

In November 2019, Kape Technologies acquired Private Internet Access from London Trust Media Inc. However, a verified no-logs policy can offset most issues posed by an invasive government.Īfter 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. We typically discourage using a VPN based in a Five Eyes country like the US. The Patriot Act also gives US authorities sweeping powers to collect and retain data, especially through the use of National Security Letters.

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

While there is no independent audit to verify PIA’s privacy and security offering, these court cases are real-world tests supporting the company’s logging claims. A bold move we want to see more VPN service providers follow. PIA subsequently removed all of its Russian VPN servers in protest to this incident. The Russian government also seized PIA servers in 2016 but did not find any retained connection or activity data. The FBI subpoenaed PIA in a 2016 court case, but despite receiving an official data request, PIA simply had no information to hand over. Server SeizuresĪs we mentioned above, the VPN’s no-logs policy has been externally verified on several occasions. PIA also releases regular transparency reports that detail the number of requests for data it has received from government agencies. This allows us to display the unbiased speed results as they’re recorded.Įxcerpt from the no-logs PIA Privacy Policy. We developed this tool in-house, using our infrastructure and resources. The graph below compares PIA’s average speed loss to other popular VPNs using our custom VPN speed test tool. In our Hotspot Shield review we highlight’s the VPN’s exceptional global speeds. There are still faster VPN services than PIA, mainly over long-distances. There can be big swings from week-to-week, which holds it back – but only slightly. The main issue which arose in our testing with PIA is that it lacks consistency of some of its fastest rivals.
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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 only saw a 35% drop when connected to Australia. However, even over the longest possible distances PIA is still incredibly fast. Here are our latest long-distance speed test results:Īs expected, the servers located furthest from our office in the UK recorded the largest speed losses. How Does Private Internet Access Compare to Other Top VPNs?īelow is a table comparing Private Internet Access to ExpressVPN and Mullvad, two alternative private VPN services. In summary, Private Internet Access is a fast, private and secure VPN, cheaper than ExpressVPN and NordVPN.
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As a result, unblocking content platforms on devices like Apple TV and PS5 is more challenging using Private Internet Access. The downside is PIA only works with 2 Netflix regions, which is much less than our top Netflix VPN choices. It consistently works with many geo-blocked video services such as US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and Disney+. The VPN is also a great choice for streaming. In fact, it’s one of the most secure and private VPN services on the market. PIA VPN uses industry-leading encryption protocols including OpenVPN, the unbreakable AES-256 cipher, and Perfect Forward Secrecy. Moreover, the VPN is unique by having had its no-logs policy verified through server seizures and multiple real-life cases. It also offers well-designed apps, a VPN kill switch on all platforms, and support for torrenting on all 17,087 servers. The service recorded one of the fastest local connection speeds we’ve seen. It’s clear PIA is a very good VPN service for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Linux – in fact, we rate it the best native VPN for Linux. We’ve put years of testing into this Private Internet Access (PIA) review.
