Private Internet Access Review

Here’s a table summarizing the information that PIA logs:

PIA VPN’s privacy policy states outright that all user activity is “NOT recorded, logged or stored at all.”

All Private Internet Access collects is your email address and payment details at sign-up, which is standard practice.

This alone would make PIA one of the best VPNs for privacy, but it’s what it does outside of its logging policy that makes it so trustworthy. Here’s an overview:

Regular Transparency Reports

PIA also releases regular transparency reports that detail the number of requests for data it has received from government agencies, along with how many it has complied with (as of June 2023: zero).

Server Seizures

PIA’s no-logs policy has been externally verified on several occasions.

The FBI subpoenaed PIA in a 2016 court case, but despite receiving an official data request, PIA simply had no information to hand over.

The Russian government also seized PIA servers in 2016 but did not find any retained connection or activity data.

PIA subsequently removed all of its Russian VPN servers in protest to this incident. A bold move we want to see more VPN service providers follow.

As well, the VPN’s no-logs policy claims have been audited as recently as August 2022. Deloitte, the auditor, found that no details that could be used to identify PIA users are stored on the VPN’s servers.

These court cases are real-world tests supporting the company’s logging claims — the best form of proof a VPN can provide. Altogether, this makes PIA the best no-logs VPN on the market.

Based in Privacy-Unfriendly US

PIA is headquartered in the United States, which is widely considered to be one of the worst places to base a VPN company.

The US is a founding member of the Five Eyes (FVEY) intelligence alliance, which has automatic systems in place to collect and share surveillance data with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK.
The Patriot Act also gives US authorities sweeping powers to collect and retain data, especially through the use of National Security Letters.

Normally we’d advise you not to use a VPN based in a Five Eyes country like the US. However, a verified no-logs policy offsets most of the issues posed by it.

After multiple real-world verifications, we are confident that PIA’s privacy policy and logging practices can withstand its privacy-unfriendly jurisdiction, and you can trust this VPN with your data.

Who Owns Private Internet Access?

In November 2019, Kape Technologies acquired Private Internet Access from London Trust Media Inc. (LTMI), a company with an established history in creating privacy tools, including PIA VPN in 2010.
At the time, the acquisition of PIA garnered some controversy.

The bulk of the backlash stemmed from Kape’s past activities in the advertising space when it was known as Crossrider. We discuss more about this in our CyberGhost VPN review.

On the whole, PIA VPN has always gone above and beyond to champion digital privacy, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t trust this established VPN.

Equally, Kape is determined to move on from its Crossrider days and is doubling down on its commitments to privacy and internet security. It now operates several trustworthy VPN services, including ExpressVPN and CyberGhost.

How Private Is Private Internet Access Compared to Other VPNs?

In the table below you can see how PIA compares to five other private VPNs in key areas, like their logging policies and jurisdictions:

We connected to PIA servers across six different continents from our testing location in New York, US. We use a 100Mbps internet connection, similar to what your baseline speed at home might be.

Here are PIA’s full speed test results:

Testing PIA’s speeds, we recorded a speed loss of just 95Mbps on short-distance connections — an incredibly fast result.

Its long-distance connection speeds were less impressive, but still fast enough for streaming, torrenting, and web browsing.

As expected, the servers located furthest from our testing base in the US recorded the largest speed losses.

However, even over the longest possible distances PIA is still quick. If you need to connect to the other side of the world then you can count on PIA to affect your download speeds as little as possible – we still routinely hit speeds of 82Mbps when connected to a server in Australia.

The main issue which arose in our speed testing with PIA is that it lacks the consistency of some of its fastest rivals. There can be big swings from week-to-week, which holds it back – but only slightly.

There are still faster VPN services than PIA, mainly over long-distances. In our Hotspot Shield review we highlight the VPN’s exceptional global speeds, for example. However, as you can see above, PIA matches or outperforms plenty of big VPN names.

PIA Has Ping Times Low Enough for Smooth Gaming

We also measure ping times while testing VPN speeds, and PIA impressed us. You can leave PIA connected while gaming and you shouldn’t notice any difference to your gameplay — not just when connected to a nearby server, but also if you’re connected to a server in another country.

PIA put up a ping of 6ms when connected to a server in the same city as us — totally unnoticeable versus a ping of 4ms with no VPN on at all.

If you like to play games like World of Warcraft or League of Legends on servers in a different region to your own, PIA is still a great choice: it only raised our ping to 6ms when we were connected to the UK (3,500 miles away).

