Private Internet Access (PIA) is a decent, low-cost VPN service that is based in the United States and works with a variety of devices. It offers acceptable speeds, a simple VPN application and an ad blocker, for a very competitive price.

While PIA is certainly not the worst choice, it also doesn’t stand out in any meaningful way. Some of the drawbacks identified in this PIA review include US jurisdiction , limited features, and poor support (as reported by numerous PIA users).

PIA Discount: If you want to give PIA a shot, you can now get a (This drops prices down to $2.91 per month.). Private Internet Access VPN price Private Internet Access (PIA) offers three basic pricing tiers. Here are the new discounted prices from PIA. (Click image to see pricing plans.) With every plan you get a 7 day money-back guarantee. There are no hidden bandwidth clauses or other restrictions on the refund. Unfortunately, I found it was difficult to get a refund and had to send their support department numerous emails. Searching online, it seems I’m not the only one complaining about this issue.

Here are just a few recent complaints directly from the PIA forums: I’m not sure I would trust the 7 day refund window, but their support may have improved since these issues were posted. London Trust Media and US jurisdiction PIA is owned by a company called London Trust Media, Inc. Despite the name, it’s an American company that appears to be located in the state of Indiana. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find much information on and the people and investors behind the company. In general, the United States is not the best jurisdiction when it comes to VPNs and privacy. This is due to:.

Mass government surveillance (NSA spying). Mass corporate surveillance (Google, Facebook, Verizon, Comcast and most US telecoms). Troubling copyright laws ( – DMCA) Many large tech and telecom companies have also been working directly with the NSA for a number of years.

For more of a discussion on privacy jurisdictions, check out the. Private Internet Access VPN features While PIA doesn’t have too many features, the application is simple and user-friendly.

It integrates well with both the Mac OS and Windows operating systems. In Windows, you can simply select the red PIA icon from the dashboard and connect to a VPN server. Within the application you can easily select from different security features and encryption options. One nice feature is called “ PIA MACE” which blocks malicious advertisements, trackers, and malware. This is similar to the feature, but PIA’s ad-blocker is not as customizable or powerful (number of items blocked). You can find the PIA MACE feature right on the application screen. The main drawback of PIA MACE is that it is a very limited ad blocker.

You cannot customize anything and it does not seem to filter as many ads as other alternatives, such as Perfect Privacy’s. In terms of functionality, PIA is simple and easy to use.

A small icon (a privacy-looking character) with a check mark next to it lets you know you’re connected and protected. Within the dashboard you can connect to VPN servers around the world. PIA servers The map below shows worldwide PIA server locations. As you can see, it isn’t the largest server network, but it still gives you a decent selection. I also tested the servers to verify their true locations using the. Everything matched up.

PIA speeds and reliability After testing a number of different servers, I found that speeds could vary somewhat depending on the server and time of day. I suspect this problem may have to do with the server load.

Unfortunately, PIA does not provide a server status page with real-time bandwidth information,. Therefore, there’s no way to see the real-time bandwidth or know for sure what was causing these speed/connection issues. Overall, Private Internet Access has ok speeds. Not awful, but certainly not great. One comparably priced option (also cheap) that I found to perform better is. User feedback – The feedback I have received from PIA users regarding speeds has also been mixed. While some are happy, many users are claiming speeds have gone down significantly in the past year as PIA has taken on more customers and has not done enough to expand their network capacity.

Privacy and security PIA provides some basic privacy and security features that will benefit users. The two main features are the “ kill switch” and “ IPv6 leak protection.” The kill switch blocks all internet traffic in the event of a dropped VPN connection. The IPv6 leak protection feature prevents your from “leaking” outside of the VPN tunnel. The real question is how these features perform in testing Privacy features testing results For testing, I ran PIA through all of the and also the website. My tests checked for:. IPv4 leaks.

IPv6 leaks. DNS leaks.

WebRTC leaks The PIA Mac OS and Windows clients passed all tests. I did not identify any active or reconnection leaks. For a, PIA is a decent option that should keep you safe. Note: In older versions of the applications I did occasionally have problems with brief reconnection leaks. However, these issues appear to be fixed with the latest round of testing for this review.

Nonetheless, it’s always good to verify your VPN is working. PIA logs PIA’s claims they do not keep any “traffic or request logs” – which is a good sign. However, it’s important to note that VPN logs are a grey area. PIA is a large provider that imposes limitations on subscriptions (limited to 5 connections). Usually, limitations require logging (connection logs), which is important to keep in mind. Regarding logs, it’s important to note that the US is a dangerous jurisdiction that has compelled various companies to log and hand over customer data. There was also where US authorities forced a Hong Kong VPN provider to log data and provide this to the FBI.

