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UPDATED December 2024
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Hoxx presents itself as a VPN but the reality is that it’s similar to a proxy service. Owned by a US company called VPN1 LLC, Hoxx VPN operates throughout the United States. The VPN’s official website claims to have over 1 million users.
Besides that, the company has 674 servers that span across 32 countries. These numbers are incredible, if they are true.
Hoxx VPN claims to provide the same features as a regular VPN. The VPN promises to hide the IP addresses of its users, encrypt traffic and unblock websites that are restricted geographically.
Moreover, the service provider offers both free and paid versions of their application. It claims to protect the personal data of users when they use public Wi-Fi.
However, we found these claims to be untrue in our testing. Find out why you should avoid this product in our detailed review.
Hoxx VPN poses as a VPN service. Therefore, it offers the same features as every other VPN on the market. It masks the original IPs of its users and enables them to surf the web anonymously. The VPN does that by relocating the VPN connection through a remote server.
Moreover, the service also claims to unlock geo-blocked websites. It also claims to unlock the geo-restrictions by governments to let users access the internet outside these restrictions. This includes letting users access steaming services for entertainment.
However, the VPN fails to put up a comprehensive performance and doesn’t really provide all of these features. That being said, it offers some good features, which include:
A VPN service needs servers to reroute user connections to distant locations. In general, a greater number of servers translate into better overall performance. If a VPN server has an increased number of servers, there’s a greater chance that users will connect their location to a server. As a result, these users will enjoy a faster internet connection.
Besides that, more servers mean that there will be more server machines to divide the traffic on a certain server. So, in the end, a greater number of severs will always be helpful for a user.
Most VPN providers have limited server locations and offer only 100 server locations at best. Hoxx VPN, on the other hand, has almost 674 server locations in its network. Premium users can access all of these servers that are distributed between 32 different countries. These numbers are great as they increase the chances of finding an unused server nearby.
However, we can’t verify these numbers as the service doesn’t let its users choose a specific server. Users only have the choice to select the country of a certain server. The service takes it upon itself to connect these users to a server location. According to them, the application automatically connects the users to the best server location available in that country.
Most VPN services restrict the number of connections a user can connect to a certain server. On average, all VPN providers offer three to five devices on a single account.
However, Hoxx VPN generously allows an unlimited number of connections. That’s great considering most VPN users want a secure connection on all their devices. These users divide their time on the internet on both desktop and mobile devices.
Hoxx VPN users don’t have a restriction on the choice of platforms available. Users can run the application on any of the major platforms except Linux OS.
Hoxx VPN is available on Windows, Mac, and Android. Moreover, users can download the web browser version of the service on Chrome and Mozilla. Users only have to visit the relevant store of that web browser and add the service as an extension.
Hoxx VPN released the iOS version of their application in February 2019. Besides that, they wanted to launch a browser extension for Opera users as well.
Often, VPN developers try to keep their application light-weight to make it as efficient as possible. Hoxx VPN did something similar with its product. Let us take a look at its interface on different devices.
The whole application only takes space of 8 MB in Android. However, this is still higher than the best VPNs available in the market that take even less space than this.
Moving on, the application is also easier to use than some VPN applications we have tested. It doesn’t over-complex its application with a hard-to-understand interface. You can start using the application as soon as you click the icon of the application.
The first screen of application has a clean design with a simple combination of white and light blue. The VPN’s interface shows all the servers available at the moment. It divides all available servers into two main categories, servers for free users and servers for premium users. Free users only get to access six server locations at the most.
The first screen also includes other options for users. They can contact customer support by clicking the message icon on the first screen. Accessing the user profile wasn’t difficult as well. Users can access their profile by clicking on the profile icon at the bottom of the screen. Besides that, users can log out of the application through the exit icon on the bottom-right of the screen.
Besides these basic features, the Android lacks any comprehensive features we expect from a VPN. Moreover, not having support for a fully-fledged iOS version is disappointing.
The Chrome extension is simpler than what we expected. The browser extension hangs at the top-right corner of the web browser where it waits for you to start browsing.
The icon is gray when the user is not connected to a server. However, it turns blue when the user connects to the VPN server. The browser extension also displays the country short-code to display the server the application has a connection with.
