Private Internet Access (Pre-Roll Landing Page)

[austinhasten]

This is great. I've used PIA for a long time and never had an issue. They have a fantastic reputation.

[SOCOM_HERO]

Just signed up for 2 years on accident. Thought the PP confirmation was a step away from the one I was on. Oh well. Got a 100mpbs speed on a UK connection for a test download. Not bad. I'll see how it goes for a few days and cancel if I find it not worth my time or money.

 

Not worth it afterall. Requested a refund after connectivity issues directly related to the VPN. Just not fast enough to connect or find different parts of the world to connect to. Speed itself is good, but I can't sit around waiting on a connection forever. Oh well.

Edited March 31, 2018 by SOCOM_HERO
Update to reflect refund after service drops

[Progressor]

Since I can't find a dedicated thread for the video(We Broke Up...) I'm posting here..

 

Ugh, wait, what? What was the point of this video and why make it? Excuse my ignorance but don't LMG have like a bunch of sponsors(you guys like two ad spots for each video)? Not only that but they had different sponsors through the years, some no longer sponsors anymore? Why is one of the bunch of sponsors not being a sponsor anymore such a big deal that you have to make a dramatic video about it? I just don't understand it. What is the point of this and why make such a big deal out of it, I mean it's just a sponsor, you have different sponsors all the time yet you don't make a video when one decides to not sponsor you anymore.. Did TunelBear broke a contract or something? I'm confused.

 

EDIT: If I had to sum the video with one picture > CLICK, poor Mudasir TunnelBear..

 

[kirashi]

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Are they actually american?  wtf, that was one of the reasons stated for dropping tunnel bear after they were purchased...

Yes, they're owned by London Trust Media, which is an American company. They also own freenode.net, the IRC network started back in 1995, which is a big deal being combined with a company that owns a VPN service, since there are a lot of ... questionable conversations? still had over IRC. ahem Not that I would know anything about that from my always-connected IRC client to freenode.net and other private torrent tracker servers. Anywho, they have always claimed they log nothing for PIA users, which is great, if believed to be true, as it means they have nothing to provide law enforcement agencies with. That being said, one cannot trust anything that isn't 100% open source, so realistically, one must assume that there is a hole somewhere in the matrix. Er. I mean, system.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-one-small-american-vpn-company-is-trying-to-stand-up-for-privacy/

https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn

1 hour ago, Blebekblebek said:

Just because they switched sponsorship doesn't mean the previous sponsor is bad.

It just meant the sponsorship is ended.

Correct, however, any company affiliated with M Security is automagically lumped into "nope.jpg" land for me, based on multiple prior experiences working with M Security and its' products over 10 years in the IT Industry, meaning I won't talk about it, recommend it, or even support it for my clients (even for a large sum of money) because it goes against my professional morals. But you are correct; just because someone switches sponsors does not mean the prior sponsor is bad - they're bad because of who they're new owner is.

[vanished]

1 minute ago, kirashi said:

Yes, they're owned by London Trust Media, which is an American company. They also own freenode.net, the IRC network started back in 1995, which is a big deal being combined with a company that owns a VPN service, since there are a lot of ... questionable conversations? still had over IRC. ahem Not that I would know anything about that from my always-connected IRC client to freenode.net and other private torrent tracker servers. Anywho, they have always claimed they log nothing for PIA users, which is great, if believed to be true, as it means they have nothing to provide law enforcement agencies with. That being said, one cannot trust anything that isn't 100% open source, so realistically, one must assume that there is a hole somewhere in the matrix. Er. I mean, system.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-one-small-american-vpn-company-is-trying-to-stand-up-for-privacy/

https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn

I still can't believe they don't make it obvious what currency their prices are in on the website.  That might be excusable for an exclusively american company that everyone knows about, but when you offer services online and around the world, this is basic stuff.

[kirashi]

3 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I still can't believe they don't make it obvious what currency their prices are in on the website.  That might be excusable for an exclusively american company that everyone knows about, but when you offer services online and around the world, this is basic stuff.

Yeah, I just checked and they don't even have a help article in their support KB explaining this. To be fair, I just automagically assume any site not denoting a currency that's based in the USA to be in USD, but then again, I'm used to buying things like WebHosting or servers in USD, even if the company is based in Canada.

[Guest]

Dont really have a problem with McAfee, been using it for a while before I switched to Mac.

[CPotter]

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

OK I have an actual question... what are the US vs Canadian pricings?  Is that $2.50 they show in CAD or USD?  This really should be obvious but they don't even say...

I'm talking to them to get this changed, sorry for the confusion.

[kirashi]

1 minute ago, CPotter said:

I'm talking to them to get this changed, sorry for the confusion.

YOU ROCK. If you can get PIA to even show the currency they charge in, that'd be a first step in the right direction for sure.

[vanished]

18 minutes ago, kirashi said:

YOU ROCK. If you can get PIA to even show the currency they charge in, that'd be a first step in the right direction for sure.

