Private Internet Access
PIA isn’t a particularly exciting service, but it does the job and has some good-value subscriptions
SCORE
PRICE £8 per month or £32 per year, from privateinternetaccess.com
One of the best-known privacy-oriented VPN services, US-based Private Internet Access had, under previous ownership, the dubious privilege of being one of the few VPN providers whose policy of keeping no identifying logs was demonstrated by court orders.
It was subsequently bought by Kape Technologies, but its no-logging policy may soon be reproven in a court case surrounding the piracy of the movie Angel Has Fallen. Until that point, it’s a good idea to regard its no-logging policy as you would that of any other reputable VPN that hasn’t had the misfortune of having to prove it: likely true, but not certain.
A more troubling aspect of the takeover by Kape is that one company now owns a not-insignificant part of the VPN market, which in practice reduces meaningful consumer choice. Regardless, PIA provides a capable and cost-effective service. Its monthly subscription fee of just over £8 isn’t particularly amazing, but longer subscriptions, of £32 a year or £65 for three years, work out much more favourably: the latter is only £1.81 a month.
Connected via a UK endpoint, we obtained speeds of 225Mbits/sec – just above the group mean. We saw 176Mbits/sec from the Netherlands, which was a little below average, but nothing to complain about. PIA has consistently struggled a little when it comes to accessing US endpoints from the UK, so although it was less than half the group average speed, we were perfectly happy with 72Mbits/sec from New York.
At one point, Private Internet Access stopped providing support for streaming region-locked TV. That’s changed, and it now has dedicated streaming endpoints in several countries. This month, we were able to watch BBC iPlayer and stream US-exclusive Netflix content, although we had to reconnect to the endpoint a couple of times to refresh our IP address. Disney+ refused to play ball, however.
The rest of its features are as expected. You get endpoints in 77 countries, obfuscated connection options, split tunnelling and the usual kill switch. It supports the recent WireGuard protocol, as well as OpenVPN, IKEv2/IPSec and a SOCKS5 proxy.
Our conclusion? If you want a service with long, cheap subscription options that can do most things, then PIA is a solid choice, albeit one with middling performance.