Hola Better Internet (1 Viewer)

[7 - No tomorrow]

So I have installed this Chrome extension - Hola Better Internet - so I can watch iPlayer and stuff.

It asked for a lot of permissions that I probably shouldn't have agreed to - particularly "access all your information on all websites"
Should I uninstall or am I already fucked?
Or should I trust Google not to put something dodgy on the Chrome store (Why do I think I heard Pete laugh when I asked that?)

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Don't they all say that?

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Yeah, maybe. I don't pay attention really. I'm usually so gung-ho to watch something or to make a comment I'll agree to anything.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Does anyone else use this?

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

No. But how bad can it be?

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

It's fine.

I kind of assume they know everything we're doing anyway.

I googled for a humidifier for the apartment and checked price today at Home Depot.

Then went onto FB and there was a suggested post for a humidifier from Home Depot right there in my feed.

It's just how we live now, I guess.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Did you buy the humidifier?
I keep getting ads for office stationery and have no idea why.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Did you buy the humidifier?
I keep getting ads for office stationery and have no idea why.

I'll get it on the way home. The new place is blown hot air. So fucking dry in the place.

 

[washingcattle]

Does anyone else use this?

I use it to access US Netflix. It's grand. The way I see it, if a government wants to spy on me , have at it. I'll tell them there all fucked to their face anyway. If anyone wants to rob me, have at it I've fuck all anyway. Anyone wants to "Identity thieve" me also fair play they'll never get a bank account or a credit card using my broke ass as collateral I had to go to 3 banks before one let me give them my pittance so fuck it. As for blackmailing me by releasing to the world details of what i look at online - half the people I know would be shocked how tame I am plus as I already said I aint got shit to take.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I made a fake facebook account to play the facebook backgammon game I was temporarily addicted to. I now have 27 new friends from Pakistan who think my name is something other than my real name - is it racist that I assume I'm probably being spied on by the NSA as a result? I'm bored with the game and want to delete the FB account but I quite like these new friends and don't want to be rude and at the same time I don't want to tell them I'm fake. It's a terrible mess I'm in.

 

[washingcattle]

I made a fake facebook account to play the facebook backgammon game I was temporarily addicted to. I now have 27 new friends from Pakistan who think my name is something other than my real name - is it racist that I assume I'm probably being spied on by the NSA as a result? I'm bored with the game and want to delete the FB account but I quite like these new friends and don't want to be rude and at the same time I don't want to tell them I'm fake. It's a terrible mess I'm in.

Sounds like the best rom com of the year. You can be played by Brendan Gleeson - Irelands answer to Tom Hanks and this is the Pakistani Meg Ryan apparently

Rob Riener is already attached to direct.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Does anyone else use this?

I use it when the one i normally use stops working. I have to say the WE ACCESS ALL stuff freaks me out a bit.

I'm not as comfortable with all this as Washingcattle.... good for him though, having nothing to hide.

 

[Theseus Mock]

I've never looked into it but I reckon Hola/Media Hint are basically switches for enabling some kind of smart proxy server. I don't know what their monetization game is but I'm guessing they're gathering as much data on their user's browsing behaviour & selling it on. You could always just turn it off when you're done watching whatever geoblocked site.

 

[washingcattle]

I'm not as comfortable with all this as Washingcattle.... good for him though, having nothing .

Fixed.

 

[pissypants]

I'm late to the party here, but I use hola and as far as I'm aware it's fine. The reason it wants permission for all sites is that it's acting as a VPN - a virtual private network - that's how it does what it does - cyphoning you your precious media data packets through a remote location for all websites.

 

[Theseus Mock]

They also started injecting ads into webpages, saw some people making noise about it on reddit during the week. That's the trade off between free vs. paid service.

 

[Buckrake]

I've used it to watch BBC and RTE stuff, but since October/November the RTE website no longer works with Hola. Sometimes you can't even get on the site, you get an error message; sometimes you can get on the site, find what you want to watch, open the player and click play, but you get a message saying 'no content' or somesuch. And it still works fine with the BBC iPlayer.
I don't for one minute believe that RTE have consciously found a way to block Hola...anyone else had the same problem?

 

[pete]

They also started injecting ads into webpages, saw some people making noise about it on reddit during the week. That's the trade off between free vs. paid service.

shocking

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

I've used it to watch BBC and RTE stuff, but since October/November the RTE website no longer works with Hola. Sometimes you can't even get on the site, you get an error message; sometimes you can get on the site, find what you want to watch, open the player and click play, but you get a message saying 'no content' or somesuch. And it still works fine with the BBC iPlayer.
I don't for one minute believe that RTE have consciously found a way to block Hola...anyone else had the same problem?

Balls

 

[Theseus Mock]

Balls

Give mediahint a shot Media Hint They might be pushing their traffic through different servers. Usually RTE/AerTV will blacklist entire datacenters. Also, if any of those services are going through Amazon's EC2, despite the service running on an Irish machine, its IP addy could come from half way across the world.