Last update: 07.20.2018
Overview
Private Internet Access is deeply flawed but has its uses. A good starting point for Europeans and North Americans on a tight budget!
I‘m sure someone at London Trust Media thought the little, depressed green robot was cute. We suspect it‘s actually a murder-bot. Not a state-of-the-art version, but still the kind your tears have no power of stopping.
It‘s probably unintentional, but the emotionless expression on the robot‘s face describes Private Internet Access (PIA) rather well. It‘s just kind of average: its security is mediocre, so is the speed and the features, so is the look. PIA‘s strongest selling point? It‘s shamelessly cheap.
PIA offers different levels of data encryption, several handshakes, and authentication standards. In short, the ciphers are more than sufficient. The tool offers three security protocols (on different versions of the app) – OpenVPN, IPSec/L2TP, and PPTP. These are more or less standard and should be sufficient for most uses.
Private Internet Access has a network kill switch that will stop all traffic if your VPN connection drops. They also use their own DNS for all queries, making DNS leaking situations a lot less likely. There are other types of leaks users should worry about with PIA, namely WebRTC leaks. We’ll discuss these later.
Jurisdiction should be the more concerning area for PIA VPN users. The company behind PIA is based in the US, which is one of the worst countries for online privacy. Despite this, their zero-logs policy has proved legitimate thus far. A fake bomb threat case in the US tried to get evidence from PIA and got nothing of use. Either way, if you’re doing something of interest to intelligence agencies, take PIA’s marketing statements with a pinch of salt. They mean well, but a lot is probably out of their hands.
PIA has a large number of servers – 3,533. They are spread out across 51 locations and 31 countries. The sheer number of servers is impressive and second only to NordVPN, but the network is quite small. VPNs with significantly fewer servers have a lot more server locations. Essentially this means some locations will have to suffer a bad connection under PIA VPN. At a glance, we can assume that the Middle East and Africa will be the slowest, but the Far East isn’t likely to do much better. With that said, if you’re from Europe or the US, you should be fine – PIA connection speeds are about average for the top 10.
The VPN includes a free Private Internet Access proxy (SOCKS5). Not the most important feature, but we appreciate it nevertheless.
One area where Private Internet Access does badly instead of mediocre is Support. It has become a given for top VPNs to offer a 24/7 live chat, but you will only be able to reach PIA representatives via email. While the knowledge base provided on their site isn’t bad, the ability to get help from the company is lackluster.
This VPN should get you watching Netflix, but as of recently, it doesn’t. Ultimately PIA isn’t the most surefire way to bypass geo-blocking measures. Can you use torrents safely? Right now we would say “Yes” – their no-logging policy has held up thus far, and the company has no qualms about you violating copyrights. The same probably goes for using PIA VPN with Kodi.
So, why is Private Internet Access in the Top 10? It‘s super-cheap and offers three pricing plans: 1 month for $6.95, 1 year for $3.33 a month, 2 years for $2.91 a month. No other decent VPN sells their shorter subscriptions this cheap. That’s why a lot of the time it will inevitably remain the layman’s choice.
We tried the Private Internet Access Windows 10 version and it was alright. Is it a top choice? Nope. But if your needs aren’t so great, then here’s a not-so-great VPN. Read the rest of our Private Internet Access review to find out more!
Contents
Is Private Internet Access safe to use?
Speed & Performance
How to download PIA
How to install PIA
How to use PIA
Apps and Extensions
Private Internet Access for Netflix
Private Internet Access for Kodi
Private Internet Access for Torrenting
Is it good for users in China?
Support
Pricing
Bottom Line
Is Private Internet Access safe to use?
PIA is not one of the biggest VPN services for its security. Much like everything else, its security credentials are mediocre.
The ciphers used by PIA are AES-128 and AES-256 – a great level of encryption. The 128-bit version is the default choice. Keep that in mind if you’re aiming for maximum security. There are many choices here that aren’t commonly available: what level of data encryption, what handshake, and what authentication standard would you like to use? To be fair, the choice has less to do with security and more with speed. Less encryption means less calculation and more speed. Many top VPNs don’t bother with these options but have good performance anyway.
Whenever we discuss VPN security protocols, our most important question is “does it use OpenVPN?”, and everything else is a sideshow. In PIA’s case, the answer is “yes”. What about the sideshow? There’s no IKEv2, which some other VPNs do offer (particularly on mobile versions). This is nothing to scoff at, although not nearly as important as OpenVPN. In addition, if you’re a Chinese user you’ll likely be forced to resort to L2TP.
Private Internet Access has a network kill switch – an important feature for any VPN to have. This will protect you from any unexpected connection disruptions. They also use their own private DNS to avoid leaking. According to reports, Private Internet Access indeed does not have any DNS leaks. But it does have issues with WebRTC leaking (as do many other VPNs). This means your real IP address may leak through the browser’s WebRTC functionality. This is an issue because an IP address can reveal a lot about you, most importantly your location.
