What are /r/PrivateInternetAccess' favorite Products & Services?

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This did not explain ANYTHING, nor was it relevant to the topic. What a mess... I'm even more glad that my subscription expired recently and that I just switched to NordVPN. At least they look trustworthy to me atm

In the interests of clarity and transparency:

Mark Karpeles is not the CTO of Private Internet Access. The Technical Lead is Tommie P.

Mark Karpeles does not have anything to do with Private Internet Access (he's not even on our internal communication channels).

Mark Karpeles is the CTO of London Trust Media which is the parent company of Private Internet Access, but is not iinvolved with it.

The Management Team of Private Internet Access is viewable here (including myself):

In response to your question "Does he have full access to my user data?". No, Mark Karpeles does not have access to your data. Mark doesn't work for PIA. Even internally, we're extremely conscious about who gets access to personal information. If you don't need access, you don't get access.

Whilst I appreciate your feedback and opinion, that is the facts of the issue. I will allow the thread to remain as long as the responses are constructive and respectful.

As a company, Private Internet Access (PIA) is committed to both privacy and transparency. These central tenets are what we rely on for our users to be able to trust both our network and our applications. As such in early 2018 we started the process of providing all of our applications as Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

We have chosen to use the most permissive (relaxed) licenses we can, which means that anyone is free to use the source code for almost any purpose. This was an active choice to be inclusive and encourage community development without fear of restrictions or oversight. All of our current and future releases can be found at .

Our first FOSS releases focussed on iOS. As a result TunSafe may have chosen to use resources and/or code available in our iOS releases, which could explain why the clients look very similar. Of course, if that is the case then we hope that TunSafe will be inspired to also release their code/changes and, if appropriate, contribute upstream!

We are working very hard to ensure that the Android and Desktop applications will join the iOS and Extension code bases in being freely available to everyone.

Hijacking the highest post for visibility. V81 of PIA just released with a fix:

• Improved disconnected notification text when killswitch is enabled
• Link to manual instructions when debug log submission fails
• Added a link to the sign up page
• Added translations for new region names
• Added links to our youtube and reddit pages in "About Private Internet Access"
• Changed support links to our new Support Portal
• Windows: Improved reliability of the killswitch feature
• Windows: Added a setting to allow local network access when killswitch is enabled
• Windows: Fix an erroneous Windows Defender virus alert
• Linux: Added a setting to allow local network access when killswitch is enabled
• macOS: Improved code signing for newer macOS versions
• macOS: Preliminary macOS Mojave (10.14) support

> Private Internet Access has it's own technical lead who is responsible for technology to ensure customer security and privacy. This has not changed and we will continue to move towards our open source policy and releasing our code for inspection and, hopefully, collaborative improvement.

How is it not a problem for you to hire someone and then immediately have to convince your customers that your product is safe from this person?

We've introduced these companies as part of our recent ip changes (). They are wholly owned subsidiaries of Private Internet Access and exist to provide further levels of privacy as some networks and ISPs and websites treat VPN traffic in a non-neutral manner.

We have notified our network engineers about the concerns raised but we are not aware of any risks to customers' privacy at this time. We are not aware of any changes to our users' privacy caused by our recent ip changes.

Private Internet Access has had a bug bounty and reward program called WASP for many years () If someone has a vulnerability report, they can be reported on that page and the discoverer(s) will be rewarded.

I’ve used an extensive list of VPNs in the past couple years (Windscribe Pro, Nord, Express, Mullvad, AirVPN, PIA to name a few) and PIA has consistently been the most reliable with the highest speed.

If you concern is on security and not performance, I’ve not seen any indication that they are logging since or before they were acquired. If you have evidence of that, please share.. this would be a substantial revelation that would certainly get people off the service. In fact they have a planned external audit on the roadmap according to this post.

If your concern is on pricing.. well PIA is extremely competitive on pricing TBH

I'm definitely switching providers after this. I mean, how can you trust a virtual PRIVATE network provider after this kind of thing? What's next - logging user data left and right? No thanks, gonna switch to someone more reputable like Experss or NordVPN

> Can PIA please provide a comment on how this relates to PIA

I'm just trying to save you time here. It doesn't. ExpressVPN was just purchased recently. How could it possibly have had anything to do with PIA? That isn't how an umbrella corporation works.

Neither of these are serious security products for the "ITSec" industry, so god only knows what the hell you're talking about.

dig A pornolab[dot]net says their A record is mapped to 127.0.0.11 and there is no AAAA record.

I tested with few different DNS(over TLS, So my ISP can't be interfering here).

Looks like, It's a issue on their end.

Also tested with webpagetest and it also errored with Connection refused

NordVPN Technically logs it's all in the wording a company can say we do not keep logs which in my eye is maybe they delete them after a year that is not keeping logs if you read their log policy they don't tell you if they do or don't or if they do how long they keep them I think the best bet for VPN providers is we do not even generate logs I would love to see subpoenas and court orders but I could not find any on their site PIA openly shows that. In the United States it is not required to keep logs or generate logs which is a beautiful thing. When you see a VPN company and they say we do not keep logs that doesn't say much. I don't keep trash but sometimes I have it until my trash can gets full then I throw it away. So I guess I can say I don't keep trash. eroc1990 This has nothing to do with you just wanted people to know.

​

The CTO of a VPN would have oversight of security, however the actual security implementation would be handled by the DevOps team. In this instance however, Mark Karpeles is not the CTO of Private Internet Access.

We have a number of staff who come from security backgrounds, myself included, who work at Private Internet Access.

