Hotspot Shield vs ISP

neoxide · February 19, 2013

I was wondering if my ISP can see my activity when Hotspot Shield is on? Can they see downloads through HSS?

This is purely out of curiosity as I've used Hotspot Shield for years as a proxy for games like minecraft and WoW but I read it's a VPN and I was wondering what makes a VPN so special?

hunchback · February 19, 2013

the best way i can explain it is like this.

A proxy is like a tunnel. All your traffic requests goes through it and when it reaches the destination or host PC it gets the info and sends it back to you. So to any outsider any web traffic looks like its all coming from the IP of the proxy you are using.

Where as a VPN is like a virtual cable, So think of it like running a cable from your computer all the way to where ever the VPN is located. Its more secure in most cases, easier to setup and all your web traffic goes through it. But it can cost money

Here is a more in depth explanation at superuser

http://superuser.com/questions/257388/what-is-the-difference-between-a-proxy-and-a-vpn

But to answer what makes a VPN so special well in the corporate world i could setup a VPN on my network and on the computers that live on my network and then when a computer leaves the business as long as it is connected to the VPN it could access servers and such that are at the business location. So basically with a VPN i can go anywhere yet still have access to the save local network because i have a virtual cable running back to the local network.

rufee · February 19, 2013

Your ISP can see every single packet you send or receive, so there isn't much use hiding your traffic. Proxies are usually used to "fool" destination hosts that you are from for example - US so you can access content that is restricted to US users, where you are from somewhere in Europe etc...

azeotrope · February 20, 2013

A VPN like hotstpot shield will encrypt all traffic between you and wherever the VPN is running, so you your ISP cannot see what you are doing. They can see data passing between you and where the VPN is running, but it would be garbled and impossible for them to decipher.