In addition to the VPN, there are also PIA proxy services in the form of the Chrome/Firefox extensions and a separate SOCKS5 proxy.
Next up – non-technical concerns. The legal jurisdiction of a VPN company is important, because of the legal context in which it operates. It is also important due to the company’s exposure to intelligence agencies, corporate intelligence efforts and other things a VPN user is generally trying to avoid. Private Internet Access, or rather its parent company, London Trust Media, is based in the United States. Remind us – where is Edward Snowden from?…
The US is one of the most problematic places to register a VPN company. There are many reasons for this – the legal climate with legislation such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), government surveillance, including by the NSA, corporate surveillance by tech and telecommunications companies, and so on. It is also problematic because the US is part of the 5 eyes country group (and the extended 14 eyes country group) – a robust intelligence-sharing framework.
While the United States does not have any data retention laws, the government can access commercial data records quite easily. Private Internet Access has a clear no-logging policy, that is to say, they say they are not collecting either connection logs or activity logs. If true, this is commendable, to say the least. As a matter of fact, a US court case in 2015 has given credence to these claims. But there are reasons to doubt the truthfulness of these claims. For one thing, it seems inevitable that a VPN will collect some logs to impose limits on the number of connections, etc.
In short – it’s probably enough security for the casual user, but we wouldn’t depend on PIA for our lives.
Speed & Performance
Yet again – straight in the middle. But there’s an important caveat.
Connection speeds depend on location. Due to this, no average speed test in the world can give you a good answer to the question “how fast is this VPN for me?” While we will try to give a reasonable idea of how fast PIA VPN is, keep in mind that the results may vary. In this particular case, you’re most likely to feel this if you’re based in Asia (including the Middle East), Africa, or even South America – most servers are simply not based in these locations.
With that said, if you are in Europe or North America – you’re in luck. The great majority of Private Internet Access servers is found on these two continents, so you can expect good speeds. There’s more to be said about this: PIA servers number 3,533, otherwise known as “a lot*. Only NordVPN has more servers. Does this massive Private Internet Access server count mean anything? Probably, but the extent is not clear. For one thing, PIA is one of the most popular VPN services on the market, which means it has lots of users who can overcrowd even a large number of servers. Furthermore, although the PIA server list is impressive, their location list is less so. The servers are spread out over 31 countries – half of NordVPN‘s number.
As for averages, Private Internet Access is exactly that – average. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence showing that they don’t have the most technically gifted team. This leads to poor optimization, bad code, and that’s how you stay average with 3k servers. Of course, there is another important element at work – popularity. It is completely clear that PIA is one of the most widespread VPN services available. To their credit, they have managed to convert a mediocre product into a big and successful brand. Among other things, that’s a huge burden on their infrastructure. It is quite likely that their server numbers are actually quite low in comparison to their needs! Whatever the case may be, our research for this PIA VPN Review shows a performance level that shouldn’t be bragged about.
How to download PIA
Like taking candy from a baby (if you’re that sort of person). Just go to their website and click the carrot-colored “GET STARTED NOW” button. You’ll be asked to choose one of three pricing plans, select a payment method and make the payment. Then you’ll create an account and receive an email with your username and password. Enter these later into the Private Internet Access login screen when the app starts.
Just download the app for the platform of your choosing and you’ll be ready to greet the green emo robot. All versions can be found on the “Download” page of the website.
How to install PIA
We went through the process for our PIA VPN review and it was very simple. The page that starts your download has all the instructions on how to install PIA. You’ll have to:
- Run the installer from your browser or your “Downloads” directory.
- Choose a language for the installation.
- Allow the installer to make changes to your device (click “Yes” when prompted).
- Follow the installation wizard – it will install the client and the TAP driver.
- Click “Finish”.
That’s all there is to it!
How to use PIA
The Private Internet Access Windows 10 version is the one we’ll look at. PIA’s Windows client is elegant and simplistic. The front screen is the Private Internet Access login screen – enter your details to start using the app. Once you have, you’ll see some settings to choose from below. You cannot change any of these whilst connected to a VPN server. Knowing this will help you avoid hate-clicking. Still, it’s a stupid state of affairs.
Here are the general settings:
- Start application at login (enable/disable)
- Auto-connect on launch (enable/disable)
- Show desktop notifications (enable/disable)
- Connect by: Region/Country
“Region” is the more specific setting – some countries, such as the USA, have several regions. If a country has only one region, then the whole country will be its “region”.
- Manage favorites
You can make a list of favorite countries or regions for auto-connect.
- Advanced settings
More on these below.
- Region/Country
Choose a region or country to connect to. Alternatively, you could leave it on “Auto”, which will connect you to the fastest server.
