PIA review

Today we will talk about Private Internet Access (PIA), the company is registered in the United States, which as we know is part of the 5 eyes alliance, not the best country to register a company, but this VPN provider has a zero-logging policy, so if the government and present a warrant for information about users, PIA can not help.

The service has established itself as a reliable VPN provider, trusted by 15 million users, providing anonymous Internet surfing and privacy of your digital identity through advanced security features such as MACE ad and malware blocker, split tunneling, killswitch, DNS leak protection, IPv6 leak protection, as well as strong modern AES 256 encryption and Wireguard, OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec, PPTP, and SOCKS5-proxy protocols. You can connect up to 10 devices at the same time, the applications are well optimized, have some differences for different operating systems, but in general work stably. Let's check how PIA copes with opening access to different streaming platforms and test the speed.

General highlights

PIA VPN is registered in the USA, as we know, not the most favorable country for the choice of a VPN, as the USA is considered one of the founders of the 5 eyes alliance and besides sharing intelligence the USA is also known for mass surveillance of its citizens and not only, covering it all as the fight against terrorism only, the country allows VPN and values freedom of speech and free access to the Internet, however, the reputation of the Five Eyes Alliance and Edward Snowden's articles about mass surveillance is not the best choice for a VPN. But even if the government or other agencies demand data about their users legally, the PIA VPN can not help in any way, because it has a zero-logging policy, which means your IP address connection time, history of your website visits and other information is not stored on the PIA VPN servers and is not tracked.

Also worth trusting PIA for the reason that once every 6 months they post a transparency report, which shows the court order, subpoena, and warrants, eventually received 16 applications, but the logs were not provided because there is simply nothing on the servers due to the zero log policy, so PIA VPN could not help anything, which is good news for us.

PIA VPN has at its disposal a massive server network represented in 78 countries, the number VPN servers location - 105. Why is it so important for a VPN provider to have a large server network at its disposal? Firstly, the closer the server is located to you, the faster will be your speed, and secondly, the load on the servers is lower, which eventually also affects the speed, the PIA VPN focus on U.S. servers, thus providing high speed, both within the country and abroad. Another advantage is the unlimited bandwidth of the servers.

List of countries:

Canada, Vietnam, Venezuela, Ukraine, Turkey, Slovakia, Singapore, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Moldova, Qatar, Poland, Philippines, Panama, New Zealand, Norway, Netherlands, Nigeria, Mexico, Malta, Macao, Mongolia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Indonesia, Morocco, Latvia, Luxemburg, Lithuania, Liechtenstein, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Cambodia, Japan, Italy, India, Hong Kong, Israel, Ireland, Hungary, Croatia, Greece, Greenland, Georgia, Great Britain, France, Finland, Spain, Egypt, Estonia, Algeria, Denmark, Germany, Czech Republic, Cyprus, China, Switzerland, Bahamas, Brazil, Bulgaria, Belgium, Bangladesh, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria, Argentina, Armenia, Albania, UAE, Andorra, South Africa.

How good is the PIA VPN for streaming and torrenting?

As you know, recently famous streaming sites such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, BBC iPlayer have learned to recognize VPN traffic and block it. PIA VPN was able to bypass the blocking of Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Disney+, which restrict video content for geographical reasons, we have no problem opening the site and the content was downloaded without buffering and in HD, it concerns the servers from the U.S., Britain, Canada. Unfortunately, the server in Germany disappointed me, I could not access Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu opened without problems. If you are considering working with PIA VPN for streaming, not the best choice. The service manages to bypass the great Chinese firewall, but the results are mixed, not always a stable connection, and sometimes even blocked access.

PIA VPN has at its disposal optimized for torrent, P2P servers with unlimited bandwidth and support BitTorrent, killswitch function while downloading torrents prevents the risk of data leakage if suddenly you have problems with VPN connection, the speed when downloading torrents is sometimes excellent, sometimes too low, indicating instability.

Support is available 24/7, but what disappointed me, you can contact the support team only through the mail and usually, the waiting time takes about 15 hours, yes, you do offer a constructive solution to your problem and answer the question, but if the situation requires an immediate solution, this method is not suitable. The site has guides for installing and configuring applications, as well as a blog where you can find useful articles and a section with frequently asked questions, and one more thing I liked, before you send a letter via email you have to fill out a lot of items, in the end, it takes a very long time. To sum it up, PIA VPN tech support doesn't reach the premium service because there is no live chat, but there is a lot of useful information on the website so you can figure it all out on your own, including topics, articles, news, knowledge base, blog and FAQ section.

Pros

✓ Zero logging policy
✓ Multifunctional
✓ 10 simultaneous connections
✓ Works with a variety of streaming platforms
✓ Well-optimized applications
✓ Reliable security features

Cons

✘ No live chat
✘ Unstable speeds
✘ USA, where PIA is registered, is a member of the Five Eyes Alliance