Hola Unblocker O_o

[OMSkates]

Anyone run across this?  My wife wants to watch some content from the UK and we live in the USA.  The video content site prompts us to add "Hola Unblocker" to our browser.  So I go to FF addon manager and find its an installable extension/addon for FF.  Then try to view the content again and it says we have an old version "please download latest Hola Unblocker".  OK (LOL), but all it does is download an .exe M$ file, perhaps the addon is no longer supported for other operating systems.

[menotu]

I came across this on thenextweb OMSkates it may be worth looking it over

I looked at the Hola Unblocker Firefox add-on and the reviews aren't to positive (an understatement)

Emil Protalinski - 24 January 2013

Sweet: Hola lets you use Hulu, Pandora, Netflix, CBS, Fox, BBC iPlayer TV, and iTV from any country

Hola is a new service that claims it can let you access videos on Hulu, Pandora, Netflix, CBS, Fox, BBC iPlayer TV, and iTV from any country. To try it out, download the extension for Google Chrome or the add-on for Mozilla Firefox. Windows users who aren’t using either of those browsers can download the standalone client, which offers a bit more features.

Back in November I wrote about a service called Media Hint that lets you use Netflix, Pandora, Hulu, and Rdio from any country. In December, I heard about Hola but a quick check showed me it wasn’t anything new: it unblocked the same services minus Rdio, so I told the CEO to let me know when his company expanded to more services. Hola co-founder and CEO Ofer Vilenski got back to me today, so it’s time to put Hola to the test.

I’m based in Canada, but I’ve already used Media Hint to access Hulu. As such, I wanted Velinski to tell me when I could get access to BBC iPlayer TV, since whenever I visit the site and try to view a video, I get this annoying error message:



Since I’m using Chrome, I installed the extension by clicking the blue “Add To Chrome” button, and was rather pleasantly surprised at the list of seven services I could now access:

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/01/24/sweet-hola-lets-you-use-hulu-pandora-netflix-cbs-fox-bbc-iplayer-tv-and-itv-from-any-country/

[footstep11]

As the firefox reviews tell, what this program does is nothing else that redirect your internet connection through their proxy server.  In other words, sites like BBC, FOX, etc block your browser by recognizing your IP address.  If it belongs to a "banned" country, then your access is closed.  A proxy server is nothing else than a re-direction of your connection through another machine (that is, another IP address) that could be in the "right" range, and therefore you can access the sites.

What I see here is an enormous problem of privacy: because most of the people do not know what is going on by installing this addon, then they forget about it and then ALL their browsing pass through the proxy, and if they log it, then they know what pages you visited and when. And this is not good at all 

To check the way you connect to the internet, in firefox go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Network -> "How connecting to internet" and check that "No proxy" is selected.

Mauro

[OMSkates]

Thanks so much for the good info guys    I had no idea that it works through a proxy    I'll review other options.

[footstep11]

Thanks so much for the good info guys    I had no idea that it works through a proxy    I'll review other options.

Unfortunately, there are not other options   
The only way to fool these sites is to make them believe you are coming from another IP, and this is exactly what a proxy does.  The important thing is that you know what you are doing, and after you use it, you must remember to go back to a direct access...

Mauro