Thoughts on Private Internet Access?

[Vishera]

56 minutes ago, Brevan04 said:

is there anyone in the VPN industry with a quality service offering and chrome/brave extension support.

Windscribe got your back

It;s one of the best VPNs out there and one of the few that properly protect your privacy.

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/windscribe-free-proxy-and/hnmpcagpplmpfojmgmnngilcnanddlhb

[davidcardenas]

7 hours ago, Vishera said:

Windscribe got your back

It;s one of the best VPNs out there and one of the few that properly protect your privacy.

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/windscribe-free-proxy-and/hnmpcagpplmpfojmgmnngilcnanddlhb

I use Windscribe in tandem with other VPN services, but Windscribe isn’t the best.

Windscribe recently suffered a security breach and they failed to properly encrypt the server. 
(Source: https://restoreprivacy.com/windscribe-vpn-security-breach-servers-seized/)

 

Despite their incompetence, their response to the mistake was fair. I still use Windscribe on a few of my devices, but only because it’s cheap. 

[OmniPhillips]

I just had one of the most amazing customer service interactions with PIA a few months ago.

 I had an existing multi-year subscription for the VPN service and they had a promo for a new multi-year subscription of the VPN plus anti virus software. I purchased using the promo and it created an entirely new account because of the anti virus. It would have cost exponentially more for me to renew my plan vs using the promo but I did not need the anti virus and did not want a new account. Once I reached out and explained that I instead just wanted the extra subscription time allocated to my existing account they happily obliged. They confirmed with me that I would not have access to the anti virus and double checked I had given them the correct account and they just did it with no hassle.

[Kroon]

Pleas just stay away from endorsing any VPN!

 

It's a privacy product and there is no way you can guarantee with 100% certainty that the company in question not keeping logs, etc etc.  If it was a HDMI cable, shoes, a clock, ..... Well demand new product or refund.  With a VPN it can actually mean prison or even worse for the ones that trust your recommendation. 

[Sorachan]

On 2/12/2022 at 2:11 AM, DarkSplice said:

The Best VPN Service, I have used NordVPN, expressVPN PIA is better than Nord and express, PIA has the best servers I use it a lot and I enjoy it.

Even though the VPN industry is shady, ExpressVPN is the shadiest big one. It shares the office space with a company called Chengbao LTD in Hong Kong, this clearly is a mainland Chinese name since the name is in pinyin, not used by Hongkongers. Let's say they don't give anything to Chinese government, the business is definitely owned by someone from mainland China.

 

This brought many more questions: At such a big size and accessible in China, why the owner is not yet arrested? China is cracking VPN industry heavily, it is definitely illegal to own a unlicensed VPN business, how can ExpressVPN grow so big? Most VPN providers in China use obfs features to hide from detection, ExpressVPN is the only one that uses relatively easily identifiable protocol but somehow never been fully blocked in China, why?

 

I think people should never trust VPN provider, build one yourself, use Oracle free tier or something similar you don't even have to spend money on a VPS.

[Sorachan]

Lagged & repeated post

[CPotter]

This is great discussion, thank you everyone. Like I said, a lot of us around here still use PIA, but the VPN industry as a whole seems to be in a weird place these days, so we're still going to hold off on actively promoting anyone in the space for now.