I have reason to believe it's in USD and it just shows that to everyone no matter what country they are in

 

Clarifying this is literally the least they could do, but ideally (and it's not really asking for the moon lol) they would just price and charge in the currency for your country, where ever you are.  Considering they wide variety of payment methods they accept, this really isn't unreasonable in any way.

[CPotter]

17 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I have reason to believe it's in USD and it just shows that to everyone no matter what country they are in

 

Clarifying this is literally the least they could do, but ideally (and it's not really asking for the moon lol) they would just price and charge in the currency for your country, where ever you are.  Considering they wide variety of payment methods they accept, this really isn't unreasonable in any way.

You are correct. Not sure if they'll be able to do the latter since it's not quite as easy to do as you're saying, but I've made them aware.

[vanished]

Just now, CPotter said:

You are correct. Not sure if they'll be able to do the latter since it's not quite as easy to do as you're saying, but I've made them aware.

Yeah I don't expect that to be setup overnight, but it really should be run like that

 

Thanks for clarifying

[JoostinOnline]

I've been using PIA for a couple years and it's bomb, but I want to give everyone a heads up on two issues:

1. Support is absolutely terrible. Their support is a crappy forum. I've almost never had issues, but when I have they've been difficult to resolve.
2. You can't receive MMS messages when PIA is enabled on your phone. I don't know if this applies to iPhone, but it's been a long time issue with Android.

The benefits far outweigh these problems, but I think it's something everyone should be aware of.

[Cyberspirit]

I just bought a Nord VPN subscription. Should I switch to PIA? I've heard good things about both so I'm unsure.

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

I've been using PIA for a couple years and it's bomb, but I want to give everyone a heads up on two issues:

1. Support is absolutely terrible. Their support is a crappy forum. I've almost never had issues, but when I have they've been difficult to resolve.
2. You can't receive MMS messages when PIA is enabled on your phone. I don't know if this applies to iPhone, but it's been a long time issue with Android.

The benefits far outweigh these problems, but I think it's something everyone should be aware of.

With regard to #2, I don't care in the slightest, but that is very interesting... make me wonder how on earth those things are connected.

[ItsMitch]

US company and does private internet access? That can't be true right? Last time I checked the US is home to the FBI, NSA and the CIA. Avoiding, Sorry Colt. 

[Groundedbeef]

I wonder if they work with netflix, tunnelbear didnt

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, CCWong said:

Having worked on a couple hundred new computers with McAfee installed by the mfg, I'd have to say it is pretty awful. A lot of the time any issues people had with their computers directly after purchase were resolved by uninstalling McAfee. It was a resource hog and its uninstaller would crash 25% of the time.

I guess user experience varies but the time that I had it up till around 2012 it worked great for the enterprise edition

[JoostinOnline]

8 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

With regard to #2, I don't care in the slightest, but that is very interesting... make me wonder how on earth those things are connected.

Well MMS used network data to download whatever is sent, so presumably it would go through PIA. After you disconnect the messages come through though.

[JoostinOnline]

3 minutes ago, Groundedbeef said:

I wonder if they work with netflix, tunnelbear didnt

Most of the time, no. Sometimes you'll get lucky for whatever reason. I've noticed I'm rarely blocked on the USA Midwest server.

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

With regard to #2, I don't care in the slightest, but that is very interesting... make me wonder how on earth those things are connected.

MMS configuration if I remember is a seperate from internet configuration, however iOS devices will use this through iMessage anyway. 

[vanished]

42 minutes ago, CPotter said:

You are correct. Not sure if they'll be able to do the latter since it's not quite as easy to do as you're saying, but I've made them aware.

Another thing that occurred to me... can you share accounts?  They allow up to 5 devices simultaneously which is probably more than enough for one person.  I read through the ToS and it's not entirely clear imo.

 

Quote

"Privateinternetaccess grants you a limited, non-exclusive license to use an account to which you have access for your personal, private, commercial, non-transferable, limited uses[...]"

Makes it sound like sharing is not allowed, but...

Quote

You must also agree that you nor any other user that you have provided access to will not engage in any of the following activities:

makes it sound like it is allowed.

[JoostinOnline]

17 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Another thing that occurred to me... can you share accounts?  They allow up to 5 devices simultaneously which is probably more than enough for one person.  I read through the ToS and it's not entirely clear imo.

Yes. It's the same principle as a Netflix account. Anyone can use it, you're just limited by the number of simultaneous users. I split it with my mother so I only pay $20 a year.

[NMS]

I'll be honest, every time I saw an ad for TunnelBear on LMG I got a boner.

I expect nothing less from PIA now!

 

F

[2Pi]

2 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

I've been using PIA for a couple years and it's bomb, but I want to give everyone a heads up on two issues:

1. Support is absolutely terrible. Their support is a crappy forum. I've almost never had issues, but when I have they've been difficult to resolve.
2.  

Quick note, I have heard this from a lot of people but I'm not sure it's a consistent issue. I've had to contact their support team a few times in the past 2 years that I've had PIA and I've usually gotten a very thorough, albeit slow response. I'd personally rather have something slow and helpful verses something copy and pasted from their helpdesk quick answers, but I can see why some people still consider that bad support.