Private Internet Access (PIA) VPN review 2023
how’s it going everybody welcome back and today we’re going to be taking a look at
private internet access and uh i’ll try to review everything from privacy policy to speed streaming
20 capabilities as well security and features so that you guys can hopefully have a better idea
of whether or not pia could be the best choice for you and your situation now before we get if
you guys are interested in pia you’ll find links to pricing and discounts in the description down
below so that you guys can hopefully save a little bit more cash rather than just going
straight to the website and while getting a worse deal so yeah i’ll try to keep it updated
down there so that you can get the updated deal if it happens to be updated so no worries there
okay so starting with the privacy policy pia do state that they do collect minimal information
in order to process payment and verify users like your email address um name and payment information
which is all standard procedure amongst vpns and it’s nothing out of the ordinary but
in their cookie policy they do state that they collect necessary cookies and other types
of tracking cookies which is a little suspect but they do release transparency reports that detail
the number of requests for data it has received from government agencies and so far they were
not able to provide any logs or data according to these reports now i wouldn’t really count on these
as verification for a no logs policy i would rather look at some independent
audit reports which pia hasn’t allowed before and so while that takes away from their credibility
there were a few incidents that do make up for that and indeed verify their no logs policy
one incident in 2016 when the fbi was unable to link the suspect’s ip address to the activity due
to pia’s secured servers another incident in 2016 when the russian government seized pia servers as
part of an enforced law that forced companies to record and provide logs the russian government
was not able to find any stored activity data or recorded information and as a result pia removed
all of their russian servers in protest to this privacy violating government legislation so to me
it seems like pia do care about the privacy and they do have a clean slate but i do think they
can shy away a little bit less from conducting independent audits because independent audits
will increase the credibility of a vpn provider or any kind of cyber security software really
now when it comes to speed speed is great across the board especially that you have the
wireguard protocol right here now i’m not going to show you any speed results because that’s not
going to matter much and speed tests will give us a good idea of how a vpn performs but at the end
of the day it’s about upload and download speed uh in practice not just numbers on a speed test so
you know are you buffering when you’re streaming netflix in 4k are you buffering when you’re
uploading something are you having trouble uh with your connection in general while connected to the
vpn are certain networks being blocked because of the vpn so it all comes down to that but if you
want to get a bit of an idea of how pia performs i’ll just let you know that any drops between five
and twenty percent uh is considered to be very good and any drop between twenty and forty percent
is acceptable granted your base speed can handle that in the first place i would just recommend
using the wireguard protocol uh but i like that the openvpn protocol is very customizable here so
if you’re looking for more encryption go with 256 less encryption more speed go with 128 you’ve got
udp and tcp you can select ports you can enable port forwarding uh which is great not many vpns
do allow for full port forwarding and we’ll talk about that in just a minute when it comes to the
within the context of torrenting so overall all you wanna know about uh private internet access
is that it can be very quick and it is very quick especially if you’re using the wireguard protocol
you can expect you know drops between 10 and 20 to 25 in speed so uh yeah that would be it
now when it comes to streaming according to uh support pia is new to this and pia claims to
be able to unblock most streaming services including netflix regions like the us uk
germany japan france and italy but no other regions can be accessed unfortunately
though in my experience i saw no success in unblocking any of the netflix libraries at
the time of my attempts despite cycling through a few servers but sometimes i have found some
success in unblocking the us netflix library but given how unreliable the service can get
i would not recommend private internet access for unblocking streaming services and i was able to
unblock amazon prime video disney plus and hbo max so yeah and as for torrenting pia is just
excellent the speedy connection definitely helps with streaming but it especially supports
peer-to-peer activity if we go to the settings here i think um was it network there we go request
port forwarding now in terms of security pia defaults to aes 128 bit encryption uh but pi also
again as i told you guys it lets users manually select their own uh 256-bit cipher in the uh