However, we were surprised to see that the application had more features in its web browser than the Android application. The browser version has a many more locations than the Android. These locations number up to 17.
Besides that, the extension has public servers available to free users. Something that wasn’t available in the bare-bones Android application.
The extension also presented us with the option to embed another extension to protect ourselves from WebRTC leaks. However, this link leads back to a third-party application called WebRTC Leak Shield and the web browser fails to add any protection mechanism on its own.
We found Hoxx VPN to be extremely problematic. The VPN does little effort to offer basic VPN features. It has an unapologetic logging policy which captures sensitive user data. Besides that, the application deprives its users common features like common torrenting.
There are many things wrong with this VPN, so we’ll start with the most basic one: its logging policy.
Whatever its faults are, you must give Hoxx VPN points for honesty. The VPN publicly admits that it keeps a log of internet activities of its users. Does the VPN save all proxy logs?
To this question, the company replies on their website’s FAQ section that it does log the activity of every user for a certain period of time. They claim to do this for stopping illegal activity on their proxy networks. While this stance is admirable, it eliminates the whole purpose of using a VPN service. People start using VPN services to keep their information from being logged.
Besides that, it’s a poor excuse for logging personal information of users. The service doesn’t even explain what it does with that information afterwards, which raises our suspicions further. Most VPNs aren’t upfront about their logging policy. VPN services hide real facts in their privacy policy while claiming anonymity on the front.
To get a clearer view of what data the Hoxx VPN collects, we visited Hoxx VPN’s privacy policy.
Hoxx VPN not only logs information from your browser, but it also saves access times, viewed pages, IP addresses, and the pages a user has viewed before activating the service.
Moreover, the application doesn’t guarantee that this information will be safe with them. That’s disappointing since the application not only logs your application but also reserves the right to save that information in their privacy policy.
People would assume that since the application keeps information to keep an eye on illegal activities; they won’t share it unnecessarily with others. However, that’s not the case.
Hoxx VPN’s privacy policy proudly claims that it will share any information it has with any government or law enforcement agency. This is clearly against the foundation of VPN services. They give no importance to user privacy and user security.
After discussing Hoxx’s privacy policy, it makes little sense to criticize its jurisdiction in the US. However, it still is an overwhelming hazard to a user’s privacy.
Hoxx VPN’s parent company, VPN1 LLC, has its base in the United States. The US government has a history of monitoring not only data of its citizens but also people in foreign countries. So, besides worrying about the CIA and FBI tapping in on your connections, you also have to worry that your own VPN service. You see, Hoxx VPN is liable to share your information with the government; it is bound by the US law to do this.
The VPN’s willingness to share personal information with the government aggravates this even more. However, it doesn’t end there. The United States is the founding member of the Five Eyes Surveillance Alliance. This alliance is a consortium of countries that share information with each other. The UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are part of this alliance.
Therefore, all the information that the US government collects about you can also be easily shared with any of these countries. Besides that, the US government can also share the information with the other 9 members of a larger consortium known as the “Fourteen Eyes.”
4096-bit encryption algorithm used was the most secure encryption algorithm on the planet until it was cracked in 2013 by researchers. The researchers had only used rudimentary software to decrypt data.
Since then, this technique has been abandoned by the VPN industry. Most VPN providers use the AES-256 encryption algorithm to encrypt user data, which is the security standard these days. The AES-256 method is so secure that even the US government and agencies use it while sharing sensitive information.
Even supercomputers don’t come close to cracking AES-256, which is a testament to the algorithm’s strength. This is in contrast to the 4096-bit RSA method that was cracked using a microphone six years ago.
However, Hoxx VPN gives further proof that it doesn’t care much about user privacy. The VPN still persists with the outdated RSA encryption protocol to hide user traffic. As a result, all the traffic that goes through the VPN service is vulnerable to hacks.
The personal information of users such as their personal messages, pictures and banking details can get compromised if someone cracks through this outdated encryption technique.
Tunneling protocols are also an important part of securing user information and ensuring that no one can snoop on users. It has a huge role in establishing a secure connection between the user’s device and the destination site.
This is why all reliable VPN services use OpenVPN to establish a secure and private connection. Experts consider OpenVPN to be the best modern VPN protocol. As we have seen before, Hoxx VPN shies away from this necessary security feature.