Being located in the United States, PIA is more vulnerable to these issues, due to the simple fact that they fall under US regulations and laws. For providers that are outside of the United States, check out the. Poor support – many complaints PIA’s support seems to have taken a nosedive in the past few months when it comes to support. Going back a few years ago when I first tested PIA, I do not remember having any problems with support. However, the support has recently taken a turn for the worse, based on my recent interactions and other user feedback I’ve seen online. Here is a recent screenshot I took from the PIA forums: This may just be a temporary issue with the support department, but regardless, it is not reassuring.

I have also seen a few replies where PIA has stated they are expanding their support. We’ll check back later to see how this has gone – hopefully things will improve. Private Internet Access review conclusion is overall a mixed bag. If you’re looking for a cheap, decent VPN service, it’s worth considering. But there are other cheap options available that are also based in better jurisdictions for privacy, such as in Romania , in the British Virgin Islands , and in Panama. You can also check out the page for other active discounts. For a full description of our top VPN recommendations, see the comparison report.

And if you want to give PIA a shot, you can check out their discount prices below: Stay safe! Alternatives to Private Internet Access. PIA claims to have a 7 day money back guarantee. Just try getting your money back and see what happens.

When I couldn’t get the Windows app working reliably I submitted a trouble ticket. Had to submit multiple trouble tickets because all I ever got were useless script replies from bots. Something about “Sorry, temporary backlog, try uninstalling and reinstalling the software, blah blah.” The script was of no help in fixing the problems, and all they ever did was continue sending me the same useless script every time I submitted a trouble ticket. So I submitted a new trouble ticket and asked for my money back. Did that multiple times as well.

Couldn’t even get bot replies to that. They just ignored me. After waiting almost a month for a refund that they were obviously never going to give I filed a fraud claim with my credit card company.

I’ve heard others say “PIA is the Walmart of VPNs.” Okay, I get that. But it’s unfair to Walmart. At least Walmart gives your money back if you’re unhappy, and they make it easy. Walmart also has real managers you can complain to who’ll take care of any problem.

PIA has bots with useless scripts. What few real people PIA has are also useless.

“PIA is the Walmart of VPNs”? I don’t think so. PIA is more like a flashy Las Vegas used car dealership that makes big promises but sells you a lemon and then refuses to give your money back.

Might as well take your money and buy a lotto ticket. Your odds are better with lotto than with PIA.

Most VPN’s (marketing) claim no log policy, but not ONE (Legally) states that neither they nor their third parties don’t log. In PIA’s case, they use an American server Company called – Total Server Solutions. In effect, Total Server Solutions is basically our ISP.

Except they are American, bound by USA laws and so store everything going thru their servers. In this case, PIA’s customers. So why is there not one genuine articles/critique of this issue anywhere on the internet. To be fair, other vpns operate exactly the same. I was a long-term PIA customer. They were pretty good years ago but in the past couple years they’ve been absolutely horrible.

I see you’ve significantly downgraded your review of PIA as you’ve gotten more negative comments from PIA customers about their PIA experiences. I’m very impressed by that.

It shows this is a legitimate review site and that you value the real life experiences of actual customers. All reviews should be done this way. The problem I see with the vast majority of VPN review sites is, at best, they’re just a snapshot. A reviewer tries out a service for a few hours and, based on that alone, the VPN gets a “review” of that snapshot. That’s anything but real world. What about things like customer service and technical support?

I’ve only rarely ever seen a VPN review that properly evaluated that, even though it’s an extremely important part of any company’s overall service. The other thing that troubles me is how disingenuous most “review” sites are.

They seldom ever disclose if they were compensated for their “review,” and the fact is most of them are paid. That’s not a review. It’s an advertisement. I’ve noticed that quite a few, maybe even most, PIA “reviews” look very similar to one another. Quite obviously they were actually written by PIA’s marketing department and then furnished to the “reviewer.” What a sham! PIA’s horrible support was reason enough for me to leave.

But their dishonesty was also an important reason why I left. A big element of any VPN is trust. You have to be able to trust your VPN, especially when they claim they don’t log.

It took awhile for me to come to see it but PIA isn’t trustworthy. Your review as well as comments by PIA customers here pretty much reflect my own sentiments.

I was already far from impressed. Then this week it was announced that the chairman of PIA, Andrew Lee, hired Mark Karpeles, as the CTO of PIA. For those who don’t already know it Karpeles was the head of Mt.

Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange. Due to either gross incompetence or outright fraud Mt. Gox was responsible for the biggest Bitcoin swindle of all time — $480 million.

Karpeles was arrested in Japan in 2015 and is awaiting trial on embezzlement charges there. Even if he’s ultimately acquitted there’s no getting around the fact that, at the very least, he presided over the biggest Bitcoin security breach ever. And this is the man who PIA chooses to head up their security? Stupid and reckless!

This more than proves to me that PIA is not a business that I can trust with my security. I’ve left PIA for a more prudent VPN. So, love the site – have been watching for a while. However, there are a few key things that need fleshing out. In regards to PIA being located in the US: This is a non-issue. Despite literally being the home of ‘eyes’ and of course the ‘CIA’. They were one of the first to challenge requests, both in the states and abroad, and do so succesfully.

This is old hat and can easily be reasearched. To continually beat that drum is a little disengenuous. Additionally, saying that ‘we can not know their log storage policy’ betrays a little bit of lack of understanding of how these technologies work (you do this for several service reviews to be honest). There are always logs.

It would be literally impossible to have a server/client model in any environment without them. It is what happens to the clogs after the fact that should be focused on. Further, if one is concerned about any of these things they should be using the DecentalEyes and httpSAnywhere addons for Waterfox to mitigate in conjunction with PIA’s client. – one of the older pieces discussing this issue. They literally responded to each request that it would not be possible to turn over information, quite actually, because such information does not exist. Regarding PIA’s software and, by proxy, possible log practices: they are now OpenSource.

This is huge, and something that should be pointed out. They have removed access to the service in countries where the physical safety of the infrastructure could not be gaurunteed (Russia, for example). There is additional information available further supporting that they do not store PPI on any logging system. They were Subpeonad in a criminal case and could not assist: They have legitimate issues with west coast serves – i’ll give you that, but it isn’t a speed issue – it is a growth issue – which you did fairly cover. Hopefully they can improve; I currently grab speeds in excess of 150-250 mb on their LA servers. Well done on them – could be more consistent.

Their support does suck re: time and response, no argument there. PIA is lauded all over the web because well, it’s good stuff.

I am from Russia, we have new anti internet freedom laws so I decided to buy a good VPN subscription. I chose PIA after reading several reviews.

I bought a yearly subscription. I installed it and it worked fine, but after restarting my PC I cannot launch the application again. I have tried everything to launch it again and obviously contacted technical support, but they are giving me standard advice that does not apply to my problem and seem to be going around in circles. I have asked for a refund but since it’s after some “7 day period” I can’t get my money back even though the product that I bought is faulty and simply does not work! I could not have asked for a refund within the 7 days as I did not realize that the problem existed at that point. The company has been horrible to me and I advise everyone to avoid it.

There are a ton of other options available and I will be trying one as well. I can post screens of my emails with the support if you need them, but trust me, the guy is just copying notes from some manual instead of actually trying to help 🙁.

PIA servers in the west coast of USA generally suffer from not only inconsistent but dismal speeds. In the PIA forums, people are complaining.if they don’t get their post removed. Generally speaking, “out of the box” performance is pitiful with PIA if you are located in the west coast of the USA and are trying to connect to any server. PIA runs many promotions and has a very loyal-fan base due to it’s low cost. The typical PIA user is not too concerned about speed or they use other apps or protocols not available in the native PIA client.

Their users often download or upload P2P before they go to bed at night. Usually by morning, the download is completed. Their clientele is mainly focus is not receiving an ISP Copyright infringement letter. And for the time being, PIA is not compromising the identity of their users. Given this latest log issue, it’ll be interesting to see what happens and if they too will be implicated like PureVPN which it too has a heavy fan-base. It seems that PIA was caught again for the second time lying about their “no logging” claims.

In this post ; the PIA employee sn0wmonster makes the claim “We have public.evidence. that logging is not happening” in response to questions from a person (bopnbob) looking for a VPN service, this person asked to see the “proof” that PIA had supposedly presented in U.S. Court that it does not log. Sn0wmonster made that claim in reply to him. Another user (bgxsec) challenged that claim but was threatened with warnings at which he basically laughed at and then he was banned. The person ‘bopnbob’ just happens to have come back to the forum and posted this to which the PIA employee sn0wmonster replied. Bopnbob replied and showed exactly why the claim of “evidence” by sn0wmonster was a lie.

