“PIA” – Private Internet Access VPN Review

PIA – Private Internet Access Review: Great Features

Private Internet Access VPN ™ (PIA) has been around since 2010. Developers of the Bitcoin system took part in the provider’s create, promising quality in privacy and open standards. The focus should be on speed and ease of use.

The purpose of Private Internet Access ™ is to protect users’ anonymity and privacy in the best possible way. The provider is based in the USA, where no user log files need to be stored, but user data on IP addresses is often the subject of discussion in many forums. The fact is that the US allows Patriot Acts (laws) and ACTA (copyright protection) and can oblige providers to publish data.

Of course, Private Internet Access ™ also provides access to restricted content in other countries, as well as using modern and secure encryption protocols. But is that enough to get a top spot in our VPN comparison? We have therefore put Private Internet Access ™ to the test.

Company

PIA Private Internet Access ™ provides access to 25.155+ VPN servers in 77 different countries. The company is headquartered in the United States and is operated by London Media Trust, Inc. (a British company). In November 2019, PIA announced that it would be merged into Kape Technologies. It operates two competing VPN services, Cyberghost and Zenmate.

Private Internet Access VPN pricing

All tariffs offer unlimited bandwidth and access to all available VPN servers for a really low price. There is also a 30 day money back guarantee. Up to 5 devices can be used per user account simultaneously. Private Internet Access ™ accepts all major payment methods: Paypal, VISA, Mastercard, AMEX, Discover, Amazon, Google, Bitcoin, CashU, Liberty Reserve, OKPay. Private Internet Access ™ was the first VPN provider to accept bitcoins.

Streaming – TV and video content

PIA ist optimized for streaming purposes, especially for US- und UK-content and also includes a FireTV App. US Netflix and BBC iPlayer are available. However, access is not unhindered. PIA users need to switch servers quite often to find the unblocked server. This is probably due to the mother-country of the service (USA).

Private Internet Access Review: Privacy

Data security is, of course, an important aspect in the selection of the VPN service, the multi-hop method (a connection can be routed through up to 4 VPN sites) Private Internet Access ™ brings here a very significant and important advantage into play. Although this somewhat suffers the transmission speed, since the path of the connection is extended accordingly, but it is practically impossible to locate the actual user of an IP address.

This is a clear advantage in anonymity that until now only the VPN service Perfect Privacy VPN had offered. However, this cascading connection variant can only be used with the provided access software for Microsoft Windows!

Of course, you should not use a VPN for illegal activities on the Internet. Also, Private Internet Access is important and the user conditions leave no doubt about that. At this point applies to the provider: zero tolerance. PrivateInternetAccess.com declares that it will cooperate with the authorities in case of illegal use. Therefore one can not always expect a 100% protection of one’s own identity.

Logfiles

Private Internet Access ™ claims to record no user data, including traffic or usage time. This should provide good support for both privacy and anonymity, however, the US authorities are likely to gain access to user information.

Torrent, downloading with PIA

The service is quite well to use for Torrent, but it has no port forwarding option. The own torrent server is quite fast enough. No traffic or user data is collected or recorded. There are no restrictions on the volume and speed of data transfer. So, P2P (peer-to-peer), file sharing and downloading large amounts of data is not a problem for Private Internet Access VPN.

Private Internet Access Review: Features

Private Internet Access is a modern and convenient service. It offers almost everything that a regular user would like to receive from a VPN. Read more in this review!

VPN Protocols

Private Internet Access offers different protocols for use: PPTP, L2TP / IPSec, and OpenVPN, with the OpenVPN protocol, recommended. With PPTP and L2TP / IPSec but also devices such as routers, Apple iOS, Android and Boxee can be used.

PIA Applications

Private Internet Access Client software is quick and easy to install, and you can also use the OpenVPN GUI. The software also offers the use of PPTP and has an appropriate tax instrument. The software is compatible with all major operating systems, such as Windows or Mac OSX. The Android App works fast and stable.

Private Internet Access VPN Network

Private Internet Access users use “shared IP addresses” to optimize anonymity and privacy on the Internet. This brings a decisive advantage over other VPN providers, as this makes it even harder to assign IP addresses to individual users. Private Internet Access ™ operates its VPN servers in the US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Romania, Germany, Sweden, France and Hong Kong and some other countries

There are 7 locations in the US which also have the advantage of being able to guarantee users the lowest latency. Although it generally depends on your location, a quicker location can certainly be found as well.

In total, VPN servers are available in 25 countries, which covers the most important states, but other VPN services offer much more choice, for example, CyberGhost or Surfshark.

Private Internet Access review: VPN on the router

On routers, PIA offers all the support for OpenVPN client routers, but you cannot use the service permanently without LoadBalancing and because the servers are sometimes not very stable.

Traveling

Unfortunately, PIA VPN does not have any obfuscation, i.e. a technical option to bypass VPN blocks, which is common in China or other countries. In addition, the streaming of German content is not the provider’s strength.

Online-Gaming

The rather long latency times do not make online gaming much fun. The service otherwise offers a good speed, but the latency times proved to be too high even after weeks of tests.

Speeds with downloading

The weak point of PIA is certainly the often slow VPN servers. A few years ago, users would have had reason to applaud if they reached 50MBit/s, but today this is unfortunately no longer a good result. We therefore also asked PIA how they plan to provide users with current expected performance today. The answer was that the network is designed to handle as many users as possible, and most of them do not expect more performance. They are probably right, but if you are looking for the fastest VPN, you should not choose PIA.

Private Internet Access VPN: Customer support

Erstellt am: 12/07/2019