It's always nice to hear some praise once in a while :)

For me it's practically indistinguishable: with and without the VPN. Being relatively close to big exchanges helps quite a bit!

There are no encryption options for wireguard.

Wireguard is always encrypted, and does not support/allow operating without encryption.

Wireguard was intentionally designed to be simple and secure by a bunch of fairly skilled cryptosecurity folk, and there have been so many protocol downgrade attacks over the past decade that they decided to just start off with the good stuff and not give folks a ~~choice~~ opportunity to do it wrong.

Read more

I'm not sure what happens if any of their choices become obsolete in the future, guess we'll find out at that point.

Btw, this decision has absolutely nothing to do with PIA, they're just implementing the wireguard protocol as-is.

If you want to check, wireshark is an open source tool for Win/OSX/Linux that can capture, display, and decode network packets.

There isn't much PIA can do if they decide to block all or certain VPN's. Matter of fact, there isn't anything anyone can do about it. But the tracker is still working properly. I am downloading with ProtonVPN as we speak.

Here's an email from PIA that worked for me. It solved it.

Thank you for contacting us here at Private Internet Access. 

I'm so sorry you are experiencing these issues with the installer v1.1. We are working diligently on a resolution and we do have a new installer which may resolve the issue you are experiencing. Please download and test, below, the the file for your operating system:

64-bit Version: 

32-bit Version: 

It has been stated in 2 court cases that Private Internet Access could not provide any logs as the logs did not exist. Additionally, part of our Legal Department stated under oath and threat of perjury that Private Internet Access does not log and as such no logs could be provided.

We are currently working on a trustless system which remove all requirements for trust from our customers in addition to open sourcing out code.

I apologise for the delay in responding as I was waiting for the Chairman to release his statement regarding the hiring of Mark Karpeles as the CTO of London Trust Media.

Regarding Private Internet Access, as Andrew stated, Mark is the global CTO and is responsible for "reviewing technical architecture from an efficiency and security perspective and providing advice and guidance".

Private Internet Access has it's own technical lead who is responsible for technology to ensure customer security and privacy. This has not changed and we will continue to move towards our open source policy and releasing our code for inspection and, hopefully, collaborative improvement.

We openly announced that Mark was hired as the global CTO instead of hiding the information. This demonstrates our commitment to transparency and our belief that trust is paramount, especially to our customers.

I understand that some people will disagree with the addition of Mark to the London Trust Media team considering the situation with MTGox. However I personally agree and stand by Andrew's belief in getting back up when you're flat on your back. I also respect people who have the strength to get back up when they're down.

I can promise from both myself and my teams, we will continue to put our customers privacy and security first. The Customer Support Team not present on Social Media and Jason, Jerry, Austin, Anna, Jeff, Colleen, Max and I will continue to be present on social media should you have any issues, questions or suggestions pertaining to your service.

We will continue improving on the service you were receiving last week and we will continue to fight like we were last week. This has not changed and this will not change.

I hope this helps clarify the situation.

Regards

Jayson Q. (Senior Vice President of Customer Experience)

Nothing changed regarding our No logging policy.

We have publicly stated that if someone tried to force us to log, we would just withdraw from the region. We did it in Russia and we did it in South Korea.

Furthermore, on the 15th March 2018, we started releasing our code under open source licenses in order for people to read how the Private Internet Access applications work. This was done for transparency reasons as we strongly believe in a free and open internet. We have plans to release all our software under open source licenses in the next 6 months.

I hope this helps answer your question regarding logging.

In response to your question about 'illegal/shady stuff'. Our Terms of Service explicatory state that such activity is not allowed on our servers or service. Although we do not log, we sometimes have users who state things like "I'm trying to DDoS [target] however I cannot get my botnet to work with your service.... can you please help?".

In these instances, we will then follow our Terms of Service and deal with the issue as appropriate.

I hope this clears up any confusion, however if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask or drop us an email.

Regards

Jayson Q. (Senior Vice President of Customer Experience)

Can't say I've had those issues with PIA.

> I've gone to BTGuard, which only VPNs my torrent client.

Whoever you're quoting doesn't know the difference between a VPN and a proxy.. they are describing using a proxy. I'd suggest staying away from proxies, then you have to hope that your torrent client will know to kill switch itself if the proxy connection drops.

Strange, because just a cursory search on the TORguard forums reveals this thread: ?/topic/731-netflix-wont-work/

You quote "unrestricted access". Read the whole thing: >Enjoy unrestricted access to the Private Internet Access Privileges VPN network. The most secure, anonymous VPN tunnel is now at your fingertips.

They are giving you access to PIA if you pay. Your traffic is still secure.

I just don't understand how you can not take issue with netflix. If I hire a car service to drive me to my friends, and they do that, and I get to my friends house and they don't let me in the house, I can't turn around and say "what a stupid goddamn car service". It's your friends fault.

How is PIA "just ok" ? It has the best split tunnel of any VPN (on all 3 platforms), it has piactl for scripting control, it has a GRAPHICAL client on linux (extremely rare), it's written in pure C++ and QT so it's less ram-hungry than the shitty "electron apps" that nearly every other competitor uses, it has shadow socks, it has wireguard support, it ip-subnet based split tunneling too. PIA is also open source

Mullvad is a very basic electron app that doesn't even have a real split tunnel implementation.

PIA, Mullvad and others support WireGuard. By design WireGuard uses Curve25519 for key exchange, ChaCha20 for encryption, Poly1305 for data authentication, SipHash for hashtable keys, and BLAKE2s for hashing. These are open source, audited cyphers with no NIST involvement (save for NIST approving them for federal government usage after they were audited clean).

After carefully reading Article 13 of the European E-Commerce Directive, it is our position that our VPN service would not be legally required to adhere to Article 13. Article 13 applies to “information society services that store or give access to large amounts of copyright-protected content uploaded by their users.”

​

Private Internet Access does not "store or give access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users" as required by Article 13. Article 13 is aimed at content hosts such as Facebook, Youtube and Instagram given the amount of content hosted by each platform and how they allow users to upload and share copyrighted material across their platforms.

​

Private Internet Access is opposed to Article 13 because it is a restriction against the fair use of copyrighted content and a draconian solution in search of a problem. We urge our customers to contact their MEP representative and make their opinion and voice heard

Would never happen as Mark Karpeles does not need access. There are only 3 people in the entire of Private Internet Access with access to the servers (with over 100 employees).

The Head of the Server Operations team wouldn't do it anyway even if it meant he lost his job. It's one of the reasons I respect him.

Yes.

And London Trust Media is the owner/holding company of Private Internet Access.

Jayson_Q keeps trying to make a case that PIA and LTM are separate, distinct and autonomous from one another. But just take a look at PIA's web site. LTM's name appears everywhere. PIA's corporate headquarters are LTM's corporate headquarters. LTM is the copyright holder of PIA. And there are many more examples of why PIA is anything but separate and distinct form LTM. Legally speaking Private Internet Access is a dba of London Trust Media. They're one in the same.

While Private Internet Access agrees to accept service of law enforcement requests based on the above method listed above, Private Internet Access does NOT waive any legal rights based on this accommodation.

> As explained before, Mark is the Chief Technical Officer of London Trust Media.

...which is the holding company of Private Internet Access.

You're just splitting hairs Jayson, and in doing so you're not helping PIA's credibility in the least. You should be in damage control mode rather than spin mode.

Here's the reply I got to my email to PIA support. Thank you for contacting Private Internet Access support

We are deeply sorry for the issue you are experiencing. We do not throttle any traffic but we will be happy to do our best to ensure that this issue is resolved as soon as possible.

In order to assist you further, I’ll need some information about how you have the VPN service setup, to ensure we provide the correct information to you:

What operating system are you using on the device you have the VPN service setup on (Windows, Mac, iOS, etc)?

Are you connecting to the VPN using our VPN software, or did you use different set-up instructions (if you used a different set, can you tell us which set you used specifically)?

Do you have any security applications installed on the device you’re using the VPN service on (firewalls, antivirus, etc)?

What country/state are you located in?

How do you connect to the internet on that device (plugged in, Wifi, mobile data, etc)?

Are you receiving any sort of error message or other alert (and if so, what does it say)? Where are you seeing the slow speeds exactly (torrents, etc)? What speeds are you actually seeing (with and without the VPN active)? How are you gauging your speeds? What gateway/server location are you using?

Once we receive this information from you, we’ll be happy to review it and offer additional assistance based on your setup, to resolve any/all issues you’re encountering where possible.

>I have high suspicion that my ISP is intensely giving high connection speeds to speedtest.net and fast.com while giving slow connections to all the other websites.

very unlikely that your ISP whitelisted all such speed test servers. illusory correlation is a thing that we do.

>Is there a way to check it using PIA?

the only thing that PIA do is offer an encrypted connection between the client (your machine running their software or compitble app, like wireguard and openvpn) and one of their various exit nodes. your connection still needs to go through your ISP and the ISP server is aware that you're trying to connect with the IP address associated with the chosen PIA exit node. if your ISP is indeed throttling everything but speed test servers (very unlikely), then your connection to the PIA exit node will be throttled as well.

But most vpn review sites are garbage anyway. I've seen so many of them that heavily promoted Nord (who is at least as shady as Kape if not more so) while never even mentioning VPNs like PIA or Mullvad.

Pretty much the only one I consider worth a damn is torrentfreak's comparison of vpns. Mostly because they don't try to determine "who's best"; they just look at answers from each vpn on privacy/logging/torrenting related questions

PIA has made some questionable choices in the past few years for sure... I wouldn't say they are 'bad' at what they do, but at this point there are definitely better VPNs out there.

Back when I was on PIA I faced constant captchas and IP bans but now that I'm on Mullvad I haven't faced anything but good things. Full speeds also unlike PIA.

Your post is hot garbage lol I've noticed no change in service in fact it's IMPROVED since the acquisition especially with wireguard and all the split tunnel improvements.

Keep your stupid FUD to yourself. And i think you'll find other VPNs are far worse....i tried ExpressVPN for a while and it was terrible, half their "features" dn't even work and they don't fix thm. Mullvad is terrible too with an embarrassing UI and user experience. , they have secuty issue after secuirty no other VPN comes close to PIA's linux support, other VPNs just have low-effort CLI interfaces LOL

No, their ping and speed is actually that terrible. I have a 200mbps connnection with less than 10ms ping brought down to 8mbps and my ping off the charts. Save your money up and buy a premium VPN like Astrill that won't choke the internet speeds you pay for.

PIA is a joke.

Hello! Thank you for your inquiry. However, while I understand that it looks like the Private Internet Access application is using most of your battery, it is actually to do with how many other active services you have on your phone.

When each application connects to their respective server, the information is sent via the Private Internet Access application which makes it look like we are responsible for consuming all of your battery. As such if you disable some services, you will see a significant increase in battery life.

I hope this helps address your issue! Please contact us if you require any further assistance. If you need further assistance, please let us know! - PIA CS TEAM

I just cancelled mine. Ebates is offering 40% cash back on NordVPN. It was 107.55 for three years and I will get like 43$ back.

