<story><title>VPN Report – Reviews of the top VPNs</title><url>https://vpnreport.org</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mobitar</author><text>PIA actually scores as one of the highest on the objective measures. The star count is just a subjective impression and experience with getting it set up. They connect over HTTP on startup instead of HTTPS (which is unacceptable for a privacy company). They then ping almost a hundred servers on startup (no other app does this, at least not to this extent).</text></item><item><author>abstractbeliefs</author><text>Regardless of how you feel about _why_ PIA sponsor the organisations they do, it is surprising to see someone claiming they &amp;quot;perhaps put [their money] to better use&amp;quot; given their record of supporting foss and digital&amp;#x2F;online rights [1].&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the characterization as being extremely focused on the tech illiterate I feel isn&amp;#x27;t really the case either, they have lots of docs about how to use OpenVPN [2].&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, while there&amp;#x27;s no online free trial, at DEFCON and other events they do liberally hand out free trial cards.&lt;p&gt;The above points, as well as reading the commentary, leads me to believe that the author hasn&amp;#x27;t spent much time at all using or understanding the various product offerings, and the written review and star-score seem to clash with the high feature based score listed above. I can&amp;#x27;t speak at all for the other providers, but I don&amp;#x27;t feel like PIA at least has been well researched.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;companies-we-sponsor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;companies-we-spo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;client-support&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;client-support&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As full disclosure, I&amp;#x27;m a unpaid volunteer for a non-profit PIA has contributed to.
I have used in the past, but do not currently use, PIA VPN.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rasengan</author><text>Hi mobitar.  Thanks for the highest score in regard to the objective measures.  Regarding the subjective impression and experience, I&amp;#x27;d like to let you know what&amp;#x27;s going on.  If you feel that this changes your impression, it would be great to update accordingly!&lt;p&gt;The HTTP connection upon startup is for the region data request which is signed and verified upon receipt.  It&amp;#x27;s tamper proof, but you can read it.  It&amp;#x27;s something that anyone with the client can read, and the client is free to download.&lt;p&gt;Arguably, it&amp;#x27;s more secure to entrust the communication from PIA to the client software itself than to blindly entrust it to HTTPS which has provably been compromised due to bad actors in the past.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re in #privateinternetaccess on irc.freenode.net to discuss anytime as well!&lt;p&gt;Thanks for everything mobitar and for taking the time to produce this report.</text></comment>
<story><title>VPN Report – Reviews of the top VPNs</title><url>https://vpnreport.org</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mobitar</author><text>PIA actually scores as one of the highest on the objective measures. The star count is just a subjective impression and experience with getting it set up. They connect over HTTP on startup instead of HTTPS (which is unacceptable for a privacy company). They then ping almost a hundred servers on startup (no other app does this, at least not to this extent).</text></item><item><author>abstractbeliefs</author><text>Regardless of how you feel about _why_ PIA sponsor the organisations they do, it is surprising to see someone claiming they &amp;quot;perhaps put [their money] to better use&amp;quot; given their record of supporting foss and digital&amp;#x2F;online rights [1].&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the characterization as being extremely focused on the tech illiterate I feel isn&amp;#x27;t really the case either, they have lots of docs about how to use OpenVPN [2].&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, while there&amp;#x27;s no online free trial, at DEFCON and other events they do liberally hand out free trial cards.&lt;p&gt;The above points, as well as reading the commentary, leads me to believe that the author hasn&amp;#x27;t spent much time at all using or understanding the various product offerings, and the written review and star-score seem to clash with the high feature based score listed above. I can&amp;#x27;t speak at all for the other providers, but I don&amp;#x27;t feel like PIA at least has been well researched.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;companies-we-sponsor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;companies-we-spo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;client-support&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;client-support&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As full disclosure, I&amp;#x27;m a unpaid volunteer for a non-profit PIA has contributed to.
I have used in the past, but do not currently use, PIA VPN.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jwfxpr</author><text>Considering your claim to be interested in producing a quality analysis of the various services and clients, and in other reviews you took pains to point out that connections were made to Google analytics servers, I found it pretty disappointing that you didn&amp;#x27;t explain what the servers that PIA were pinging actually &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Are they, as I suspect (as a PIA user), pinging their own servers worldwide, to find the fastest options available? Are they pinging third parties?&lt;p&gt;Your review basically says &amp;quot;pings are bad m&amp;#x27;kay&amp;quot; without demonstrating any understanding of what the client is &lt;i&gt;doing&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, your questioning of the use of port 80 makes me wonder about your own security knowledge. You really don&amp;#x27;t understand why a commercial VPN product designed to be used by portable devices in unexpected environments might commence a connection on port 80?&lt;p&gt;These &amp;#x27;objections&amp;#x27; you have make me sceptical of your attention to detail in general.</text></comment>