![]() This displays all the options in a long, narrow bar, even when you set it as a floating window. Private Internet Access offers extensive functionality via the macOS Menu bar – in fact, it’s the only way to access the app. Each virtual server is indicated with an icon in the app, and crucially doesn’t have an adverse effect on connection speeds. It means the Brazil server is based in Amsterdam, while appearing in China will go via Hong Kong. These use an IP address from the country you’ve chosen, but are hosted in a location where PIA has a physical server. Most of Europe, Central America and Asia is also covered, although some use virtual servers (or geo-located regions, as they’re known here). PIA has physical servers in countries like the UK, US and Australia, so there are lots of places to choose from there. That dwarfs the number you’ll find on almost any other consumer VPN, with all the most popular locations present. ![]() So, you either count it as £2.19 / $2.69 for 26 months, or £2.37 / $2.91 for 24 months.At the time of writing in May 2021, Private Internet Access (PIA) offers a hard-to-comprehend 33,665 servers across 73 countries. Like other cheeky VPN services, PIA was – at the time of review – displaying ‘+ 2 months free’ and factoring them into the monthly price to make it look lower. However, prices are competitive, with a month’s subscription costing £2.37 / $2.91 if you go for the two year option. PIA doesn’t offer a free trial, but its money-back guarantee has now been brought in line with the 30 days that most VPN services offer. No longer do you have to fill out a contact form with details of your problem and wait for a response. The company also has 24/7 live chat, addressing the main criticism that we had previously about its support. But finally that is sorted – at least for now – as when we tested the London – Streaming server from a physical location in France, we were able to watch shows with no issues. When we tested Private Internet Access in 2017, 2018, 20 it was unable to unblock BBC iPlayer. If you have fast broadband you can do your own testing for free by signing up for a month as there’s a 30-day money back guarantee, so long as you don’t pay by Apple Pay (as refunds can only be processed via Apple). ![]() All we could see is whether any servers ran noticeably slower than this. At the time of updating this review, lockdown prevented us using our office and it’s not possible to test how fast VPNs run on a slow home broadband connection below 40Mbps. Testing the speed of a VPN is a tricky business as speeds vary all the time and are affected by many factors. We’d like to see this resolved soon, because IPv6 connections are becoming more prevalent and quite a few rival services support both types of IP address. Only IPv4 is supported though, so all IPv6 connections are blocked. This means our real location was always concealed. We found no DNS or IP leaks when testing Private Internet Access. You can pay anonymously via Bitcoin, though, so you shouldn’t write off PIA as an option simply because it’s based in the US. Unfortunately, you’ll have to take the company’s word for it as it hasn’t released the results of any audits into the logging policy. No logs of any kind are kept so PIA doesn’t know when you use its service, how long for or what you do while you use it. You have to search the support section to find these, where you’ll find that Privacy policy you’ll find only a terse reference to logging, but no actual details about what it does or doesn’t store when you use the VPN service. We’d like PIA to make its logging policy a lot more prominent on its website, and make its privacy policy a lot easier to read and understand. Kape also owns Cyberghost and NetProtect. There have yet to be any requests since Kape took ownership. However, these were before the company changed hands in 2019. ![]() It has demonstrated this is several court cases where it has not offered any data which could identify individual users. However, while PIA can be asked to hand over data by authorities, its no-logs policy means there is no data to hand over. PIA is headquartered in the US, which is a red flag to anyone who knows about the 5-eyes (and 14-eyes) group of countries.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |