Non-EU vendorVPNHeadquarters: GB

HMA VPN: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

HMA VPN, formerly marketed as HideMyAss!, is a consumer virtual private network service with applications for desktop and mobile systems. The service was created in England in 2005 and is headquartered in the United Kingdom, with offices in London and other cities. It is sold as a subscription and provides VPN connections to servers in several countries, which masks the user's IP address and location on public networks.

The service was acquired by AVG Technologies in 2015 and has been a subsidiary of the Czech cybersecurity company Avast since 2016. Avast is in turn a subsidiary of Gen Digital, which is co-headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and Prague. The ultimate parent is therefore a group with US headquarters, so US legal reach through the parent is relevant for a European organisation, even though the service is run from the United Kingdom. The UK lies outside the EU and EEA, which matters for data transfers. Public information on where user data is hosted is limited and should be requested from the vendor.

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Sovereignty score

32 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
Data residency SOV-30
No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
Key management with a non-European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-630
Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 11, 2026

Headquarters	GB (OTHER)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company	USVerified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	VPN
Type	Product
Website	hidemyass.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to HMA VPN

The European alternatives to HMA VPN come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

26 European VPN vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with HMA VPN

HMA VPN is headquartered in GB, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor. The ultimate owner is based in US. Foreign control undermines part of the certainty a European headquarters offers.

HMA VPN hosts data outside the EU (OTHER). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

HMA VPN is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs HMA VPN together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to HMA VPN?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to HMA VPN include AdGuard VPN, AirVPN and Avast SecureLine VPN. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to HMA VPN?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to HMA VPN include Cryptostorm. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is HMA VPN GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

HMA VPN is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 11, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

We found none of these signals on the vendor's own site when we checked.

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 11, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in VPN

VPN: Virtual private network — privacy protection, encrypted connection. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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