HideMyAss is one of the major names on the VPN market and it has been providing stellar services for over a decade. It has over 940 servers in more than 220 countries, which is why it is a great choice for bypassing geo-restrictions. However, since China is getting serious about blocking all VPN traffic in the country, the question is whether HideMyAss is able to circumvent the Great Firewall of China and provide Chinese users with the same quality of service that is available in countries with unrestricted Internet access.
No Good News To Report
Not long ago, HideMyAss VPN service had 3 Chinese servers – Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai – with the Shenzhen server being the best option for users who wanted to access content restricted to Mainland China. However, due to infrastructural changes, the only remaining option is the Beijing server, which is not in fact located in China. It is a virtual server located in the Czech Republic, but it is still supposed to allow you to use a Beijing IP address. The truth is that when you connect to the Beijing server, your virtual nationality is not Chinese but Czech, which is a problem HideMyAss has been working on for a while.
When it comes to accessing content unavailable in China, the situation is equally bad. Our tests showed that HideMyAss is unable to bypass China’s blocks even with IPSec protocol. We reached out to the service’s representatives and got a confirmation that this VPN is currently unable to provide services to Chinese users. They claim to be working on a solution, but that they have no major results to report and they sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
While we are sad to learn that HideMyAss is of no use to the people of China, we are pleasantly surprised by its representatives’ honesty and glad to see that there are still a couple of VPN providers that work hard on providing good service and do not make empty promises in order to make a profit.