiry will be sent to your home address.
• Committing fraud: Your IP could be used to perform credit card fraud or hack into other online accounts, making you the primary suspect in the investigation.

The bottom line is simple: If a crime is committed using your IP address, you are the first person who will have to prove your innocence. It’s a catastrophic risk for a service that offers no real benefit.

3. Case study: The 2015 Luminati botnet scandal

If the peer-to-peer model sounds like a system ripe for abuse, you’re right. We don’t have to speculate about what could go wrong – we have a well-documented case study that exposed Hola’s unethical core.

For years, Hola secretly operated a sister company called Luminati (now rebranded as Bright Data). This wasn’t a separate, ethical business. Luminati’s product was the collective bandwidth and millions of IP addresses harvested from the users of Hola’s free service. They were selling your internet connection to paying customers. As a cybersecurity analyst, I still consider this one of the most flagrant betrayals of user trust in the industry’s history.

In 2015, the inevitable happened.

A paying customer of Luminati used the network for a malicious purpose. They effectively weaponized the millions of free Hola users, turning them into a massive, unwitting Hola VPN botnet.

Think of a botnet as a secret army of hijacked computers. The owner of this army can command them all to do one thing at the same time. In this case, the command was to attack the imageboard website 8chan. The site was hit with a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack – a coordinated flood of junk traffic designed to overwhelm its servers and knock it offline. That flood of traffic came from the home computers and IP addresses of everyday Hola users.

The incident became a major story. As Ars Technica reported at the time, the creator of 8chan correctly identified the Luminati Hola VPN network as a “botnet for hire.”

The most damning part of this story? This wasn’t a bug – it was a feature. The entire business model was built on exploiting the free user base. While Hola claims things have changed and has since rebranded Luminati, the fundamental P2P architecture in the free product that enabled this catastrophic abuse remains. The risk is baked into its DNA.

4. Why Hola is not a real VPN: A feature checklist

Over the years, I’ve developed a non-negotiable checklist for what defines a true Virtual Private Network. These aren’t fancy extras; they are the fundamental pillars of security and privacy. A service must meet these criteria to even be considered a VPN.

When I put Hola through this basic evaluation, the results are alarming. It doesn’t just score poorly; it fails on every single essential point. Here is a direct comparison to show you exactly what you’re missing – and the risks you’re taking.

Feature	Real VPN (e.g., NordVPN, Surfshark)	Hola VPN
Encryption	Uses AES-256 encryption, the same standard used by banks and militaries, to create an uncrackable tunnel for your data. No one can see what you’re doing online.	Offers no meaningful encryption in its free P2P model. Your data travels through other people’s devices largely unprotected and visible.
Server Network	Owns or securely leases a private network of dedicated servers. Your traffic goes through a secure server controlled by the VPN company, not a random stranger.	Uses a network of its own users’ devices (P2P). It hijacks the IP addresses and bandwidth of its free users to route other people’s traffic.
Kill Switch	Includes a reliable, automatic kill switch. This is your safety net. If the VPN connection drops, it instantly blocks your internet access to prevent your real IP from leaking.	Has an unreliable or completely non-existent kill switch. If the connection to another peer drops, your real identity and location are immediately exposed.
Logging Policy	Operates under a strict, independently audited no-logs policy. They have a proven commitment to not tracking, storing, or sharing what you do online.	Logs extensive amounts of your personal data, including the websites you visit, your IP address, and how long you spend on pages.
Business Model	Earns money through paid subscriptions. Their financial incentive is to protect your privacy so you remain a happy, paying customer.	Makes money by selling your bandwidth and IP access to paying customers through its sister company (Bright Data). The free user is the product, not the customer.

As the checklist clearly shows, Hola is not just a poor-quality VPN – it operates on a model that is the polar opposite of what a real VPN is designed to do. It doesn’t provide privacy; it systematically dismantles it.

5. Our Lab Tests: Exposing Hola’s Security Failures

Theory and history are one thing, but as a security analyst, I always trust verifiable data. A VPN’s most fundamental promise is to secure your connection and hide your identity. We put Hola’s free service through a series of basic security tests in our lab. The goal wasn’t to measure top speeds, but to see if it could perform the most essential function of a VPN.

It failed catastrophically.

5.1. IP and DNS leak test results

A leak test reveals if a VPN is accidentally exposing your real information. A real VPN should show the VPN’s IP and DNS server addresses, not your own.

Test Type	Expected Result (Real VPN)	Hola VPN Result	Risk Level
IP Address Leak	VPN’s IP Address Shown	REAL IP EXPOSED	CRITICAL
DNS Leak	VPN’s DNS Servers Shown	LEAK DETECTED	CRITICAL
WebRTC Leak	VPN’s IP Address Shown	LEAK DETECTED	HIGH

What this means: These aren’t minor flaws. These tests confirm that Hola actively leaks your identifying information, making it completely useless for privacy. Websites, your internet service provider, and anyone watching can still see who you are and where you are.

5.2. Malware scan results

We uploaded the Hola installer to VirusTotal, a service that scans files with dozens of antivirus engines. While not flagged as a direct virus, the results were still concerning.

