In 2014, usage of Hotspot Shield increased in Hong Kong after the outbreak of the 2014 Hong Kong protests. In 2013, usage of Hotspot Shield increased in Turkey, in response to the suspected efforts of the Turkish government to censor social media and citizen access to international websites. Hotspot Shield was also widely used during the Egyptian protests and revolution in 2011, when the Mubarak regime cracked down heavily on access to social media sites. During the Arab Spring protests in 2010, protesters used Hotspot Shield to access social networking tools to communicate and upload videos. Hotspot Shield has been used to bypass Internet censorship in countries with strict Internet censorship programs. Both the client software and the service are freemium: the main features of the client app, as well as a number of public servers are available free of charge, but users have to pay to get additional features, which include the elimination of advertisements, antivirus protection, connecting to more servers and choosing the geographic location of the service to which they connect. Users can bypass censorship using Hotspot Shield by connecting to a VPN server located outside their country.

While the service cannot make users completely anonymous on the Internet, it can greatly increase privacy and security. The connection protects the traffic between the user and the server from eavesdropping, and the IP address of the client is not exposed. The Hotspot Shield client establishes an encrypted VPN connection with one of its supported public VPN servers, through which the user can connect to the Internet. It was expanded to include support for iOS and Android in 20, respectively.

The first Hotspot Shield client app was released in April 2008 for Windows and macOS operating systems. Hotspot Shield is developed and operated by Dnick (former AnchorFree Inc.), a company in Chester county with offices in the Ukraine and Russia. Hotspot Shield was used to bypass government censorship during the Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. Hotspot Shield is a public VPN service operated by AnchorFree, Inc. Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, LinuxĮnglish, German, French, Russian, Arabic, Persian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish

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