Edit* I didn't cancel because of anything PIA did. My year was up and I found a better price. For the most part it worked really well.

In all it said:

Dear Customer,

In order to continue offering exceptional service, we will be raising our prices for the first time ever on all new subscriptions starting on or after 3/18/2019 to:

$9.99/mo; $3.49/mo for 2 years; $5.99/mo for 1 year

We are committed to providing a great service at highly competitive rates. We will continue to add new features, release new and improved software, and adapt to meet the needs of our customers. For example, we have had many requests to increase the connection limit, so these new plans will double the connection limit, allowing you to connect up to 10 different devices at the same time.

As a current subscriber, you have the option to keep your current plan, with the same price and 10 device limit, as long as your subscription remains active.

Limited Time OFfer -- 3 years for $99 for 10 devices

Upgrade now to a 3 year plan, and get the old price, with new device limit. Your new 3 year subscription will automatically start as soon as your current plan has expired.

If you have any questions feel free to contact us by visiting the client support page.

Kind Regards, Private Internet Access Team Subsidiary of London Trust Media Inc.

To uninstall on Linux, you can open the app, navigate to Settings>Help and click Uninstall <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/buy-vpn/redditfaves">Private Internet Access</a>.

Alternatively, just run `` in the terminal.

Aside from posting in the wrong place for this, What did the support refuse to help you with? Maybe you can try to ask here and maybe the community can help you out? If it's something the application doesnt do, then I dont know how support can help you.

If you're looking to jump ship, check out thatoneprivacyguys list of VPNs and do your own research and find what fits your needs.

I've personally used CyberGhost, NordVPN, Mullvad and PIA and currently use both PIA and NordVPN for different reasons. (One being PIA was a humbleBundle but also exactly what I needed)

Every data center that Private Internet Access utilizes undergoes strict scrutiny before any deals are made. Are you concerned that the data centers might be secretly logging customer data? Even if this were to occur, I don't believe there will be any reason to panic because PIA has implemented a shared IP system and encryption algorithms that have been thoroughly tested in the security industry. If PIA discovers that one of the data centers has been logging data or providing assistance to government agencies without due process, they will immediately wipe the server from the network entirely. As they have on multiple occasions.

I've been a customer since 2014 and I have always felt safe with them!

Literally just got off live chat technical support with NordVPN. They told me that OpenVPN is not recommended for speeds as high as mine, and they had me install IKEv2, and now my speed is 750 mpbs WITH the VPN! Needless to say I am fuckin stoked.

I don't think LondonVPN is associated with Private Internet Access in any way. However, I should be able to verify whether you have an account in our systems with a little more information. If you'd like, please log a support ticket with us and include the email address you used to register as well as your payment method, and I'll be happy to look into this!

We have a project currently that deals with geoblocked content. Unfortunately I cannot give timelines yet for release date.

There is a lot of things happening in the background here at Private Internet Access, what you see happening recently and in the near future is purely the start of what we have planned...

> In this instance however, Mark Karpeles is not the CTO of Private Internet Access.

You really want to split hairs at a time like this Jayson Q? Your perpetual hair-splitting and semantic gamesmanship are so tiresome. You should have been a politician rather than the "Senior Vice President of Customer Experience."

This sums up my PIA "customer experience": over the past several years I've repeatedly found PIA to be disingenuous and often outright duplicitous. As head of Customer Experience I hold you directly responsible for much of that. Keep up the good work Jayson.

That's a good starting point, but I've read in some VPN subreddit(s) that the author has a bit of an agenda and/or doesn't really emphasize the right things. Good place to START, though. I'd also recommend reading the VPN article(s) at Torrent Freak.

So, PIA is cheap, but it already has a former Mt. Gox guy and now it's got another, so they may be losing me, which is a shame. I have ProtonVPN... not cheap... but good most of the time. If you can afford them, I'd recommend them.

I really want to like Windscribe (I have a lifetime sub), but I can't stay connected to them and the speeds are really slow for me for some reason.

TigerVPN, stay away.

• slower than hell, and the client, while pretty, sucks up tons of system resources on my Mac. Last time I used the Windows client, it wasn't much better.

There are many ways to identify you even if you're using VPN.

Your dns traffic may be leaking: https://www.dnsleaktest.com/

Browser fingerprint: https://panopticlick.eff.org/

The computer or phone you're using is signed in to Google/iTunes/Facebook/E-mail accounts. LE can go to those companies and ask them which users connected to them at a certain time from the Netherlands VPN server.

PIA may be forced to disclose information on it's users. IP or Account info. They have in the past.

NSA may be collecting metadata on internet traffic. Even if your connection is encrypted they can see for example at 1:15 PM qdash connected to PIA and sent 2345 bytes of traffic, and at the same time PIA sent 2345 bytes of traffic to X website. They'll be able to figure out it was you without seeing what was transferred.

If you want to be secure from gov agencies you'll need to buy a new phone/laptop with cash (each device has a unique id, so they may still be able to track it down to the store and review their camera footage). Don't login to any personal accounts on it. Never use it to connect to the internet from your house or anywhere near your house. Only use open wifi. Don't walk inside the the location that offers the open wifi because you'll be caught on camera. Leave your personal phone at home because its always being tracked. Skip the VPN because it's just another way to identify you. Connect only to encrypted websites and/or use TOR. Even if you do all this you're still not 100% safe.

Shadowsocks is a protocol, with several different implementations available.

PIA installs a shadowsocks service on their own servers.

Your VPN data is never passed to or through any server controlled by some shadowsocks organisation - if one even exists.

Same goes for OpenVPN and Wireguard fwiw.

