Private Internet Acess VPN Review For Android

Private Internet Access ( PIA ) is VPN provider located in the US which is part of the Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

On November 19, 2019 PIA was aquired by Kape ( formerly known as CrossRider ) in for $95.5 million, a company which also owns CyberGhost, ZenMate and ExpressVPN.

Kape Technologies previously known as Crossrider, which was founded in 2011 was an Israeli firm.

The company developed advertising apps primarily before being rebranded as Kape Technologies and entering the VPN industry. They were flagged as spreading Malware and AdWare by Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Symanctec.

Kape will according to sources soon be taking on the new name of “Private Internet” as the parent company of Private Internet Access.

PIA says they now offer NextGen servers which 'utilize better hardware components', have '10Gbps network cards instead of 1Gbps', uses RAM disks to ensure 'all sensitive information is lost as soon as the server loses power'.

Features:

The network has 3000 servers distributed across in 78 or 84 countries. Depends where on their site your read.
All servers uses RAM-only ( No SSD or HDD )
No logs policy ( They do not keep logs, data, timestamps, or any other kind of information ) However, look further down this page !
10 Gbps server ports.
Private DNS on each server.
Support up to 10 devices.
Global network: - With focus on the US.
Unlimited bandwidth.
Many locations are Virtual: - meaning the servers are located in the US.
Examples: are Brazil, Argentina and others.
P2P on selected servers: - Not allowed on US servers.
Unblocks some sites, but recently more and more sites are blocking PIA.
30-day money back guarantee.
Protocols: WireGuard and OpenVPN ( UDP/TCP )
Encryption: WireGuard uses: ChaCha20 for symmetric encryption and OpenVPN: AES-128-GCM or AES-256-GCM.
VPN Killswitch.
PIA Mace: Will block ads,trackers, and malware while you are connected to the VPN.
Obfuscation via a Proxy server: Netherlands only and I never got it working ( it just keeps trying to connect )
Port connections: Auto,8080,853,123,53 or your choice 1024 - 65535.
Dedicated IP: Might prevent you from using a blacklisted IP.
Open-sourced their software.
Support: Very good and informative answers, but they do not reply a second time if the problem persists.
For Android only - 7 days free trial - the same as others...

Payment methods to choose from:

Paypal,
Credit Card
Google Checkout
Amazon Payments
Bitcoin
Liberty Reserve
Cashu
OKPAY

How to install:

I assume you allow installations from other sources than Google Play store:

Download the .apk-file here.

Note: This is important, PIA might log your data !!!

Settings:

Now the second most important setting is selecting the protocol:

This is the default setting and the fastest one.

You probably didn't know this, since it is rarely spoken off, but WireGuard has some inherent problems, that can undermine a users privacy if not adequately addressed.

NOTE: PIA have has not responded to our questions about how they address the WireGuard problem, so we can not recommend them...

Network settings:

You should activate Request Port Forwarding if you are going to use P2P sharing and Agressive IPv6 Blocking is highly recommended to activate !

I do not recommend sending data to PIA, but it is your choice. If you are an affiliate and are officially testing their apps, then it is a good idea to activate this. If you are not, leave this off.

Test your broadband speed:

speedtest.net

The test was performed on a max 15Mbps network although it sometimes reached 18Mbps, using a LG smartphone.

Germany - ( Frankfurt ) 13.45Mbps download, no upload is shown for Android. Tested with Firefox.
Australia - ( Melbourne ) 11.43Mbps download, no upload is shown for Android. Tested with Chrome.

There is a notable speed increase on their servers, but I am no longer sure they apply their no-log policy.

Unlike their VPN app for Linux, the Android app has not disconnected by itself for over 24h, whilst the one for Linux usually disconnects every 3-4 hour.