I would of honestly made this a lot sooner, but I thought everyone already knew, but after talking to some people in the forum and on certain discord servers I'm apart of, I've learned that people don't actually know this about HMA.
In the past HMA has been known to give out data to the government, and has (and still does) state that HMA does not condone or allow any sort of illegal activities.
The last (and greatest) known case of this was several years ago, when they gave over information about members of the LulSec hacking group. {you can read some extra information about that here, and on their blog post here)}
For me personally, that is enough to not trust the company, but there is some more, and I will link to some more sources down below.
On that blog post as mentioned before,this is one of the things that they stated
"Our VPN service and VPN services in general are not designed to be used to commit illegal activity. It is very naive to think that by paying a subscription fee to a VPN service you are free to break the law without anyconsequences. This includes certain hardcore privacy services which claim you will never be identified, these types of services that do not cooperate are more likely to have their entire VPN network monitored and tapped by law enforcement, thus affecting all legitimate customers."
So they clearly state that they will work with the government if requested to help and take down people who are using their services for illegal action.
(read here for information about someone getting a email from HMA threatening to turn him into authorities for torrenting off of piratebay)
There's a couple more things that I feel should be mentioned about HMA.
The parent company of HMA is called Privax, somewhere around 2015, AVG(The company that owns Avast!) acquired Privax & HMA,
So, this means that things could have changed on how they handle user data, however AVG itself does not have a very good track record, (I mean seriously, Avast is a piece of shit.) so it easily could be that they are still doing it, but maybe just in a bit of a quieter manner.
I feel as though bestvpndeals.com did a pretty good job of portraying HMA. (which you can read here)
This is really something that you have to take at your own discretion, for me, however my data is handled needs to be extremely private and secure, and I have to have 100% trust in the company that I am using.
I hope that this post has been helpful and informative to... well... someone out there...
If you have anything you would like to contribute to this post feel free to do so!
LIST OF SOURCES
The Lounge
Serious Message to users of HMA
Submitted by ZiZien, 11-05-2018, 08:51 PM, Thread ID: 88201
Thread Closed
Did you know this about HMA before now? And would you trust them now?
Yes I knew about this
Votes:
1
% of votes:
50.00%
No I did not know about this
Votes:
0
% of votes:
0%
I would continue to trust them
Votes:
0
% of votes:
0%
I would not trust them
Votes:
1
% of votes:
50.00%
You have already voted. Click on the dropdown to undo your vote.
RE: Message to users of HMA
RE: Message to users of HMA 13-05-2018, 01:58 AM #3
13-05-2018, 01:58 AM
#3 RE: Message to users of HMA 13-05-2018, 11:54 AM #4
13-05-2018, 11:54 AM
#4 RE: Message to users of HMA 21-05-2018, 02:36 AM #5
21-05-2018, 02:36 AM
#5 RE: Message to users of HMA 22-05-2018, 06:45 PM #6
22-05-2018, 06:45 PM
#6 RE: Message to users of HMA 22-05-2018, 07:15 PM #7 Yes, I do heartily repent. I repent I had not done more mischief; and that we did not cut the throats of them that took us, and I am extremely sorry that you aren't hanged as well as we.
22-05-2018, 07:15 PM
#7 Yes, I do heartily repent.
I repent I had not done more mischief; and that we did not cut the throats of them that took us, and I am extremely sorry that you aren't hanged as well as we.