Won a free 30 day VPN key from a Voat, sponsored give away provided by "Private Internet Access." Here is my review I agreed to give at the end of the trial. Please read. it's not good, unfortunately.

Won a free 30 day VPN key from a Voat, sponsored give away provided by "Private Internet Access." Here is my review I agreed to give at the end of the trial. Please read. it's not good, unfortunately. (whatever)

submitted 5.5 years ago by DrSelfAppointed

I won a free 30 day VPN key from a Voat, sponsored give away provided by “Private Internet Access.” Here is my review I agreed to give at the end of the trial. Please read. it’s not good, unfortunately.

If you are not aware, about one month ago, a company, Private Internet Access, was willing to do a sponsorship give away here on Voat. https://voat.co/v/Voat/3235210 I was lucky enough to be on at the time, and got my submission in on time to win. The stipulation was that, whoever won would give a review at the end of their trial period.

Let’s make something clear, I did not want to give a bad review to this VPN. They are (were?) an entity willing to take the risk of paying for advertisement on Voat. So it sucks it isn’t something I can endorse. I will ~~try~~ fail at being brief.

WHEN it works, it works well. “When” obviously being the important word to take away from it’s capitalization.

I thought saying that it “only worked %50 of the time” was a slight over exaggeration for the first two weeks of use. Nearly 30 days later, I am convinced it is an extreme under exaggeration.

Lets start with the good:

The API (what the user sees/uses too interact with the program) is simple, easy to use, and strait forward. I like that.

When it worked, it worked well, transmitting data at a very nice speed. I would, for most browsing, forget it was on. To include torrenting*. Those connections would also last hours, the entire time it was connected, without flaw. LOVED THAT.

They have a lot of servers all over the world, with at least 6 that were close enough, to be under 100ms.

When a connection failed, the application does not let data through, which is good if you don’t want a failure to expose you.

That’s it for good.

The Bad:

THE SHIT DOESN’T WORK FOR MORE THAN HALF THE TIME, AND EVEN ONCE CRASHED IN WAY THAT POSSIBLY EXPOSED ME.

Lets break down the normal experience. I try to connect to a server; EVERY time it would say I was connected, but only half the time it would give me an IP. Of that half success rate that would give an IP, only half of THAT time would it pass data. Why the fuck should anyone pay for a service only working %25 time they try to use it? This wasn't just a single server issue, it was a problem trying to connect to multiple servers in search of a working connection.

*Torrenting... This fucking VPN would slow down the moment a torrent port was used, even for Bitchute! Fuck me if I tried an actual torrent. this would be after using it normally for a decent time. To be fair, once it decided to accept torrent connections, it would work fine, but go ahead and roll that dice, chances are, your connection was fucked and you get to start all over.

The one, and only one time it crashed, it was while I had torrents running, and the connections defaulted to my actual IP. My ISP already warned me once when I didn’t use a VPN, and that was for all of 3 torrents. I don’t torrent, and really did it again to stress test this VPN. Now I get to wait around to see if I get fucked because of it.

DO NOT PAY FOR “Private Internet Access” (PIA) VPN. It is garbage.

I plan to repost this again tomorrow (Friday) at a better time, as well as Saturday. Verbatim (nearly.) I don’t care about the up/down voats, I care that Goats are informed about this shit.

I tried contacting @Puttitout via PM before this business week, attempting to get a rep to fix this shit, and again yesterday; Nope ( and I get his shit if flooded but it was a reply to his PM, I would think it would stick out.) I also submitted a help ticket with PIA to get a hold of me via PM (through Putt.) Nope. I really didn’t want to give a Voat sponsor a bad review, but if Putt wont do a quality check on a sponsor that he himself shilled, than why the fuck should I, or any Goat trust any other sponsor?

Again, I wanted for this too be good so I could encourage the sponsor to stick around with a good review, but I wont lie for that hope alone.

EDIT: I said the "%75 normal experience", rereading, that doesn't completely make sense. I guess I meant that %75 or the %100 experience was bad, which is better explained after. Removed the %75 part.

98 comments

SearchVoatBot 5.5 years ago

This submission was linked from this v/SelfHelpForABetterMe submission by @forget-me-not.

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RustyFender1 5.5 years ago

I used to use them then became aware of 14 eyes. Being located in America they are part of the five eyes. However I always had good service from them.

