Private Internet Access

Private Internet Access is a personal VPN service that manages to remain lightweight while hiding your online activity from eavesdroppers. The service's VPN technology passes all your online activity through an encrypted tunnel from your computer to the destination website so that your data remains safe at all times. If you are on an open wireless network, using a VPN service such as Private Internet Access will keep you safe from malicious individuals after your data.

There are many VPN services on the market, some of which we've reviewed, such as Symantec's Norton Hotspot Privacy which received our Editors' Choice designation, as well as VPN Direct (Premium) and proXPN. Private Internet Access, despite its unwieldy moniker, is a straightforward one-click-to-go VPN client with several advanced features that sets it apart from the competition.

Private Internet Access comes in three payment plans, at $6.95 a month, $35.95 for six months, or $39.95 for a year. Unlike many other competing products on the market, there is no free version or a trial available for users who want to check it out beforehand. I would have liked to see a cheaper one-day pass or something, but considering the monthly plan is roughly equivalent to a grande latte at Starbucks, it's not a bad deal.

A Refresher on How VPN Services Work
Your computer has an IP address assigned by your ISP. A geo-location lookup reveals the geographic location of the ISP or the data center containing the server assigning the address. You may want to change the address so that it will be harder to trace online activity back to you, or trying to access a service that is restricted by geographic region. VPN services override the IP address with one assigned by their networks, so that users can suddenly appears to be from a different country. Considering Facebook is blocked in China, Netflix is restricted outside the US, and some YouTube videos are blocked in Germany, being able to change where you are "from" is useful.

The service creates an encrypted tunnel between the computer and the destination website or network, and all data flows through the tunnel. This means even if you are using a coffee-shop hotspot, you can log into your email or access other accounts without worrying about someone eavesdropping or intercepting data. It's important to remember that the data is only protected while in transit; if the destination site is not using HTTPS, that part of the connection is unencrypted. Anyone who is sitting at that point of exit can see and harvest that information, and there are fairly complicated timing algorithms out there to identify user activity.

At the time of this writing, there are rumors that all VPN services are being blocked in China.

Installation and Getting Started
I downloaded the Windows version of Private Internet Access from the Website and installed it within seconds. I received my login credentials inside the purchase confirmation email.

Starting the software for the first time opens up a settings window where you enter the login credentials and select the region server to which you want to connect. If you don't care, you can leave it as "auto" and let the software pick. According to my tests, the app really seemed to like the New York region, but that may be because that is where I was based, and the software was simply hitting the closest server.

Like many of its competitors, Private Internet Access uses OpenVPN SSL technology to create its encrypted tunnel. It has an extensive list of servers, with options in the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, and Romania. The geographic diversity for the U.S. is staggering, with servers available in California, Denver, Florida, Ohio, Texas, "East," "Midwest" (Chicago, Ill.), and "West." The company is poised to roll out 45 more gateways worldwide with dedicated Gigabit ports this month.

Perhaps you are a power user and want more control over your network, or perhaps your ISP is overly restrictive and you need to tweak your settings. You can click on the "advanced" button on the settings screen. Under "advanced" settings, you can select the connection type, specify the remote and local ports to use, enable port forwarding, set up a VPN "kill switch," and turn on DNS leak protection. I will go in detail about these options later in the review.

The software is extremely minimalistic and lightweight. Unlike most other competitors, Private Internet Access showed no actual application window when I launched the program. All I got was a tiny lock icon in the system tray, and when I right-clicked on the icon, I saw a menu listing what servers to connect to and the option to go back into the Settings screen.

No Feedback
While I like the supremely minimalist interface, I found it frustrating when I ran into trouble because there was no way to get any kind of feedback on how to troubleshoot.

Whenever I review a VPN service, I try to schedule a trip so that I can try out the software while on the road. On my most recent trip, I ran into an unexpected snag when I tried to connect. The systray icon was green and my status message said "Connected." Yet when I tried to get to a Website, I kept getting connection errors because the browser didn't think I was connected to a network.

After a little bit of poking around and tweaking, I changed my connection type in the advanced panel from UDP (which is the default) to TCP. It turned out the particular ISP I was connected to blocked or filtered UDP ports. Now, in general, UDP filtering is rare, so this was an edge case to begin with, but nothing in the application hinted at any problems?

Next: Performance and Features

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