How Hotspot Shield saves you money

Here’s a little secret even your most tech-savvy friends won’t know. Booking your flights using Hotspot Shield can save you hundreds of dollars. Here’s how it works.

What is Hotspot Shield?

Hotspot Shield is a FREE app that secures your internet connection, meaning all your online activities are anonymous and hidden from prying eyes. When connected to the internet via Hotspot Shield, not only can a website not see who you are, neither can a hacker, government actor, or your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Hotspot Shield is trusted by over 600 million people in 200 countries to protect their online security, privacy, and their freedom of information.

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How can Hotspot Shield get me cheap flights?

Hotspot Shield hides your IP address by routing your web traffic through its secure servers. There, it scrambles your data and provides you with a new IP address. When you’re in the Hotspot Shield app, you can easily pick the location of that server. For example, if you are using your computer within the United States, but you’re connected to a Hotspot Shield server that’s located in the United Kingdom, the website you’re visiting will think you’re in the U.K.

This means we can search for flights as if we’re in a different location, and airlines have different rates for different countries. A person booking a flight in Brazil, for example, may pay more for a ticket than a person booking that very same flight in Mexico. And the differences can be substantial—hundreds of dollars, even. The Hotspot Shield app has over 25 virtual locations around the globe to pick from.

Firstly, we found the price of a Virgin Atlantic flight from IND to MAN on Kayak during Spring Break. Our server location was set to the “United States,” and the cost of the ticket was $2,607.

Next, we switched our server location within the Hotspot Shield app to “United Kingdom.” We then opened up a new browser, cleared the history—including cookies and cache—and typed “Kayak” into the search engine. This time, rather than Kayak.com showing up, we were routed to the U.K. version (Kayak.co.uk)—because that’s where Hotspot Shield was telling the site we were located.

We then searched for the exact same flight on the exact same date and were given a total price of £1,751.