Safety-Conscious Users Driving Popularity Of Pioneering Hotspot Shield App
MENA’s growing demand for more online control is helping to make AnchorFree one of the most popular web destinations.
According to Quantcase, AnchorFree is now well ensconced in the world’s top 35, generating more monthly visitors than global household names such as CNN, Yelp and MTV.
AnchorFree’s remarkable growth is down to the popularity of Hotspot Shield, which is by far the world’s most popular VPN.
MENA is a strong contributor to the company’s rise to prominence, with active mobile users increasing by nearly 1000 per cent last year. AnchorFree also saw its desktop users in the region increase by 30 per cent.
“The premise behind AnchorFree is simple – we want to place consumers in control of their personal information online, safeguarding them from threats such as malware and identity theft. Essentially, our addressable market is the around 5.7 billion people that access the web through computers or mobile devices,” said David Gorodyanksy, CEO and co-founder, AnchorFree.
“In so many ways, we are only just getting started in terms of influence and reach. Our robust performance in MENA is a vivid case in point. As a rapidly developing, youthful and tech-literate region, it is only natural that they would be drawn to solutions that offer a better, more secure online experience. I am extremely confident that our profile and growth will continue to accelerate in this part of the world in the coming year.”
Last year, AnchorFree’s business potential helped secure $52 million in C-round funding (bringing the total to $63 million to date) and the company is enjoying double digit profits every year.
Hotspot Shield protects against snooping and identity theft by creating a secure, encrypted tunnel between a mobile device or computer and the internet. It also detects and blocks malware and compresses data to save on roaming charges when abroad.
Since launching in 2007, the product has garnered 120 million downloads across 190 countries. 6 million new downloads now take place each month.
Five billion pages views are made secure every month and over 700 million malware threats have been thwarted to date.
A significant portion of AnchorFree’s recent success is due to the Hotspot Shield mobile app, which has been downloaded over 10 million times in just 18 months. Around 1.5 million new downloads are now taking place per month across both Android and iOS platforms.
Hotspot Shield also enables users to reduce their bandwidth by up to 50 per cent, which has saved global users over 103 million MB in the past 18 months.
Hotspot Shield is currently the number one security app on the iPhone and iPad. It also ranks number one in the Apple App store’s Utilities category in over ten countries.
Earlier this year, AnchorFree was hailed as America’s sixth most promising company and Gorodyansky was identified as one of the country’s most promising CEOs. Hotspot Shield was also named by popular download site Softonic as “one of the best apps” at Mobile World Congress 2013.
About AnchorFree
AnchorFree believes in placing consumers in control of their personal information online. The company’s mission is to enable secure access to the world’s information for an addressable market of 5 billion people who access the Web through computers or mobile devices. AnchorFree does this through Hotspot Shield, the world’s most popular app for safe browsing.
Hotspot Shield secures all Internet communications, protects the user’s identity online, and provides universal access to all Internet content. Hotspot Shield is available for PC, Mac, Apple iOS, and Android platforms at www.AnchorFree.com and www.HotspotShield.com. AnchorFree is a privately held, venture-backed company based in Mountain View, California.
