Hola Producing Questionable Activity
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I use Hola VPN at home (for Netflix and things like that.) It works well. But after starting to use the free version of it and going to Google, Google gave me a warning that there has been questionable activity coming from my machine and gave me a recaptcha security prompt to prove that I was a human.
This has me a little concerned. Obviously the free version of Hola uses my computer as a peer so people are coming through my machine and accessing the Internet as if they are at my IP address. Is this a normal thing that happens to Hola users? Or is this actually indicative that there is something more malicious being done through Hola?
I should mention that the machine in question is pretty much used for nothing but watching Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, and similar. It is hooked directly to a TV and not used for any amount of general surfing or anything like that. Pretty much just a media center and this happened about two days after Hola was first installed. So pretty confident that it is related, especially given what Hola VPN does. Also, ran an AV scan immediately and nothing was found. It had AV on and scanning before, but you know, to be sure.
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Never heard of it, but google is odd sometimes It made me change my password recently because "they detected unusual activity." my IP address changed was all that happened.
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I blocked the stuffing outta that. Students are occasionally smart and once it's on it would zip through the firewall - had to go manually remove it from the computers. Once off the FW blocked them from visiting the page to get it again.
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It's a peer to peer VPN that pretty much lets people do anything that they want as if they are your IP, from what I can tell. Popular for getting around censorship, and to represent as if you are in another location. So popular for Europeans to get American television shows or Americans to get British ones, for example.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's a peer to peer VPN that pretty much lets people do anything that they want as if they are your IP, from what I can tell. Popular for getting around censorship, and to represent as if you are in another location. So popular for Europeans to get American television shows or Americans to get British ones, for example.
So It's basically TOR again.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
So It's basically TOR again.
Sometimes your responses just seem exceedingly simplistic.. It it not anything like TOR. Not any more than Pertino is like Hamachi.
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@JaredBusch said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
So It's basically TOR again.
Sometimes your responses just seem exceedingly simplistic.. It it not anything like TOR. Not any more than Pertino is like Hamachi.
but in the most simplest of terms it is.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It's a peer to peer VPN that pretty much lets people do anything that they want as if they are your IP, from what I can tell. Popular for getting around censorship, and to represent as if you are in another location. So popular for Europeans to get American television shows or Americans to get British ones, for example.
So It's basically TOR again.
TOR is obfuscation. This is simply a VPN with automated geolocation selection.
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@Dashrender said:
but in the most simplest of terms it is.
In what way is it like the parts of TOR that were important? By that logic, is TOR just a VPN? That's all this is.
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In so much that you've obfuscated your IP to appear to be coming from another country to get around export controls.
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@Dashrender said:
In so much that you've obfuscated your IP to appear to be coming from another country to get around export controls.
It's not really obfuscated, though, only to the point of making geolocation fooled, not to protect your privacy. TOR was extremely different.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
In so much that you've obfuscated your IP to appear to be coming from another country to get around export controls.
It's not really obfuscated, though, only to the point of making geolocation fooled, not to protect your privacy. TOR was extremely different.
OK you're right! but the idea behind what I was getting it is also right, basic obfuscation and I'm sure that's what @thecreativeone91 probably meant by it too.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
In so much that you've obfuscated your IP to appear to be coming from another country to get around export controls.
It's not really obfuscated, though, only to the point of making geolocation fooled, not to protect your privacy. TOR was extremely different.
OK you're right! but the idea behind what I was getting it is also right, basic obfuscation and I'm sure that's what @thecreativeone91 probably meant by it too.
Yep, I'm sure it's some of the same people using it. I really never understood using these it's too risky. If you need a VPN get a virtual server you can use or something.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Yep, I'm sure it's some of the same people using it. I really never understood using these it's too risky. If you need a VPN get a virtual server you can use or something.
In this case, it's because you want to select the country out of a large list, some of which you cannot easily get a virtual server in. Normal people can't maintain a dozen virtual servers around the world and build their own VPNs just to watch television.