Here’s a list of streaming services that PIA currently unblocks:

Although Netflix’s strong geo-restrictions stop many VPNs from working with the service, Private Internet Access streams Netflix with ease.

For the most reliable performance, connect to one of its ‘Streaming Optimized’ servers present in a number of countries, including Australia, Italy, and Sweden.

Here are the 10 Netflix regions that PIA was able to unblock in our latest round of testing:

• Australia
• Brazil
• India
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Spain
• Sweden
• Turkey
• UK
• US

Having said that, our ExpressVPN review and Windscribe review detail how both VPNs are more effective at bypassing Netflix geo-blocks around the world.

PIA Streams UK Video Content

We also tested the “UK London-Streaming” server, and Private Internet Access unblocked BBC iPlayer every time.

For the time being, we can safely say that PIA now consistently works with all UK streaming services, including ITVX and Channel 4.

PIA Unblocks Prime Video, Hulu & HBO Max

Our tests found PIA VPN is one of the best VPNs for Hotstar, and it also works with many other content platforms including Hulu, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime Video.

On top of this, PIA’s fast speeds mean you won’t experience any lag when streaming shows in HD or 4K.

When we consider what PIA does best, it’s not historically been a top VPN for streaming. However, its recent performance in our tests has been fantastic, and we love that it can now match some of its best rivals when it comes to unblocking international services and content libraries.

PIA’s Streaming Performance Compared to Other Top VPNs

The table below compares Private Internet Access to other streaming VPNs based on Netflix and BBC iPlayer access, and whether streaming with Smart DNS is available:

PIA is the best VPN for torrenting out of all 55 VPN services we’ve tested. It allows P2P and file-sharing activity on all of its servers, which we love when compared to so many of its competitors which exclude servers for seemingly no reason.

PIA is compatible with all popular torrent clients including Deluge, uTorrent, and Transmission. We test using qBittorrent.

MACE, PIA’s built-in ad blocker, can also help block any trackers or malware you come across in the process.

In our P2P tests, we were able to successfully torrent on all PIA’s servers. You can torrent from any server location, with no bandwidth or other limits. Simply connect to your nearest VPN server and start downloading.

Using PIA, we downloaded a torrent file at a rate of 9.6MiB/s. This is one of the fastest results we’ve measured, beating other top VPNs like ExpressVPN and NordVPN.

There’s no throttling and no bandwidth restrictions — torrents downloaded almost as fast as they did with no VPN connected at all.

PIA Has an Impressive Port Forwarding Tool

PIA’s port forwarding feature redirects incoming connections to bypass any NAT firewall.

Port Forwarding lets you increase the number of torrenting peers you can communicate with, and drastically improves P2P upload speeds. The PIA settings let you forward to ports 443, 80, 110, 53, 8080, and 9201.

PIA’s VPN Kill Switch Is Reliable & Effective

All PIA apps come with a VPN kill switch to protect your traffic if your internet connection suddenly drops.

This is especially important when torrenting files. Without a working kill switch, your real IP address would be visible to everyone in the event of a VPN connection failure. In our testing it worked every time.

PIA supports OpenVPN, WireGuard, IKEv2, and L2TP/IPSec protocols with the option to choose between UDP and TCP connections.

The default setting protects your connection with AES 128-bit encryption, but we recommend you select the AES-256 cipher in the settings interface, or switch protocols to WireGuard.

There is built-in protection against IPv4 and IPv6 leaks, DNS leak protection, and a VPN kill switch on all platforms.

Our tests detected no IP, DNS, or WebRTC leaks in any application.

Private Offers Private DNS Servers

PIA also owns and operates its own private DNS servers, which means your DNS requests are resolved by Private Internet Access rather than your ISP. That means that no third parties get to see what websites you visit — it’s all handled by PIA from start to finish.

The apps are flexible, too – the Windows client can be set to use any custom DNS of your choice.

Highly Customizable Encryption

Unlike a lot of VPN services, PIA gives you detailed control over the algorithms and protocols used to encrypt your data.

Adjusting your encryption settings is useful for optimizing performance and configuring the VPN to suit your security needs, but it might be overwhelming for some beginners.

The default settings protect your connection with OpenVPN and AES 128-bit encryption. You can step up the encryption type to AES-256 (CBC or GCM) in the settings menu.

You can also choose the encryption level used for data authentication and the VPN handshake. These processes allow your device and the server it is contacting to verify the authenticity of the connection and the data being transmitted.