Instead, Hoxx VPN uses HTTP tunneling protocol for its browser add-on services. Besides that, it uses an outdated Shadowsocks protocol for both its Android and desktop applications. The use of Shadowsocks is almost obsolete and no other VPN service uses this protocol.
Moreover, the protocol only supports proxies and isn’t a VPN protocol itself. As a result, not many programs can run on top of this foregone proxy protocol.
Saying that it’s disappointing would be an understatement.
Every VPN we review has to go through testing for any leaks and data vulnerability. Considering how little effort the VPN puts in securing the data of its users, we didn’t expect from the service. As it turns out, we were right.
WebRTC is a necessary browser feature that enables real-time communications between browsers. Almost every browser from Google Chrome to Mozilla Firefox uses this method to communicate effectively. It’s a really useful service as it helps the development of RTC applications. However, it can also cause privacy problems for VPNs.
The WebRTC leak happens when the browser APIs interfere with the VPN’s functions and uncovers the original IPs address of the device. This is why it’s essential for every VPN service to ensure that any IP doesn’t get leaked through a WebRTC leak.
To test this, we visited the same website the VPN provides for its testing: “https://ip8.com/.” As we expected, the VPN service failed to protect our original IP. The VPN leaked our original IP address right away.
However, other tests yielded better results for the VPN provider. Hoxx VPN managed to protect our connection from IPv4 leaks. Still, the VPN failed to protect our connection from DNS leaks. As we connected to the VPN, we were surprised (not really) to find the name of our ISP right in front of our eyes.
Our VPN leak tests prove that the VPN is unsafe to use.
The reason behind Hoxx’s leaky connections is a mixture of outdated encryption methods and obsolete VPN protocols. On top of all that, the VPN doesn’t have a kill switch. A kill switch is the last line of defense in the case of an IP leak.
So, if a major IP leak happens, Hoxx VPN has no chance of protecting your identity online. This is something our leak tests have already proven. Whatever you do, you will always be unsafe while you’re using Hoxx VPN.
It’s true that all VPN services slow down connections to create a safe path for their users. This is a necessary sacrifice to ensure that user data doesn’t get compromised. However, Hoxx VPN fails miserably here and drags the speed down to new lows.
Just as we’ve done in the past, we referred to the experts to tell us how fast the VPN service has been. For our Hoxx VPN review, we looked at the extensive review given by TheBestVPN website.
The website’s Hoxx VPN review discloses further faults in the VPN service. According to the speed test, the VPN caused a 94% decrease in their connection, which is outright terrible. We expected the service to have a better speed than other services as it had more servers than most VPN services and used a less secure data protection mechanism.
However, that’s exactly what you get for using outdated technology.
The website gauged the VPN’s performance by testing two different servers. The tester at the website was using a 100 Mbps connection and connected to a European server to see how it performed. They made it clear that the best VPN services only meet the 97 Mbps benchmark.
The European server failed to give acceptable speed and decreased the overall speed down by almost 70%. However, the ping and upload speed were relatively better and held at 39ms & 46.21 Mbps (12% slower) respectively.
The US servers were not as bad in terms of downloading speed. The download speed hung at 48.99 Mbps, which is 49% slower than the benchmark (still horrible). Besides that, the VPN had an even worse upload speed of 2.78 Mbps (94% slower than the benchmark). The VPN featured a dismal latency of 197ms as well.
One of the main functionalities for a VPN service is bypassing geographic locations. This feature allows these services to break through restrictions and access content. However, not every website allows VPNs to unlock their content.
Popular streaming websites such as BBC iPlayer, Netflix, and Hulu enforce restrictions on their content. They even manage to block VPN services from accessing restricted content. Only a handful of VPN services bypass these restrictions. As you may have guessed it, Hoxx VPN is not one of those VPNs.
Though it was already impossible to enjoy streaming through Hoxx VPN because of its dismal speeds, the VPN went one step further and didn’t even give us the option to try. The VPN failed to unlock Netflix in all three of the following servers we tried:
The VPN did manage to get through restrictions on US YouTube.
