There are three options when it comes to a Private Internet Access subscription. That means you’ll have to take the company’s word for it, although there’s been no suggestion of any foul play. VPN Trust Initiative, a global alliance aimed at ‘promoting privacy and security through VPNs’ It’s also not one of the 14 members of the However, aside from the no-logs policy, there’s no evidence PIA’s other security measures have ever undergone an independent audit. The document goes on to say that activity data is never recorded, logged or stored. Private Internet Access’ Privacy Policy states that of the limited personal data it collects, none is ever associated with user activity in the app. This policy has apparently been proven in court twice, with the most recent case concluding in 2018. In the unlikely event the US government requests information from PIA, it would only be able to provide basic data that couldn’t be used to identify you. This means that your IP address, connection history and browsing data are all encrypted and then deleted at the end of each session. However, the company operates a strict no-logs policy. The US is one of the founding members, meaning PIA could theoretically be asked to hand over user data. That may set alarm bells ringing if you’re familiar with the 14-eyes, a collective agreement between 14 countries to freely share security information with one another. Private Internet Access is based in the United States. In New York (local time 7am), speeds were stable at around 26Mbps, with full access to the US Netflix library. It dropped downloads slightly to 28Mbps, but worked well with both Netflix and Disney Plus. The only dedicated streaming server on the app is based in London. I recorded all the following shortly after 12pm UK time on a weekday, using 30Mbps download/6Mbps upload) meant I couldn’t fully put PIA through its paces, but speed testing gives a useful indicator of the sort of drop-off you can expect from whatever speeds you normally get. It’s impossible because my own Wi-Fi connection (approx. Until this information is updated, it’s impossible directly compare the figures. VPNPro’s comparative analysis suggests that PIA is much slower than the leading VPN providers, but that’s still based on the older OpenVPN protocol. PIA is one of a growing number of VPN services to support WireGuard, a new lightweight protocol which delivers significantly faster speeds than OpenVPN and others. The user experience with Private Internet Access for Mac isn’t particularly intuitive, but what really matters is the speeds it can offer. Small arrows indicate where there are multiple locations within a country, and there’s also an option to save favourite servers – these are then displayed under the ‘Quick Connect’ section. The latter typically increases with physical distance from your actual location, but gives a good indicator of the speeds you can expect. PIA allows you to sort locations both alphabetically and according to their latency. However, that full list of servers is undeniably impressive. I got used to this quirk over time, but there’s a learning curve here that simply doesn’t exist with many VPN services. This is something I’d recommend doing, as the default layout puts data usage and advanced quick settings above where you choose a server location. There are nine separate sections on the app home screen, with the option to ‘pin’ each to the top of the display. I couldn’t find a way to display both at the same time, which felt unintuitive. It turns out you have to select the location in the ‘VPN server’ section, then click the arrow at the bottom of the window and then finally the big yellow button to turn it on. The main screen is separated into a range of different sub-headings, but layout doesn’t make it clear how to connect to servers not available under the ‘Quick Connect’ heading. The layout of the app also makes for a confusing user experience.
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