The default settings are for RSA-2048 and SHA-256, but you can go all the way up to RSA-4096 and SHA-384.

The most secure settings aren’t selected by default, though, so we recommend changing them to the following configuration:

• VPN Protocol — WireGuard
• Local Port — Auto
• Connection Timeout — 1 minute
• MTU — Auto

Unique Advanced Security Features

Private Internet Access also comes with a range of advanced security features designed by the VPN itself — you won’t find them anywhere else, although some of them are similar to features other VPNs offer.

PIA’s advanced features include an ad-blocker (PIA MACE), a private browser (InBrowser), and SOCKS5 encrypted proxy. Here’s what all that means:

Custom Ad & Tracker Blocker: PIA MACE

PIA MACE is a DNS-based malware and ad blocker found in the ‘Privacy’ section of the app’s settings. This feature blocks access to domains that are commonly known to host ads, trackers, and malware.

MACE isn’t a great ad blocker. You can’t white list certain domains, or adjust the filter settings: it is simply On or Off.

The inability to whitelist certain URLs means you have no choice but to keep the feature on, which ends up breaking certain websites.

Our testing also showed that MACE isn’t perfect but is still one of the best VPN ad blockers we’ve tested, even with the issues that have been reported by PIA users.

Private Mobile Browser: InBrowser

InBrowser is a private browser for iOS and Android. It offers a permanent private browsing experience that deletes your history, cookies, and session data every time you exit the app.

Obfuscation: Shadowsocks Protocol

Shadowsocks is an open-source encrypted proxy that can be selected directly from the app’s interface.

Also known as SOCKS5, Shadowsocks’ speeds make it a favorite of torrenters and anyone looking to bypass internet censorship.

Users will require a different username and password to use the SOCKS5 proxy, which can be generated from the Client Control Panel.

Open-sourced Apps

All of PIA’s desktop applications, mobile clients, and browser extensions are open-source.

This means that absolutely anyone can view their source code, study how the apps are written, and contribute themselves by fixing errors and making code improvements. It’s definitive proof that the apps do what they say they do, and there’s no nasty hidden bits of code inside them.

Other VPN services such as ProtonVPN and IVPN have chosen to open-source their apps. It’s still quite rare among VPNs, but we’d encourage them all to do it.

Leak Test Results: PIA Does Not Leak Your Data

PIA comes with built-in protection against IPv4, IPv6, and DNS leaks. DNS leak protection is enabled by default on the macOS app, but has to be manually enabled on the Windows app.

We can confirm that the desktop and mobile apps do not leak. We tested for IP, DNS, and WebRTC leaks, and our real IP address in London was consistently protected.

All of these features combine to make PIA one of the safest, most advanced VPNs we’ve tested. It’s a VPN that lives up to its reputation for security and anonymity, and we’re very pleased at how consistently its maintained such a high standard in our testing over the years.

Additional Security Features We’d Like to See

We test PIA VPN’s access in China weekly, using our test Shanghai server. We connect to it remotely from our test office to see if PIA can genuinely unblock websites inside China.

Over the past three months, PIA has recorded an uptime of 57% in China. That’s not quite reliable enough to make it one of the best VPNs for China, but it sits just outside of the top five.

To bypass the Great Firewall with PIA, use the OpenVPN protocol and enable the Shadowsocks proxy within the app’s settings.

Watch us using PIA to access blocked websites in China in the video below.

PIA’s Shadowsocks Beats Censorship

PIA uses Shadowsocks, which is a third-party proxy developed specifically for use in China.

Although Shadowsocks is not as safe or effective as proprietary VPN obfuscation tools, it can access popular apps and websites like Instagram, Facebook, Gmail, and WhatsApp.

Private Internet Access is simple to install and easy to use on all platforms, but you might still require some assistance.

You can get straight into a live chat with a PIA help agent by visiting the PIA website and clicking on the icon in the bottom-right-hand corner of the screen. You are then asked to input your account details, like your email and account ID, before being connected.

It’s great to be able to get help so quickly and with so little information required.

PIA also has a large, searchable online knowledgebase with articles covering troubleshooting, account problems, technical complications, and more.

The website’s guides section has articles covering setup and tutorials for all supported platforms. It should cover most general issues you might have with the app.

You can also contact a member of the support staff on the website’s ticket request system. While this system does work and users tend to report positive experiences, you won’t always get a fast reply. It’s also only available from 11 am to 7 pm (EST) on weekdays – we’d like to see this increased to 24/7 in the future.