• Result: The installer was flagged by multiple vendors as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) or “Riskware.”
• What this means: Security software doesn’t see Hola as a benign application. A PUP is a program that can perform unwanted actions, such as tracking you, displaying ads, or, in this case, hijacking your connection.

5.3. Performance and stability test

Even setting aside the massive security risks, the performance reflects the chaotic nature of a P2P network. Your speed is entirely dependent on the quality of another random user’s internet.

Connection To Peer In…	Download Speed	Stability	User Experience
United States (Local)	35 Mbps	Unstable	Frequent buffering of video
United Kingdom	12 Mbps	Very Unstable	Page load times were slow
Japan	3 Mbps	Connection Dropped	Almost unusable for browsing

What this means: You are at the mercy of the network. There is no consistency, and the experience is often frustratingly slow, a far cry from the stable speeds offered by real VPN services. For a service that puts you at such high risk, it doesn’t even deliver a decent user experience in return.

6. What the privacy policy actually says

One of the most revealing parts of my analysis is always the privacy policy. It’s often hidden in a link at the bottom of a webpage, but it’s where a company’s true intentions are written in black and white. In my experience, you can tell a lot about a service by what it chooses to record.

And in Hola’s case, the text is nothing short of alarming.

While real VPNs go to great lengths to log as little as possible, Hola does the exact opposite. Their own policy explicitly states what they collect. Here is a direct quote:

"The Personal Information we collect and retain includes... log data which may include the following information – browser type, web pages you visit, time spent on those pages, access times and dates."

Let me be crystal clear: This is a detailed log of your online behavior. A genuine privacy tool’s primary mission is to prevent this exact type of tracking. For a service that markets itself as a VPN, collecting this information is a fundamental contradiction.

But it gets worse. Where does this data go? The policy states they can share your information with “affiliated companies” and “trusted third-party service providers.” We already know who their main affiliated company is: Bright Data (the new name for Luminati).

This confirms their business model. The data they log isn’t just for internal diagnostics – it’s a core part of the product. The practice of Hola VPN data selling isn’t some hidden conspiracy – it’s codified in their legal documents. You are granting them permission to monitor your activity and commercialize your connection.

Their policy isn’t a promise of privacy – it’s a permission slip to monitor you.

7. Safe alternatives to Hola VPN: Protecting yourself

After everything we’ve uncovered, I understand you might be wary. The most important question now is: what should you use instead? The good news is that the market is full of reputable services that actually protect your privacy.

As part of my work for Safelyo, I’ve tested dozens of VPNs. The following recommendations for a Hola VPN alternative are based on strict criteria for security, transparency, and user trust. They are the polar opposite of Hola.

7.1. Best truly free and safe alternatives

If you were drawn to Hola because it’s free, you can get the same benefit without compromising your safety. These services offer free plans funded by their reputable paid subscriptions, not by selling out their users.

Proton VPN

Created by the same CERN scientists behind the encrypted email service ProtonMail, this VPN is a fortress for your privacy. It’s based in Switzerland, protected by strong privacy laws, and has an independently audited no-logs policy. Its free plan offers unlimited bandwidth, which is almost unheard of. It’s the ideal choice if you want top-tier security without paying a cent.

Windscribe

Windscribe is another excellent free option that I often recommend for its generous features. It provides a robust 10GB of data per month on its free plan, which is more than enough for regular browsing and securing your connection on public Wi-Fi. It comes with a solid firewall that acts as a kill switch, ensuring your data is never exposed.

7.2. Best budget-friendly and secure paid alternatives

For the price of a cup of coffee per month, you can get complete protection, unlimited speeds, and access to a full range of features. These are my top picks for affordable, high-quality VPNs.

Surfshark

What I appreciate most about Surfshark is its incredible value. It offers top-tier security, fast speeds, and, most importantly, allows unlimited simultaneous connections. This means you can protect every device in your household with a single, affordable subscription. It’s the perfect “install and forget” solution for comprehensive security.

CyberGhost

If you’re new to VPNs, CyberGhost is a fantastic choice. I find its app to be one of the most intuitive on the market. It features specialized servers optimized for specific tasks, like unblocking Netflix or secure torrenting, which takes all the guesswork out of it. It’s a powerful VPN wrapped in a beginner-friendly package.

8. FAQ about Hola VPN

Even after all this evidence, you might still have specific questions. Here are direct answers to the most common concerns I hear from users who have considered or used Hola VPN.

9. Conclusion

To conclude this Hola VPN review and security warning, the verdict is inescapable: Hola is not a tool for privacy, but a direct threat to it. Its entire design is fundamentally flawed, insecure, and built on the exploitation of its free users. By using it, you are not protecting yourself; you are gambling with your personal data, your online identity, and your legal safety.

Remember these key points from our investigation:

• It’s a P2P network, not a VPN, using your IP address as a gateway for strangers.
• It has a documented history of being used as a botnet-for-hire.
• It logs your personal data, including the websites you visit.
• Our tests confirmed it fails basic security, leaking your real IP and DNS information.
• It lacks essential VPN features like encryption and a reliable kill switch.

The verdict from Safelyo is unequivocal: uninstall Hola VPN immediately and never look back. Protect yourself properly by choosing a vetted, secure service that is proven to safeguard your privacy. You can find our expert recommendations and detailed analyses in our Best VPN Reviews category.