First off, full disclosure – I liked this service so much that I signed up to be an affiliate. Meaning that clicking on the banner above and at the end of this article and purchasing Private Internet Access will earn me a commission. It will also support this site and help me to help you more.
A few years ago, a colleague recommended that I start using a VPN since I’m a mobile warrior and love spending a lot of time at Starbucks. He recommended Private Internet Access for many reasons which I will outline shortly.
Lets begin though with why everyone should have one. If you recall my nightmarish experience many years ago where I was vacationing in Lake Placid and was using public hotel wifi, you will recall that I had my login credentials stolen by someone who was listening in. What was happening was that someone was listening in to all of my internet traffic through a “man in the middle attack” so all of my passwords, login, sites were going through him and continuing on to the sites I was logging in to.
From the image, if you connect directly to the internet, there is nothing protecting you and your information is open to the world. But through a VPN, your data is tunnelled and encrypted through a private network of servers before going on to the internet. You can also stay anonymous because you are going through a third party and their IP address is exposed while yours isn’t. The best part about PIA is that they never keep logs of where you have surfed so your privacy stays intact.
So how does it work? Well after you sign up and install their client program onto your computer you will see their icon in your taskbar. By default its red.
PIA logged out icon
if you right click on the icon you will see your choice of servers. In essence, you can pretend to be anywhere in the world:
Choose From Any Server In The World
One moment you could be in Toronto and another, you could be in Seattle. Thats the beauty of anonymity. I haven’t noticed any performance degradation from the various servers I’ve chosen in my past experiences but I typically go local to maximize performance. Typically the connection is stable though I’ve found myself getting kicked off when my home wifi goes down but that is the fault of my internet connection. So the service stability is only as good as your net connection which can’t be faulted by PIA.
I’ve used the service at Starbucks and Tim Hortons and haven’t found any issues. Typically, these places will kick you off their wifi after 1.5 to 2 hours. Which means you will have to relogin again.
Once you choose your server and are logged in, your icon turns green.
Logged in icon for PIA
You can always verify that you are anonymous online by going to their website. The top of their website will tell you what IP address you’re accessing the internet from.
Unprotected
Private Internet Access Not Safe Browsing
Versus
Private Internet Access Safe Browsing
One problem I experienced was for a couple of months, I couldn’t connect to some web services while I was connected to PIA. I thought it was the problem with the web service so I kept trying to debug and figure out what the problem. Eventually, I tried updating PIA and it fixed everything. It would have been nice to have had an update notification so that I didn’t have to manually go to the site and update my
Netflix blocks Private Internet Access
self.
Another downside is that Netflix detects VPN’s including this service and forces me to turn off the service before I can continue and watch my movie.
Overall here are my thoughts:
Pros:
- Speed and easy to use
- Anonymity
- Choice of servers
- Strong encryption
- Stable connections
- Cheap, cheap and cheap!
Cons:
- Netflix detects and forces you to turn it off
- No update notifications
Click on the banner below to find out more and until next time, stay safe online.