Are you saying that you use the same password for PIA that you use for your Steam? From what I remember, you can't even change your PIA password.

It is much more likely that your email has been pwnd by an actual company breach. The alternative is that the FSB is trying to play your Steam.

Check this website to figure shit out and please start using 2fa. Crypto really can save your life.

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

From Wireguards site: https://www.wireguard.com/install/

> Warning: WireGuard is currently under development, and therefore any installation steps here should be considered as experimental. We are rapidly working toward mainline inclusion, at which point we will consider this codebase non-experimental.

We will implement it when it is safe to do so. We are testing it internally and supporting development financially.

Hi u/emothi,

We actually have a deal right now on StackSocial for a 3 year here!

Kape ain’t even have anything to do with the vpn companies like PIA, CyberGhost and ExpressVPN don’t allow kape to be have control over privacy of the vpn kape only own it so even if they wanted to they couldn’t sell your data

Unlocator is a better bet if you really want the streaming services you will need to get the Unlocator VPN + SmartDNS. SmartDNS will let you put the DNS address in your SmartTV and you will be able to use iPlayer (might have to sideload it), you can also use SmartDNS to set the Netflix region that they support.

As Kixylix says in another comment, VPN IPs are actively getting blocked all the time, that is why PIA made a dedicated UK streaming choice in its app, it is updated more often than the other geo located IPs, but it still gets blocked pretty quick. DNS blocking is harder apparently.

And finally, all of these services can be flakey, I started having to use the (official) iPlayer "download to watch later" app just to ensure I could watch the whole thing without it buffering at some point.

Good luck!

Edit: BTW I have PIA, Unlocator and Beebs, and have to switch between what is working.

I'm the coder of gluetun which was a program designed for pia initially, and extended it to about 8 VPN providers. Mullvad is quite good, they are partnering with Mozilla for the vpn you were talking about.

There is also vyprvpn which allows full ports forwarding which is nice.

Apart from that, and from the coding I did (not using), Cyberghost sucks, Nordvpn has a ton of servers and an API so that was cool, and others are like pia: 'okay'.

Today I'd probably go with Mullvad, although I don't like the name haha

I mean Wireguard by default has good security, less overhead but terrible privacy as there is logging involved, that needs to be done on the server side to establish and keep a connection going.

NordVPN got a beta implementation of it going by using double NAT. Which mitigates the logging of your actual IP. But, it is more expensive to implement.

I think PIA didn't show up on the list because London Trust Media doesn't own an assload of VPNs. The article is about parent companies and monopolies, not individual VPNs. IF PIA is a spook company and the Feds are watching our data, they'll have to be really careful how they proceed. If one customer gets busted on shit they did over the VPN, trust is going to erode really quickly. Then the Feds will end up sifting through shemale tranny porn. People who use HideMyAss usually say that they don't care if their shit is monitored.

For what it's worth, PIA have publicly stated that they will continue to support Windows 7 until Microsoft stops supporting it.

>Although Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.9 will continue to be supported, Private Internet Access plans to cease support for any operating system at the end of support provided by the manufacturer.

According to Microsoft, they will stop supporting Windows 7 on 14th January 2020.

So, yes, while it sucks that OP uses an old OS, it's still supported by both Microsoft and PIA.

I received an update from PIA on my helpdesk call which resolved my issue.

​

>Thank you for reaching out to us here at Private Internet Access Technical Support!
>
>I'm so sorry you are experiencing connectivity issues on the Chrome Extension. If, when attempting to connect, all you receive is a spinning yellow button, this issue is likely being caused by a setting within the bypass list. If you have checked the checkbox next to Netflix, please uncheck this and attempt to connect.

​

Tl;dr: Disable the Netflix bypass and try again.

Maybe I didn't make it clear in my post, but I did seek that solution. I was told there is nothing they can do at this time regarding connecting from Turkey if port forwarding didn't work (it didn't). Also, "stuck with best vpn provider" may or may not be accurate. In my experience from this issue it surely isn't. I'd prefer to have my money back and use various other services that work just as well, if not better (ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN, etc". They all work fine here. It's been down over a month now and I was just waiting for my sub to expire. It's my bad for not expecting the recurring payment, however a simple refund within 12 hours of it happening seems pretty standard and appropriate considering I have a useless year's worth of subscription at this point, and will be investing in a differn't company's annual subscription rate.

ProtonVPN here. The website is down, but the tracker is still working. Down with TOR as well. Is it working with your domestic DNS resolver and IP?

Edit: If this is true, we can already assume the worst. They might have been seized. Let's not panic for now.

Are you on a work or public wifi? Have you tried with TCP 443? It may be blocked by a firewall or antivirus. Even shutting off AV or uninstalling it, it uses the operating system to totally interfere with the process.

Add Exclusions, then reinstall the app:

• C:\Program Files\Private Internet Access
• C:\Program Files\Private Internet Access\tap\win10
• C:\Program Files\Private Internet Access\tap\win7
• C:\Program Files\Private Internet Access\
• C:\Program Files\Private Internet Access\
• C:\Program Files\Private Internet Access\
• C:\Program Files\Private Internet Access\

Cool thanks for the link it was a good read. It puts some more trust in it NordVPN. That's where I decided to get private internet access was due to In a article that showed some court case stuff.

​

To be fair, if you wanted more NordVPN-like features, you could just subscribe to them instead of PIA. PIA's a good app as is and I've never had a problem, but if their service isn't suiting your needs you're not obligated to stay.

Due to encryption embargoes with Iran, it is currently not legal to utilise the Private Internet Access service in Iran.

