AVG recently acquired the decade old VPN and proxy provider, Hide My Ass! (HMA).

Founded by 26-year-old Jack Cator and based in Soho, London, England, the acquisition could net Privax, the company behind Hide My Ass! as much as $60 million in the following year.

Anti-virus + VPN expansion

This acquisition means the Hide My Ass! Pro VPN will soon be available to the 200 million global users downloading AVG’s antivirus services today. On the Hide My Ass! blog, CEO Jack Cator says,

As part of the AVG family, HMA will have access to the expertise and resources of a major security company which will allow us to further improve our products.

This means with AVG’s tools and knowledge, HMA can take a firmer hold in the internet security for businesses space. Dutch company AVG also benefits by adding HMA’s long-standing VPN services to its robust antivirus software security layer which previously wasn’t bundled with any VPN.

Despite being an English company, Hide My Ass! has long had a global reach and is available in over a handful of languages. Thus, giving users the opportunity to use security products in the comfort of their native languages. With AVG’s acquisition, however, HMA’s services could soon be exposed to markets opened up by being available in the nearly three dozen other languages AVG also offers support and products in, better allowing HMA to compete with its competitor, Hola! who also offers their services in a multitude of languages and countries.

For the foreseeable future, Privax will continue to offer their products on their Hide My Ass! website as well as eventually being available within AVG Zen. Coupled together, Hide My Ass! and AVG will soon offer antivirus and VPN software in one package across all devices. With both antivirus and VPN anonymity in place, their users will become better insulated than before from attacks made by hackers or anyone else.

At the basic level Hide My Ass! services include a free web browser privacy plugin for browsers like Google Chrome. However, the most enticing part is Privax’s paid VPN services are available across multiple devices simultaneously. With Privax, consumers will no longer have to find a different VPN for each device they own, be it phone or tablet. Hide My Ass! will work on most major technological platforms using just one subscription.

The future looks good for HMA

Not only does the company offer its customers privacy and anonymity, HMA acts as a proxy, allowing users access to content which was previously only viewable by users in countries like the UK, USA, and the Netherlands. HMA does this by routing its traffic from a client’s restricted computer through an unrestricted HMA server and finally connecting with the desired website server.

The upgrade from a basic free account to a paid VPN service means more encryption and security including ever-changing IP addresses making it harder for others to track users. Meanwhile, HMA only logs paid users connects and disconnects to the VPN servers. With three pricing tiers, each based on the VPN subscription length, paying changes the service from a proxy to a VPN which makes it that much tougher for anyone, be it hackers or the government to detect HMA users’ activity.

Offering over 43,000 IP addresses through its VPN servers, Privax claims to offer more IPs than any other company in the VPN space. Along with privacy from Internet Service Providers, Privax appeals to users with a catchy name and language which appeals to an internet savvy user base and most importantly of all, a plug and play product.