Podcast: Hotspot Shield Free Ad-Supported Virtual Private Network - Conversation with AnchorFree CEO David Gorodyansky

I spoke with AnchorFree CEO & Co-Founder David Gorodyansky about their free ad-supported Virtual Private Network (VPN) service...

Hotspot Shield

Free clients are available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. iPhones can also be configured for use with the Hotspot Shield.

After speaking with David, I gained comfort about their service to install it on my netbook running Windows 7 Beta and tried it out. As David said in the podcast they place 90 pixel tall ads on browser pages. These ads can be removed, btw. And, AnchorFree does not store your IP address. I checked my external IP address (I'm being a NATed fireall like most people using home routers) and noted that the detected IP address did indeed change when their VPN was turned on.

I'm pretty happy with what I've seen of Hotspot Shield so far after a day of use. Next test will be the local Starbucks to see if tunneling through their SSL VPN lets me use one of my email addresses whose IMAP4/SMTP servers are blocked at the AT&T/T-mobile hotspot in Starbucks.

You can use the embedded player above to listen to the podcast. You can also subscribe to the MobileViews.com Podcast feed in iTunes.