For further information, please refer to

What worked for me on my Windows PC was to go into Device Manager and under Network Connections, uninstall the TAP driver there, I also checked the box to delete all of it's driver software.

Then I uninstalled PIA.

I then made sure Hidden Folders were able to be seen, and I deleted all Private Internet Access folders.

I then restarted, then installed PIA again.

I haven't had the disconnection problem since.

This was on v81. I didn't have the problem on v80.

v81 works fine for me now.

xifapufo Yes we do accept Bitcoin “In crypto we trust.” You can go to our website then choose "Join now" to setup your account. In regards to account creation once the Bitcoin payment posts you will receive an email letting you know your "Private Internet Access Account Activated". In my experience the time it takes before the account is active varies. If delay is with Bitpay, as there is a higher than usual number of pending transactions in the blockchain than the Bitcoin network can process quickly. These delayed payments can take from several minutes up to several hours to process.

>Fair enough. Who has access to the servers? As the holding company, could somebody from LTM theoretically gain or grant access to the PIA servers? Remotely or in person?

Server access is restricted to the Private Internet Access Operations team via SSH Keys.

It is impossible for anyone from LTM (or even outside the Operations team) to access the servers.

It's pretty common for people who think they understand how censorship and VPN work to vastly underestimate the actual difficulty of bypassing China's Firewall.

Some of the VPN services with better reviews at jumping the Firewall: ExpressVPN, VyprVPN, NordVPN, PureVPN, StrongVPN. But no VPN provider can guarantee stable connections into/out of China, and not all servers of a VPN provider can be connected. Some providers only focus on a few of their servers' connection to China.

I personally used ExpressVPN in China multiple times with success. I have a friend who's currently in China using ExpressVPN.

As I have already posted on our forums, there is no plan to decommission the subreddit. There were a number of issues with the forum as explained on the post, both security related and operations. The subreddit integrates with the Support Portal (however the forum did not) and as such there is no need to decommission it.

Whilst I recognise that change is difficult for some people, however there are additional changes planned for the future, including the deployment of live chat. Q1 through Q4 is fully planned out and on schedule. Live chat is one of those projects.

Also just for clarity:
1: PIAJason (Jason V.) is a different member of staff to PIAJayson (me, Jayson Q.).

1. One does not need to logically deduce things from my statements. I'm a very concise, to the point and direct point of person. I do not infer. I do not 'beat around the bush'. If I need to say something, then it will be said, to the point, concisely and accurately. If you want to know the answer to a question, just ask. I will always answer it, even if the answer is something that disappoints you or even "I'm sorry, but at this time I cannot discuss that due to XYZ".

2. /r/privateinternet is also our subreddit. We placed a redirect to here (/r/privateinternetaccess).

4.. I closed the Mark Karpeles thread as it had become a tirade. I had explained multiple times that Mark Karpeles is not the CTO of Private Internet Access and the technical lead was Tommie, however this point was ignored and a number of posts were made that were inflammatory and lead to no where.

We actually state this on our client support area here

To quote it: The PPTP/L2TP/SOCKS5 protocols are provided for devices lacking compatibility with the Private Internet Access application or OpenVPN protocol. PPTP/L2TP/SOCKS5 should be used for masking one's IP address, censorship circumvention, and geolocation.

If you need encryption, please use the Private Internet Application or OpenVPN protocol with our service.

Hope that provides some clarification!

From their website:

> Given this, we’re sometimes asked why we don’t fly warrant canaries on our web page: having a short statement designed to technically circumvent gag orders about what, when or where various authorities have legally coerced us to give up private information on our customers. A warrant canary can look like this:

>“In 2014, this company did not receive any coercing legal request for private customer information.”

>The idea is that if and when this statement disappears, it’s the equivalent of saying there were authorities grabbing what they wanted and preventing the company from talking about it – so what the company does, in order to circumvent the gag, is to remove the statement that it’s never happened.

> This is going about the problem in the wrong way, when you’re a privacy company. The right way is to not have any collectable information in the first place.

>A warrant canary is a little bit like a fire alarm going off. Great. You know there’s a fire. Now what do you do?

>This is why at Private Internet Access, we have designed our operations to prevent this from happening in the first place. There are no logs. There is no identifying information that can be collected, regardless of the amount of force applied. There are several companies who claim they don’t log, but do anyway at the end of the day. In contrast, we have public court records that state (under threat of perjury) we don’t log anything,

See here for more

Unfortunately no one will, PIA simple doesn't work accessing Netflix overseas. Try some alternatives like NordVPN, Proton. Personally I'm also keen giving up PIA in place of Nord. Price with their 3 years offer looks competitive so I don't have anything to lose

I'm very sorry for the trouble with this! I believe you're experiencing this issue because you're using an older version of the PIA app. Only v71 and higher are compatible with High Sierra. To reinstall our VPN application on your Mac computer, please follow the steps outlined below:

Click on the PIA application icon in the Menu bar, uncheck the "Start Application at Logon" option (if applicable) and choose Exit. Go into your Applications folder, and drag Private Internet to the Trashbin. Empty the Trashbin after doing this. If the app will not allow you to delete it, please reboot then try again. Open Terminal NOTE Please make sure this step is completed very carefully. All symbols, and spacing are VERY important. Incorrect usage of this command can lead to Data loss. (It is best to simply copy and paste the command below)

Type: rm -rf ~/.pia_manager/

Press enter. If the command is successful, there will be no confirmation, it will simply go to a new line in the Terminal window.

Once you have it completely removed via the process above, power down your computer, wait 60 seconds, and power it back up, and all traces of the application should now be removed from the system. Following this, go to and download a fresh copy of the Mac application and run the installer.