The PIA word and semantics games along with their presentation of false and disingenuous information and lies, along with their attempts at odd twisted logic, For example, sn0wmonster makes various contradictory statements in what he posted trying to give some sort of odd twisted logic, which essentially screams “PIA DOES LOG” and he doesn’t even realize it. One such example is his statement that PIA “has never been caught logging” which directly implies that PIA does log and could be caught logging.”, these things under critical examination break down. The majority of VPN users don;t look at things critically like this, they just accept the “you just have to trust” thing and move on. There is always an element of truth exposed when things are looked at with a critical eye as the person ‘bopnbob’ and ‘bgxsec’ have done, PIA does not like that happening. They forum banned ‘bgxsec’ for it (basically, although his passionate exposure was defined as being rude by PIA which they seem to do when someone challenges them on their statements, they define it ‘non constructive and rude’ as they did to bgxsec and jbis who basically only argued their points), they forum banned the user ‘jbis’ for it, and now they close the newer thread from ‘bopnbp’ which effectively prevents any other discussion on the matter. It seems that PIA does not like getting caught lying and has a fear of it, if they were as truly trustworthy as they claim they would have no fear of getting caught because a truly trustworthy has no reason to fear exposure.

Only a liar would try to shut down or control challenges to their statements if they had the means to do so, that’s what PIA has done and in doing so they have exposed themselves as liars about not logging. After posting my comment here about the user jbis who was banned at PIA and later a user by the name of larky write about some information jbis had disclosed to him about PIA logging, I started following it more closely. See the comment from me “jack” a little down below this one. Yesterday at the AirVPN forums where the user larky had posted about the jbis disclosure, there was some information posted on the forums indicating the user jbis had the information prepared on a web page to show the world.

But it was removed by AirVPN and a post was made by staff basically accusing larky of defamation and demanding the information be posted, and says they would not tolerate defamation even for their competitors. The user larky was placed on ‘moderator’ monitoring so as to keep him from posting the information without moderator approval, but he got a little sneaky and was still able to edit a previous post so he included the information in that previous post but that has now been removed as well by AirVPN. I saw that information larky posted before it got removed by AirVPN, and having tracked him down previously planning to ask him about how to contact jbis (which I failed to follow up on so i had never contacted larky previously) I had some alternate contact info for him at another forum so I contacted him there and asked for the link to the information which he provided. Just as i got to the link, I saw some information with emails and a log capture from the PIA ‘propriety’ system’, the emails were from PIA personnel discussing the log that was shown and they mentioned specifics which appeared in the log posted that i was able to look at before the page vanished.

As the page was loading it stalled so I tried refreshing the page. After the refresh the page was no longer there.

So I was not able to see the whole thing but just a few pieces of it as the page started to load before it stalled. It seems as if it has been removed and is no longer there. I contacted larky again and he provided me the reason in the form of a PM screen shot he sent an AirVPN staff member named ‘pj’ on 3 Dec 2017 a few days before the AirVPN forum removed information, this PM outlines that jbis had been contacted by someone acting on behalf of PIA asking that he not disclose the information as it is propriety, but that jbis was still planning to put it up somewhere which happened yesterday but the link was removed by AirVPN. This is the link to that PM screen shot = So after all this, I think: After what I saw It’s beginning to look like PIA got to AirVPN and AirVPN rolled over and took it up the butt, saluted smartly, and said “yes sir!” and kept the user larky from posting the link and removed the information. I was able to get the link though and did see some of the information before the page vanished.

It seems that PIA, from what I can gather so far also saw that page also and had it removed. I should have saved the page contents, or made screen shots or something. I wish I had now. In this instance, unfortunately, I regret having the browser cache cleared when I close the browser.

From what I can understand so far after this, jbis is going to put it back up somewhere else. Its got a lot of proprietary information, and the proprietary thing is what PIA is using to get it removed. Based upon the little I saw before the page vanished, I now firmly believe PIA is lying and does actually log in the ‘proprietary method’ as the user jbis previously disclosed contrary to their public statements they do not log. Things are quite a bit worse with PIA than you may be able to imagine, and they have been for well over two years. Nothing has improved with time. In fact it’s as bad as ever. One thing that especially troubles me is the way PIA scares potential customers with hypothetical and overblown network security vulnerabilities.

In every single case other VPNs (the technically competent ones) have known about and addressed those vulnerabilities on their servers long before PIA ever “discovered” them. Perfect Privacy may be the best example of a proactive VPN that the negligent PIA could learn a thing or two from. When PIA ultimately hears about their vulnerabilities they announce their “discovery” with great fanfare to the press, as if they were the ones to discover it, and rush out a “fix.” But inevitably they make a hash out of their fix because, rather than focusing on the problem where competent VPNs direct their attentions (on their servers), PIA patches their customer app. Each and every time they’ve created a problem for their entire customer base when 95% of their customers didn’t even have a vulnerability to begin with. For example PIA’s solution to the “Port Fail” issue was to disable all LAN connections while you’re connected to the PIA VPN!

