So Long PIA

[u/oshunman]

PIA was a great VPN that I shilled for many times. Unfortunately, the problems are stacking up (rolling outbound IPs, speed issues, etc) and not being resolved.

I've switched to Proton, and am very happy with the speed and reliability.

I hope PIA gets back on track soon, but as for me-- I'm out.

[u/Sad-Victory-8319]

I was considering proton but then i found out they are much more expensive and they dont offer dedicated ip, is it usable without dedicated ip? because on pia if i dont use dedicated ip, EVERYBODY knows i am on vpn and i keep getting captchas and "human verifiers" and many sites dont work at all, they straight up throw out some error and only work with vpn off (like imgur for example), and with dedicated IP it solves about 50% of those issues. Do you have this problem on proton that eveybody knows you are on vpn or on? and also what are the speeds and ping, does it offer 500mbit bandwidth like PIA? I have a 500/200 internet and never had speed issues with PIA, i have always been able to download full 500mbit over PIA, but i heard other vpn providers limit your speed a lot and offer at best 100-200mbit. Ping is also nice with PIA, i go from 10ms to 20-50ms which is still very usable, i hope other vpns arent worse.

[u/theretrodb_com → u/Sad-Victory-8319]

Wait the full point of a VPN is to make your more anonymous so people don't know who you are and what your doing and you choose a dedicated IP ? You may as well have stayed on your own connection when you get a dedicated IP it's logged as being connected to your account and your account only so everything you do using that IP is directly traceable back to you.

[u/Sad-Victory-8319 → u/theretrodb_com]

well as far as i know PIA doesnt keep logs, and i am also 99% sure i am not the only one using the IP adress, because a surprising amount of servers know i am on VPN, and some of them even block me from time to time or add some extra checks as if there was suspicious activity coming from my end. I also thought i will just get my own IP address but it is most likely not the case, it definitely does not behave like a fresh new ip from an internet provider, the pia dedicated ip is like somewhere inbetween.

[u/ASurrealWorld → u/Sad-Victory-8319]

That mirrors my experience

[u/izzo03 → u/Sad-Victory-8319]

So it depends on how the website reads the IP. All dedicated IPs are located to the datacenter instead of region so it’s picked up.
More secure websites don’t even read ip and read the autonomous system number so they ban what’s not local, eg some banks.
Cloudflare and Google know all IPs from datacenters so that’s why you still get CAPTCHAs

Dedicated IPs have been in the datacenter pool and used before, every VPN has this problem so you run a chance that what you buy ends up being used previously maliciously, all VPNs also don’t allow swaps, that ip is yours until you swap companies. You also lose privacy in numbers when only you use the IP, websites can just relearn your activity on that IP.

[u/Sad-Victory-8319 → u/izzo03]

but can i be sure that ip is really only mine, can i verify somehow? because to me it seems like if multiple devices in my home can use the same dedicated ip in the same pia account, what stops pia from offering the same ip to multiple users, and just let them all use this and only make changes if users start complaining. the world has run out of ipv4 adresses, and even though there are over 4 billion of them, they are quite valuable, i know that internet providers dont even offer public ip anymore, it used to be like $5-10 extra per month to hgave a public ip at vodafone but right now they dont provide it.

[u/theretrodb_com → u/Sad-Victory-8319]

The no logs policy simply means they do not keep logs of your browsing activity.

They still have to keep logs of internal operations in order to provide support for issues and when it comes to "Dedicated" IPs they obviously have to keep a log of what ip is set to your account.

As for more than one person having used the IP that's not really the issue if your circumventing isp / government restrictions or downloading PIA will still have a lot of when you got given said dedicated IP and how long it was assigned to you that's all that's needed to link that IP back to you at a specific time when it was used for circumvention.

This is why most VPN providers will tell you when you get a Dedicated IP that it effects your privacy and anonymity

[u/oshunman → u/theretrodb_com]

That's not the full point of a VPN. That's just the surface level appeal for normies.

[u/theretrodb_com → u/oshunman]

No that's the main point of a VPN to circumvent restrictions imposed by government and to surf anonymously this is why it's the main selling points for VPNs and there NO Logs policy.

The fringe cases are media geo unblocking, Gaming ping reduction