HMA received a "Low Risk User Privacy Impact Rating" after its strict no-log policy was independently audited by VersSprite's cyber risk experts.

Already one of the world's best VPN providers, it was formerly known as HideMyAss! - HMA serves more than 1,100 servers in 190 countries; HMA announced the policy earlier this year to protect users' data and conducted an independent assessment to ensure it is 100% effective.

The full HMA review can be found here.

According to HMA, the third-party review "included analysis of data, traffic, and storage on both the client and server side, as well as the separation of data and user identity, including information about online user activity."

The results were used to calculate risk levels ranging from low to critical, which turned out to be the former.

Andrei Mochola, HMA's commercial director, said: "The VPN industry has long suffered from the problem of trust, and the new study is a good example of this.

"The ownership of some VPN companies is ambiguous at best and hidden at worst.

Mochola explained that the company's no-log policy is part of a broader privacy improvement effort. [This stamp of approval from VerSprite completes the second phase, and going forward we will also introduce new privacy features, connection protocols, and infrastructure improvements to better protect user privacy," he added.

The provider joins the likes of ExpressVPN and NordVPN, which have had their own no-logging policies audited by well-known auditing organizations such as PricewaterhouseCooper.

During the independent audit, VerSprite analyzed HMA's Android VPN, iOS VPN, Mac VPN, and Windows VPN applications "from the installation process to the entire data flow of the target endpoint application."

In a media release, the companies stated that the purpose of this independent audit was to "identify, report, and provide recommendations on any technical gaps" in HMA's newly launched no-log policy.

Tony UcedaVélez, CEO of VerSprite, said, "HMA relied on the talents of our offensive security team to focus more on the privacy breaches that may exist through VPN client software.

." We helped them understand the nature of the risks identified so that they could validate their policy assurances of no logging and improve the overall privacy level of their product."