General Overview
PIA, short for Private Internet Access, is a United States based VPN service that offers a range of features, including an ad blocker, at an extremely cheap price. In fact, it’s one of the cheapest VPN services on the market. However, the biggest drawback it has to contend with is that it falls within the “5 Eyes” jurisdiction known for their violation of online privacy.
PIA VPN Special Features
- PIA MACE: This is one of PIA’s best features. This feature can automatically block all malware, trackers, advertisements, etc. As such, you can browse the internet without interruptions and without worrying about accidentally clicking on malware files.
- Kill Switch: This feature is extremely useful if you’re accessing sites that are forbidden by the government. Sometimes, due to connectivity errors, the VPN connection is lost. In those cases, this feature will automatically disable your internet so your activities are not discovered.
- Netflix Unblocking: Bypassing Netflix’s geographical restrictions is considered the gold standard in terms of IP concealment. PIA does allow users to bypass Netflix’s restrictions and access content from other countries, but only via a limited number of servers.
Privacy & Anonymity
PIA is owned by an American company called London Trust Media, Inc. There’s little no information available on that company, which, in itself, is a pretty big red flag. That instantly means this company isn’t very transparent, and, consequently, not trustworthy.
Furthermore, the United States is a part of the “5 Eyes”, i.e., one of the 5 worst countries in terms of online privacy. This is true for the following reasons:
- They conduct mass government surveillance via NSA.
- Companies like Google, Facebook, Verizon, etc, conduct mass corporate surveillance to derive user information.
- The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has troubling connotations for online security and user privacy.
- Many large technology companies work with the government and provide user information when called upon to do so, without informing their users.
For all of the aforementioned reasons, we’d say that PIA VPN doesn’t offer a lot of privacy and anonymity.
They do claim they follow a No Logging policy on paper. However, we have no way to know how far that policy is enforced. Furthermore, they also limit the user’s subscriptions to 5 connections. The only way for them to impose this limitation is to keep some logs of user activities. As such, being in the US, we simply cannot trust their No Logging policy.
In terms of encryption, they are set up with a 128-bit AES encryption by default. However, you can go to the settings and change that to 256-AES encryption as well. The authentication can also be secured using SHA-1 or SHA-256 encryption. Furthermore, the client devices are also set up with RSA-2048 public-key encryption that can be upgraded to RSA-4096. As such, we have no complaints about the level of customization offered in terms of encryption.
PIA VPN Speed and Performance
PIA is not equipped with a server status page. This is yet another one of its transparency issues. As such, you cannot check the real-time bandwidth during connections. Connecting through different servers gets you different results and at different times of the day. As such, it’s pretty unreliable, and just okay at best.
Ease of Use (Desktop and Mobile)
PIA is extremely easy to use both in Desktop and Mobile. The app is user-friendly and intuitive. There’s a small icon that suggests privacy. You simply have to click on it and you get connected.
To select the server, you have to click on Region Selection in the main dashboard. This will give you access to the flags of all the different countries with server locations. You simply have to select the server you want to connect through and that’s it!
PIA VPN Servers and Locations Across Australia
PIA offers 3193 VPN and proxy servers located in 52 cities across 33 countries. Out of that, they have 185 servers distributed between two Australian cities — Sydney with 103 servers and Melbourne with 82 servers. This isn’t as impressive as various other VPN services that have servers in 3 or 4 Australian cities, but it’s still not bad.
Customer Support
PIA arguably has the worst support amongst all legit VPN services. If you go to online PIA forums, you’ll find hundreds of users complaining about lack of response from the support team. Comments like “Is PIA busy” littered the forum, showing a general lack of accountability.
In defense, PIA has stated that they are updating their systems and this is a temporary issue. We’ll have to see if this issue persists.
Value for Money
PIA is undoubtedly the cheapest VPN service on the market. If you get their service for 24 months, you can get it for as low as $2.91/month. They don’t offer any free trials but they do offer a 7-day window for a complete refund.
While PIA might be the cheapest VPN on the market, it’s also bogged down by various privacy concerns. If that is not an issue for you, this VPN will be highly valuable for you. However, if privacy is a major concern when using VPNs, even this cheap price wouldn’t be worth it.
Our Verdict
PIA is one of the cheapest VPN services on the market with a wide range of features and it’s extremely easy to use. However, it has terrible customer support and their location within a “5 Eyes” jurisdiction is a matter of grave privacy concern.