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ConservativeDev 5.5 years ago

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

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Armpit_and_Ass 5.5 years ago

I've been running PIA since early 2016, and while your problems with it aren't invented, There are ways to fix almost every single one of them.

but only half the time it would give me an IP.

Some servers work better than others. Just because a node is at the top of the list with the shortest ping time doesn't mean it's the best one to use. You're not the only one using the service; if it's the fastest connection for you, it's also the fastest connection for hundreds or even thousands of others. There are times when you may want to settle for a ping time in the high 80s or even 90s over the 60s or 70s, just because that node will run more smoothly than a busier one.

From the problem you describe

Of that half success rate that would give an IP, only half of THAT time would it pass data.

Sounds like you are (or were) running with the default setting of using UDP instead of TCP, and that your ISP blocks or throttles UDP traffic because it's indicative of nefarious activity. (Looking at you, Comcast.) This would seem to be confirmed by your statement

This fucking VPN would slow down the moment a torrent port was used,

It's not about the port, necessarily, it's about what's going in and out of that port. You can change the used port in your torrent program. The default torrent ports in many torrent programs (6881-6889) are monitored, blocked, or throttled by many ISPs. (Looking at you, Comcast.) I always go for something way up in the list - 46573 or 51835 or something, since most of the Chinese and Pooinloo bots that roam the internet won't bother scanning that high.

Of course, all this assumes that you have opened your selected port in your firewall.

I will say that torrenting is the main reason I use a VPN, and PIA performs well enough for me that I've been using them for over three years now, and while it's not as fast as my bareback connection, it's fast enough for my tastes.

The one, and only one time it crashed, it was while I had torrents running, and the connections defaulted to my actual IP.

This, again, is something you need to handle on your end. In QBitTorrent, for example, you go into the settings and configure the client to run on the network device that PIA created when it was installed. That way, when the connection is dropped or lost or resets for any reason, torrents stop running (since it's configured network adaptor is unavailable) until you restart the program. PIA even has a built-in "kill switch" that shuts down all network activity if and when the VPN connection is lost. Why would you not use that if you're using your connection for less-than-scrupulous activities?

AFAIK, PIA shitcanned their user forums like six months or a year ago, but you can always put in a support ticket and get help. They're friendly enough. Some documentation still exists or has been archived if you take the time to search for it.

TL;DR: lrn2internet

Brush up on basic networking.

Explore the settings available in your VPN client and in any programs you may be using with it.

Stop being such a faggot

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Adminstrater 5.5 years ago

Thanks for putting in this much work. You are the MVP for sure.

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Crensch 5.5 years ago

PIA worked for me for quite a while. Used it all the time.

OP must have a very particular setup that doesn't mesh well with it.

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Chap 5.5 years ago

I use ProXPN. I have it on my Windows 10 Pro custom made pc and my iPhone and iPad. I just don’t use it anymore.

I’m an adult, and don’t hide what I do and say online.

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matthew-- 5.5 years ago

It's not about being an adult. It's about where you live. Call it what you will, but when you get taken away to the Gulag for having a copy of Anarchist Cookbook (from 10 years ago) or having a copy of Tarrant's shooting... you get the idea.

And I'm not fucking around. In the UK at least, simply having material that may be "useful" to terrorists is enough to get you 10 years in prison. The law is so loosely worded and they have no qualms about abusing the justice system to lock you up for wrong-think.

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SharpSliceOfMango 5.5 years ago

It works perfectly for years now. I use it on a Banana PI router to put my whole outgoing traffic through PIA VPN. I use the Netherlands and Polish VPN exit servers, they work good.

They have OpenVPN config files on their website. I use the config files with:

openvpn --daemon --mute-replay-warnings --config Netherlands.ovpn

I changed the config a little bit, deactivated compression etc

client
dev tun
proto udp
remote nl.privateinternetaccess.com 1198
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
cipher aes-128-cbc
auth sha1
tls-client
remote-cert-tls server
auth-nocache
auth-retry interact
auth-user-pass /home/openvpn/pialogin.conf
pull-filter ignore "auth-token"
verb 1
reneg-sec 0

<crl-verify>
... 
</crl-verify>

<ca>
...
</ca>

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LordOfTheRope 5.5 years ago

I've gotten a month trial too and I haven't had any hiccups. I've only ever used it on mobile, though.

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observation1 5.5 years ago

Anyone else notice the shill responses?