Utterly ingenious! And PIA calls this “networking”? Later PIA decided the best way to address their network vulnerabilities for Mac users is to disable the OSX firewall.

Hacking the Mac OS and taking down my firewall, without my knowledge or permission, is not my idea of security. PIA has never explained why they do so. I have an explanation though — incompetence. They are not a technically astute networking company nor do they understand how to write good code or follow best practices. None of it had to happen though. They could have just quietly patched their servers to address their vulnerabilities, like competent VPNs have, instead of cobbling together crappy customer app updates. If properly patching their servers is technically beyond their abilities (and it clearly is) they should have contracted it out to a competent networking firm.

But that wouldn’t have had the desired effect of scaring the hell out of everyone. They’ve been able to sign up a lot of new customers by playing that FUD game, so that’s really all that matters. Good review that accurately reflects several years of my PIA experience. Let’s just say I was happier in my first year than I have been since. The bigger they’ve gotten the more they’ve gone down hill. They were barely able to support a smaller customer base when I first signed up. They didn’t gear up to handle the much bigger customer base they have now.

What few good support guys that used to have left long ago. So I’d knock another star or two off of “Value.” Yes, they’re one of the cheaper ones, but even still I don’t think we’re getting what we pay for. Their support is one of the worst I’ve ever encountered from any tech company. Bad, as in virtually non-existent. Their Windows and Mac apps are buggy, unreliable, poorly written and poorly supported, and it’s been like that for (I kid you not) 19 updates in the past year.

Each new update claims to fix prior bugs but inevitably introduces new ones. Their programmers are morons. It’s difficult for me to come up with a single positive thing I could say about PIA, other than they may not be as terrible as PureVPN. But who knows?

PIA may be lying to us about their no-logging policy just like PureVPN did. I’m a PureVPN customer too and feel very betrayed by what they did. Because of that I now find it impossible to now trust any US based VPN provider. I’m even more distrustful about PIA than ever about their no-logging claims.

Every time they get asked about it on their forums they get incredibly defensive, make unsupportable legal claims and even technologically impossible claims, and then if challenged they just shut the threads down so no one can ask anything more. I think their actions prove they’re lying.

Thanks for your reviews.

Private Internet Access – Features and usability PIA has a clear and explicit no-logging policy, and the USA doesn’t currently have any mandatory data retention laws in place. When served with an FBI warrant to hand over VPN logs, PIA really didn’t have anything to give investigators, making it one of the few VPN providers whose no-logging claim is known to have been tested.

There are graphical clients for Windows, Linux and macOS, and detailed instructions are provided for setting up connections on other operating systems and devices. As you’d expect, the client can be configured to connect automatically when your GUI starts up. Although its client is clear and easy to use, you’ll only really need to interact with it if you want to change any of VPN’s settings, as a complete of endpoint countries is available a right-click menu, making PIA one of the most convenient services around if you need to regularly switch from one endpoint location to another. PIA comes equipped with a range of security features including a VPN kill switch that disables your connection to the internet if your VPN is disconnected, IPv6 leak protection that temporarily disables IPv6 to prevent unwanted identifying data from being accidentally transmitted and DNS leak protection that directs all DNS requests through a non-logging DNS service. Private Internet Access – Performance It has a good range of 28 endpoint countries and over 3000 servers. Our tests cover endpoints in the USA, UK and the Netherlands. Its performance in our FTP speed tests was excellent, maxing out our test server’s connection at just under 10.5MB/s (84Mbit/s) via endpoints in the UK and Netherlands, and achieving a very credible 3.4MB/s (27.2Mbit/s) to the USA.

Private Internet Access Review

In our streaming tests, we were able to watch BBC iPlayer from UK endpoints, which is great for travellers who want to keep up with their favourite series and, for the first in a couple of years, we were able to stream US Neflix content without detection. Its subscription fees among the lowest in the industry and the best value option is a two-year subscription that works out at £52.56 – £2.19 per month. If you don’t want your name associated with your subscription, you can pay using bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash or Zcash. PIA’s proven track record on privacy is also a compelling reason to use the service. Verdict PIA’s improved support for Netflix makes our favourite VPN provider better than ever. Private Internet Access hits the sweet spot for speed, features and privacy, and remains our recommended VPN service.