Though there’s nothing wrong with torrenting itself, it gets a lot of flak for its association with copyright infringement. Many torrent users engage in copyright infringement and share files that are not theirs for sharing.
Copyright infringement authorities keep a strict eye on such users and penalize them with heavy fines and even jail time. Considering that Hoxx VPN is forever ready to hand out your information in a free-for-all with the US government, it would be foolish to torrent through the website.
However, not every person uses torrenting to share illegal files. Torrents and other P2P networks are one of the best ways to share huge files at express speeds. But it also leaves you vulnerable to online security breaches if you don’t use a VPN.
Many VPN services keep the illegal use of VPN in their minds and only allow torrenting in certain servers. However, Hoxx VPN views everything in black and white. It discourages torrents despite the legitimate applications of torrenting.
“The Onion Router” or TOR has been the most renowned facilitator of internet privacy throughout the years. It provides the perfect platform for users to establish a private and encrypted connection.
The web browser reroutes a connection through several nodes which makes it really difficult to track down the physical location of a user. However the TOR browser doesn’t encrypt the information it sends to a website.
Although hackers won’t be able to locate you, they still could see your information by exploiting this vulnerability. This is the reason why experts suggest using the TOR browser with a reliable VPN service.
Using a VPN in conjunction with the TOR browser enables people to maximize their anonymity on the web. This combination is great for making sure that you have maximum privacy, but it drops down the connection speed even more.
So, only people who are dead serious about privacy use this combination. There are a number of VPNs that respect the need of these users and support the TOR network. Hoxx VPN, however, doesn’t share the same for enthusiasm for privacy as most of us do. It firmly rejects the use of TOR on its FAQ page and terms it illegal.
Terming it illegal is factually incorrect. Hoxx VPN doesn’t even know that the famed web browser is not illegal.
The TOR browser was originally developed for the US navy to ensure that their communication was secure. Besides that, journalists and activists use TOR browser all around the world to work under repressive governments. So yes, it’s not illegal; Hoxx VPN has to get its facts right.
Hoxx only has a single premium plan that has several different pricing options. These options vary according to the number of times you have used the service.
Users have the option to pay $3 for one week. They can also pay $40 right away and get the service for the entire year. This plan costs much less and breaks down to $3.33 per month.
Like most pricing structures, Hoxx VPN lets you save money by signing on longer subscriptions. For instance, the two year plan costs users a direct payment of $50 which gets divided into $2.08 per month.
Hoxx VPN also has a free plan for its users. However, the free version of the application has considerably fewer features (not that the premium version has a lot of them in the first places) and has limited performance.
Free accounts get limited daily bandwidth limits, whereas, premium accounts don’t have such limitations. According to the VPN itself, it messes with the speed of free users while paid users get maximum speed.
Besides that, Hoxx VPN also offers less secure connections to free users. Premium users get their connections encrypted through the 4096-bit RSA connection but free users only get 1024-bit RSA encryption.
4096-bit end-to-end encryption is insufficient and outdated itself; however, the encryption for free users is far worse. If you thought that was it, you were wrong.
Hola VPN cuts further features for users and they don’t get customer support beyond email support. Free users don’t get malware filtering and ad protection that premium users can benefit from.
There are so many loopholes in Hoxx VPN that it’s difficult to point out one main flaw.
To put it short, Hoxx VPN is a complete disaster for anyone who wants private access to the internet. The VPN manages to fail just about every leak test we put it through.
Its logging policies are worrying for anyone who has used a VPN. Any experienced VPN user would forego the idea of buying the VPN after reading their policies.
Besides its poor logging policies, the VPN completely fails every security test and makes its users vulnerable to cyber threats. Because of its outdated encryption and tunneling techniques, it’s fairly easy for a hacker to track and leak information of a user.
If that wasn’t enough; it fails to bypass geo-restrictions and disregards necessary services such as torrents and the TOR browser.
We thought a reasonable number of servers would help boost its speed but they too, were inadequate to make its speed bearable. The only redeeming quality of the VPN was its low-price but that too is available after long subscription and gives you a disappointing product in the end.
If you really need a VPN service that’s light on your pocket and doesn’t compromise on its service, you should consider NordVPN. NordVPN has a comprehensive version and gives unbelievably low packages.
Visit their website here.