ExpressVPN is a bit more expensive but is known to be one of the fastest VPN's out there. Plus it's location ensures protection from US policies.

NordVPN also appears to be a pretty good choice.

I don't rep for either and don't want to bag on PIA but this is of their making. The service has just suffered. I'd prefer for them to simply fix their infrastructure instead of just trying to make more money.

Various discussion threads (some quite irate) I've read on PIA suggest they are unwilling to help with geoblocking, and claim that it is not their responsibility or that legal factors prevent them from helping. So I'm not sure a support ticket will lead to much. Fingers crossed, though.

I've not been able to access BBC TV content through PIA's London or Southhampton servers for several days. I am able to download from Radio 3, however.

Radio Three, I have found, does not always demand a UK IP address. However, if the IP is not in the UK it does not allow access to the standard 320kbps stream, but rather a lower quality stream - 128kbps, IIRC. But using PIA’s UK servers I am still able to dl broadcasts in 320kbps. That suggests there is some quite specific IP blocking going on at the BBC’s end.

I searched around and found that NordVPN offers a free 3 day trial (doesn't even need a credit card, just email, and I used a throwaway email to successfully sign up.) I was able to download TV content (via get iplayer, and at 720p HD quality) when connected through this VPN. That again confirms the problem is with PIA.

I just submitted a ticket asking for some kind of public statement from PIA since this is obviously a problem for a large number of people. Perhaps it is time to share what we know about other VPN's. Research seems to show that AirVPN is also highly regarded. I had bad luck with ExpressVPN, which would only work intermittently on Linux.

First off, BTGuard is not a VPN, it's basically a proxy for your torrent client. It doesn't remotely offer the same level of security and privacy that a good VPN does.

I can't say I've experienced crashing from PIA. What platform was this on? I've been running daily for years on OSX, iOS, and Linux with no crashes to speak of. The only issue I had was that it would sometimes refuse to launch on OSX for a few months (without killing the process and restarting it). But that was fixed.

> I just run the script and it will generate what I need?

Here is where it spits out a wireguard config file - you can stop it after this point if you wish.

> I’m assuming there’s a way to do this in Windows.

Windows is hard mode, you may find WSL2 to be the simplest way :P

I'm sort of glad that you posted this thread as I think that I might be in this same boat myself. The irony is that I've only started having this problem in the past few days. Prior to last week, my 150 Mb Xfinity connection would still consistently run at 70 - 120 Mb while connected to the VPN. Now I'm regular seeing speeds in the 200 kbps range. I've tried rebooting my modem, router, pi-hole, and even altering configs to lighten the load all to no avail.

When I test connection speeds with various services (fast.com vs. speedtest.net vs. Google's Internet Speed Test) on the VPN I can sometimes get vastly different results or exactly the same results. The moment I disconnect from the VPN, all the results are the same for an extended period of time.

I don't think that the issue resides with the VPN client itself or any configuration that I have in place. Rather, I think that Comcast / Xfinity is now throttling me while I attempt to use the VPN. What's odd is that no other services seem to be impacted. (Call me a conspiracy theorist, but this may be an early indicator of them selectively throttling traffic because they can.)

If you are fine running an unofficial client, you can try https://github.com/corrad1nho/qomui. I have written this because many VPN providers support GNU/Linux poorly. It supports auto-downloading PIA strong configurations. I haved tested it successfully on Ubuntu 18.04 but you should consider disabling ufw if you want to make use of the firewall feature to prevent leaks.

See if you can change isp to whatever your local cable company is, usually cheaper and less BS. You may have been targeted if your using a lot of bandwidth.

You most likely have a dns leak. https://www.dnsleaktest.com/what-is-a-dns-leak.html

Time to upgrade your experience and join usenet.

1. How to disable UPnP? There are two ways, you can disable it just for qbittorrent in settings right under the listening port box, or you can disable it on your router. I disable it on my router. There are vulnerabilities that allow the use of UPnP to route traffic through your router to obscure the attackers IP.
2. Kill switch is a bit overkill in my option. Oh no my VPN is reconnecting...stop everything else!!! Telling qbittorrent to only use the PIA VPN virtual network adapter will prevent qbittorrent from any connections if the VPN is not active. It will also stop the program from connecting if the computer restarts after updates and start qbittorrent up. Oh course you would also have kill switch and start connection on startup...
3. As of leaking IP address, I am usually more concerned that I am not leaking my DNS, because that will most likely leak to your ISP and they are usually not so friendly to the whole P2P thing... I usually use www.dnsleaktest.com and select the extended test, but doileak.com looks good too.
4. I leave the protocol alone, you can verify the hash of the torrent at any time so the need for the extra overhead of TCP is not needed, but I understand there can be errors and TCP is a bit slower, but verifies the integrity of each packet.
5. Another good note is to install python 3 or anaconda python 3 and you can install the search engine and extra extensions for some of the most popular sites to find torrents. As for TV is use showRSS and make a feed of all of the shows to automatically add to my downloads.

I made the switch to Brave and it's now my default browser.

It has a built in ad blocker and https upgrader, and also blocks trackers and scripts. You can also add any of the Chrome extensions if you like.

The dev team are super friendly and responsive too. If you have any questions at all they're super responsive over at /r/brave_browser.

So after consulting with staff here they informed me that if you are going to access Freenode while using PIA you will need to use SASL as it is required to prevent SPAM

https://freenode.net/kb/answer/sasl

> You're aware that PIA has a Graphical Linux client, right?