settings this means you can optimize your connection to your liking generally speaking
the better the security the slower the connection so it’s up to you how you want to set up your
connection um so yeah it comes with two protocols again openvpn and wireguard the two best vpns and
you don’t really need anything else honestly once you have these two protocols available
and you also get a reliable kill switch which you can find uh was it right here in the privacy
settings you also get an ad blocker and of course you get a custom dns options a dedicated ip if
you would like a dedicated if you’d like to buy your own dedicated ip automation options here
split telling which allow to choose which applications are routed through the vpn and
which are not in multi-hop which is a double vpn feature that routes your connection through two
servers rather than one for extra security and here you have the sox 5 and shadow socks and
socks 5 will help bypass internet censorship so yeah you’ve got generally just plenty of options
here now pia run their own private dns servers and if you’re on pc you’ll be able to set any
custom dns server based on your own choice and if the debug logging feature is turned on right here
enable debug logging this feature is important if you find that you are experiencing problems this
will allow the application to collect connectivity and functionality logs
in the event you need to contact customer support this can be helpful for the support team they may
request you provide them with the client logs all of private internet accesses applications are open
source which means that the third-party developers can test the software for vulnerabilities and
regarding censorship-heavy countries pia is able to bypass the great firewall of china but it seems
like it’s a cat and mouse game where they have to keep adapting to the latest blocks imposed by the
great firewall so it doesn’t seem to be a very consistent experience according to some users
shadow songs is not as effective as proprietary obfuscation tools seen in other vpns like express
or nord but it will allow you to use popular applications and websites like facebook gmail
and whatsapp which are all banned in china by the way however the consistency is questionable and if
you’re looking for a vpn with strong obfuscation you may want to check out expressvpn instead which
i’ll link links to special deals and discounts also in the description down below by the way
if you’re interested in expressvpn now pia has the largest server network of over 32 000 servers it
is not disclosed how many servers they have but according to a bunch of reports they have roughly
over at least over 10 000 so yeah you can be safe that it’s just um there are lots of servers and
78.79 countries not 84 i’m not sure what they say why they say it’s 84 here i counted them myself
and it is uh 78 uh so yeah keep that in mind but it’s not that much of a it’s not it’s not that
big of a deal really 78 84 same thing um and yeah they’re spread across a hundred and one locations
or cities all of which support wireguard protocol the wireguard protocol pia is available on many
devices including windows mac linux android and ios chrome firefox and opera extensions they’re
all available as well as a fire stick and a router app the user interface if you noticed it is
kind of uh it’s it is good it’s good it’s not my favorite i don’t exactly like this kind of format
i prefer formats like expressvpn um i’ll show you guys this is the format that i like with
my vpns just super super simple you know but that’s just me really i use my vpns to simply
unblock streaming services so uh that’s why i use expressvpn all the time so checking the
pricing here obviously it is pretty affordable especially if you go for the three-year plan
you’re getting three years and three extra months so be sure to check the link in description for
uh this plan right here and in conclusion i think pia is an excellent service they’ve proven
the integrity of their no logs policy through two challenging real life situations even though they
don’t have any independent audit reports support their no logs policy and they’re willing to allow
an audit in uh hopefully 2022. it’s a speedy service probably the best vpn for torrenting
honestly and with a high degree of customization for advanced users but without complicating things
too much for the casuals packed with features and easy to use really i think pia is just a
great option for most people but if you’re in a sense ship-heavy country i’d recommend just
going with express do not compromise on your safety and security uh in order to save a few
bucks here and there so just go with express if you’re in a censorship heavy country so that’ll
be for this video hopefully you guys learned a thing or two again you’ll find links to special
deals and discounts in the description down below uh and uh that’ll be it for me thank you guys very
much for watching comment below if you have any questions i’ll be able to answer all of them like
and subscribe if you’d like to support the channel and stay up to date with everything vpns and cyber
security thank you guys very much for watching i’ll see you in the next one have a wonderful day