- Language
A very good selection of app languages.
The “Advanced settings” reveal the lightness of PIA – the customizations you can make are not very wide-ranging. Here’s what you can choose:
- Connection type (UDP/TCP)
UDP and TCP are protocol choices you can make with OpenVPN. The first one is faster and less stable, and vice versa.
- Remote Port (Auto/1194/8080/9201/53)
- Local Port
- Request port forwarding (enable/disable)
This is mainly used to increase performance on torrenting applications (such as uTorrent). Users should, however, be aware that this is risky and, in most cases, useless.
- PIA MACE (enable/disable)
Like a few other VPNs, Private Internet Access has decided to include an ad-blocker, anti-tracker and anti-malware feature in their suite. That‘s nice of them and better than nothing, but you will get more quality out of a dedicated piece of software.
- VPN Kill switch (enable/disable)
A good feature to have! VPN connections are a lot more fragile than regular connections – you will occasionally get disconnected. The kill switch will stop all your traffic when that happens, protecting your data from unwanted attention.
- DNS leak protection (enable/disable)
Private Internet Access has their own DNS and it would be a shame if your computer wasn‘t using those servers. DNS leak protection will make sure this is not the case. It‘s enabled by default and should stay that way. No need to take a ride on the wild side!
- IPv6 leak protection (enable/disable)
It‘s unlikely that you‘re using IPv6 but keep this on anyway.
- Use small packets (enable/disable)
A cure for less stable connections – you‘re less likely to get dropped packets if they are smaller.
- Enable debug mode
This is mostly for PIA support. When enabled, the program will create a technical log to help agents troubleshoot connection issues.
- Encryption
These choices are somewhat surprising. You can choose the level of data encryption, authentication, and the handshake (certificate). The default settings focus on speed, but they are fine for security as well. If you‘re involved in some James Bond-level activity, increase Data Encryption to AES-256, Data Authentication to SHA 256, and the Handshake to RSA-4096.
Most of the time the program will stay in the tray, and you will use it by right-clicking the little icon. This way you can connect and choose the country/region.
As you can see, there‘s no technomancy involved in using this VPN. The cost of that luxury is fewer features. Not great for power users!
Apps and Extensions
Private Internet Access Windows 10 isn’t the only version on offer. There are custom apps for all main platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. The Private Internet Access router app is, unfortunately, not a thing at the moment, but you can still run PIA VPN on router devices if you follow the instructions on their site. Finally, you can also download Chrome/Firefox extensions.
The Mac version is largely the same as the Windows version. What about Android and iOS?
Both mobile versions have largely the same features as the desktop ones. This is the advantage of not having many features. You will have access to the kill switch, choose where to connect and regulate the level of encryption. Android even offers OpenVPN, which is unfortunately not available on the iOS version. This is inarguably the latter‘s biggest drawback – it uses IPSec/L2TP by default.
PIA‘s Chrome and Firefox extensions are not simply controllers for the VPN. Rather, they are, essentially, PIA proxy services. If you use either of these add-ons, all your browser traffic will go through an HTTPS proxy. This is good, but keep in mind that only your web traffic will be affected. Chrome and Firefox extensions aren’t the only way to use a Private Internet Access proxy – each subscription includes a SOCKS5 proxy. You’ll need a separate password to use it, which you can generate on the Client Control Panel.
Private Internet Access for Netflix
Not a good idea. We were unable to bypass Netflix geo-blocking restrictions using any of the VPN‘s US locations. This is surprising – Private Internet Access has well over a thousand servers in the US, which should translate to popcorn quite effortlessly.
We can‘t comment on PIA’s ability to gain you access to all other streaming platforms (Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.), but BBC iPlayer doesn‘t work either. In short, you‘d better find some other dealer to feed your television habit.
Private Internet Access for Kodi
There are a few things to look out for when searching for a Kodi VPN. The first is security because you might be using Kodi plug-ins for streaming pirated content (who are we to judge?). In that sense, Private Internet Access Kodi might not be a bad idea. In terms of compatibility, unlike some other VPN services, PIA has no Android TV or Amazon Fire TV (Firestick) app, but you can still run it on these devices following the instructions on their website. Another aspect you should look at when asking whether Private Internet Access and Kodi are a good fit is geo-blocking. As we have already mentioned, PIA is not the go-to choice for the geographically-impaired. Therefore, all in all, with some reservations we can recommend PIA VPN for Kodi.
Private Internet Access for Torrenting
Most of the stuff you‘ll find on Netflix is available somewhere in the bountiful realm of P2P. If that‘s what you‘re aiming for, Private Internet Access is definitely not the worst choice. European and North American users will find the speeds decent. Others can probably do without a VPN. That last sentence should not be taken as a recommendation – torrent at your own risk.
The protection given by PIA VPN should be sufficient in most cases, but you have to make sure you‘ve taken all the precautions. Make sure you’re not requesting PIA port forwarding unless it’s absolutely necessary:
There are some benefits to port forwarding, such as potentially higher download speeds. Also, it will allow others to download from you, which is good if you need to maintain a ration. Although you’re using a decent VPN – Private Internet Access – port forwarding will make you a little bit more vulnerable.
DNS and IPv6 leak protection should be on at all times. Recently PIA proved the legitimacy of their no-logging policy in court. That should be enough for the casual torrent user.
Is it good for users in China?
For security purposes – it‘s not the worst. Private Internet Access has good encryption, and their jurisdiction shouldn’t be a concern for someone in China.
There are other factors users in this part of the world should consider – speed and ability to fool the Great Firewall. Unfortunately, Private Internet Access fails on both counts. Of its 3,000+ servers, only around 70 are in the Far East, which makes overcrowding an issue. As for the Great Firewall, PIA themselves admit to having problems in China and their solution is to suggest using IPSec/L2TP instead of OpenVPN. The problem with that is twofold:
- IPSec/L2TP is not as secure;
- This protocol needs to be set up manually.
Furthermore, even if you manage to solve protocol and speed issues, PIA has not given much reason to believe they have a backup plan. Currently, there is a number of VPN services that have tackled the Chinese question. A few examples are NordVPN and VyprVPN. We recommend either one over PIA, especially if you want to make a long-term investment.
Our reasons for not recommending Private Internet Access to Chinese users are less applicable in other restricted countries. People in Turkey or Russia will have less of a problem with speed (unless we’re talking Vladivostok Russia). Additionally, the governments of these countries don’t have as tight a grip on the internet as China does. We’re inclined to say Private Internet Access is worth a shot if money is a bit tight.
Support
Not the best is an understatement. PIA is plain bad at Support and there‘s no way around it.
The self-help resources available on the site are about average. Most top VPN services offer the same level of guides and FAQs or better. That‘s not what we have a problem with though – it‘s the support agents or lack thereof.
There’s no live chat option, let alone one that‘s functional 24/7. We can see where they‘re coming from. After all, Private Internet Access is one of the most popular VPN services on the planet. Who wants to deal with that many people? As Roy from the IT Crowd once remarked: “People. What a bunch of bastards.”
Be that as it may, there’s no excuse for being this big on the VPN market and not having a quick way to respond to users’ requests. As much as we’d like to say the “ticket” system is just as good, that would simply not be true. It’s too slow, especially for queries that don’t require much time or attention. And as anyone who’s worked in customer service will tell you, an overwhelming majority of issues can be solved in under 1 minute (source: common sense).
That, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. The internet is littered with angry comments about unresponsive PIA support, robotic and unhelpful answers, and the lack of a good way to take your grievances “up the chain of command”. Obviously, the evidence is anecdotal and we don’t mean to imply this is absolutely the case. But the quantity of negative testimonials heavily suggests there is a big problem.
Pricing
Not the sharpest tool in the box? Better be damn cheap like Private Internet Access!
There are three different Private Internet Access pricing plans available to undiscerning customers. You can get it for:
- 1 month at $6.95,
- 12 months at $3.33 a month,
- 24 months at $2.91 a month.
We remember someone saying once that theft is the best spice of all. Well, buying PIA at these prices is practically stealing. But let’s not get carried away – does it do what you need it to? Read above to figure that out.
A word of advice for all you greedy pirates. Seeing as the price difference is minimal, we would not consider the 2-year plan. There are much better products at similar prices if you’re willing to make the commitment.
We might bash Private Internet Access for not offering a free trial, but with prices so low we don’t blame them for skipping it. Instead, you get a 7-day money-back guarantee. Fair enough, PIA.
How good is PIA VPN?
We’re at the end of our Private Internet Access review – what have we learned?
Here’s the deal. PIA has a target audience. It will serve this audience well and do it for a complete pittance. If you’re European or North American and your goals are to 1) torrent; 2) protect yourself from cybercriminals whilst sipping a Starbucks latte – PIA is for you. You shouldn’t encounter much discomfort or risk in your daily activities.
You won’t be able to beat geo-blocking with any consistency – no Netflix or BBC iPlayer for you! And if you’re outside Europe or North America, tough luck. The speeds are likely to be pretty bad.
If you do run into problems that can’t be solved by reading a helpful guide, the unloving hands of customer support may not soothe your pain. Allegedly.
We can describe PIA as the anti-VyprVPN: cheap, not very technical, and unperturbed by your moral choices. So, if you read the whole Private Internet Access review and decided you need the complete opposite, Vypr is your choice.
In the end, regardless of your purpose for buying a VPN, we would recommend paying more. It’s not like the best VPNs are 10 times more expensive! And, come on, you’ve already decided to pay for a better level of service than is freely available. Just go one step further!