Yeah that's why I'm changing to Mullvad now, because PIA was the only one had a linux client before.

I'm not sure about this new ownership and reading this I really prefer their owners over PIAs:

Daniel Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg will continue to own 50% each of the shares. No further contribution of capital or new issue of shares is expected to be necessary. Our investment horizon is “to plant trees in the shade of which we will never sit”. Mullvad's vision is to make censorship and mass surveillance impractical. Mullvad shall strive to act in accordance with its cultural pillars of trustworthiness, transparency, and trailblazing. Owners’ restriction on board and CEO: honesty, especially in marketing.

Also the Sydney PIA server is really terrible, I can barely ever use it so I use the Melbourne one, but Mullvad has one in Brisbane which is even better

edit: Aaaaaaaaaand I can't access warcraftlogs right now because they've banned PIA's IPs

Thanks, I'll try PIA/Wireguard.

I know it's subjective, and that shills and paid PR abounds in the VPN space, but what would you recommend as an alternative to PIA now, especially one that is good for torrenting and works well for Windows, Chrome/Firefox, and Android? NordVPN seems to have gone downhill recently from what I've read, ExpressVPN is expensive, and the rest seem to all be in a similar ballpark in terms of reputation, reviews, and price.

It's already in absolute path, unless I'm missing something.

$PortPia = & "C:\Program Files<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/buy-vpn/redditfaves">Private Internet Access\" get portforward

Edit: unless you're talking to linux users. /r/woooosh

I wouldn't recommend SurfShark. It's cheap. It's *really* cheap. This sketches me out quite a bit, if I'm being honest. Go with something like Mullvad or AirVPN and pay with XMR or cash if you really want to have some anonymity.

I've been getting similar numbers (>250ms ping everywhere) and my only conclusion is that their 'new network' is absolute trash.

It's not the cheapest, but I've went across to Mullvad and everything's far snappier.

moving on - not wasting any more of my time; just keeps degrading until now it won't connect and when I read other posts matching issues I've had, such as repetitive CAPATCHAs, it can't be just a fluke, but I don't have time for testing in production; gonna give NordVPN a shot.

Looking at them myself. They also are the white-label provider for Firefox's VPN service, MalwareByte's too. I'm waiting to see if any of them offer special deals on Black Friday (I know Mullvad never seems to offer discounts), and if they do I'm jumping too.

Well:

> 10/16: We started testing NordVPN speeds using NordLynx (WireGuard), which is a faster protocol. Some other VPNs on this list, such as PIA, also have WireGuard. However, it is only available in the apps, but not through CLI (so we can’t run it on a Unix system) and they also don’t offer WG configs separately to use on a WG client. We have reached out to these providers asking for assistance with implementation and we will update our tool as soon as we are able to.

That's almost one month after this so the statement was false. Sure, you could say that they didn't know and honestly I personally don't really care. I paid for PIA and will reassess when my plan ends. I'm just saying that solutions exist, and the manual connections script repository is an official one by PIA (). It's not third party.

I'm up for renewal in a couple of months. PIA dropped a lot of misery on their customers with the changes they made, without communicating that clearly. Support wasn't speedy or helpful either.

I'm looking at Mullvad, I need port forwarding. You can't beat PIA for price, though.

I'm in Nl and score a ping of 10 ms on the Amsterdam server on Android.

Yeah I only get 80mpbs down on Mullvad as well when I can get 300mbps with PIA. I found that using the old v82 PIA client gives close to 200mbps on France PIA servers which do have port forwarding. The new PIA client is closer to 100mbps, not sure why this is. New client is using OpenVPN not WireGuard.

How are your speeds on Mullvad? I tried a bunch of different servers of theirs and couldn't seem to pass about 20Mbps down, and then it would fall to under 10Mbps. At least with PIA I can sustain 80Mbps for awhile; or could, not as good now with the Canadian servers not working properly.

After realizing my membership auto renewed for the year I contacted PIA to cancel and asked to be refunded. They were very helpful and issued a full refund. Then switched to Mullvad. No logging, plenty of servers and great speeds.

The renewal thought came after having tested their wireguard option, against some servers in Eastern Europe. Kick a$$ performance. The only other option I have ever considered was NordVPN, but only until Oct 2019...

Turned on ExpressVPN and no issues at all. No issues with AMZN or PYPL and not one outage, no problems at all. Just isn't nice to have a yearly subscription to PIA that always succumbs to outages and have to have one from a competitor that always works fine. I don't even know why I even keep on with the PIA torch.

I just switched to ExpressVPN yesterday. Working very well so far. I had been using PIA for a few years but it just became unusable in Australia with frequent dropouts. It was due to expire in a couple of months but I couldn't wait. They used to be great!

Too bad you got slammed before anyone did research.
ProtonVPN is legit, made by the creators of ProtonMail and is Swiss-Based.

The free tier is perfect if you're not torrenting - however you get an automatic 7-day trial of their basic membership when signing up, which allows you to try p2p before committing to any paid tier.

Thanks for recommending! :)

Hello u/Grits102 Sorry to read you are running into issues with our US Atlanta server. We are currently working on upgrading our infrastructure to 10G servers in order to boost performance and, for a short while during this work, some geolocation problems may occur.

As we move forward, and work to ensure the next phase of Private Internet Access matches our vision and yours, we will make every effort to provide information on outages or other issues that may arise. At the moment you can find any and all current information regarding outages or issues in our support portal, here:

In the meantime, if a connection error occurs, please connect to a different location and try the desired server at a later time, you may additionally wish to move over to the next generation network which is available through the setting of all versions of our application to see if it resolves the issue you are experiencing.