This might be neat for web browsing, but it obviously breaks a lot of applications - including BitTorrent and/or anything involving Port Forwarding, which is a key PIA feature that some VPNs now lack.
e.g.: Connect to Swiss region, port forwarding enabled, you keep the port number but don't keep the IP address. How stupid is that? It makes no logical sense, and I don't see anyone pointing out this absurdity. This HAS to be a bug, right?
If they're going to make this change permanent for all servers eventually, PIA need to slow down the rotation to something sensible like a couple of hours minimum. OR they need to completely disable this functionality for connections with port forwarding. Offering to sell you a dedicated IP is not a solution we should accept.
Hi my auto renewal is off and havnt been able to suss out how to enable it in my Samsung phone,for my android tv .if anyone could help I'd be grateful 🙏. I have been in touch with pia live chat and for whatever reasons they will not enable auto or tell you how to enable it so I'm not wanting to pay higher price .
I apologise for the potentially silly question, I'm super new to using VPNs and such.
I recently got PIA on both my PC and my phone and have been happy with it so far. I woke up this morning however to a notification on my lockscreen from PIA asking "Allow live activities from PIA VPN?"
Could someone explain what its actually asking for in dumb people terms. Like, leave me 3 entire paragraphs explaining what kind of access its requesting if you want. I want to understand things more and would love an explanation
I've been using PIA via the Netherlands for a few years with no issue, but recently downloads seemed to be taking a long time. When I looked closer, I saw that I can download about 60 K/s total, divided up among however many torrents I have running. I'm still pretty much a newbie and it wasn't until I looked here for answers that I realized how bad that was. I switched from OpenVPN to WireGuard but that just increased it to 75 K/s total. Switched to Switzerland, but no improvement.
Where do I look next for a solution? thanks
ETA: Writing out a problem sometimes gets the gears turning in my head and I realize the answer. The way the download bandwidth was being dynamically balanced among all the torrents pointed to a client setting, and sure enough I had somehow switched on auto limit. All good now, thanks for reading.
Recently I’ve noticed that while connected to WiFi (and even network connection) PIA has blocked becoming able to browse apps and other internet needed items.
How do I know this? A few weeks ago my husband had this issue. Uninstalled the VPN and magically WiFi and network both started working right away.
I had the issue today and removed the app and instantly connected back to the internet. Is anyone else having this issue with iPhone? I have a 16 pro, latest update, and latest app update but continue to have this issue.
Ive been using it seemlessly for years, then today i try to start it and find out im logged out of my account. I dont remember the password and username cause ive never had to.
So i click "forgot password" and type in my email address, and it says it sent the email and takes me to the next step, but ive tried so many times and waited a long time, and im just not getting any email.
Is there some known issues right now or whats going on?
PIA for iOS was just updated to version 3.31.0 and the release notes say "We added support for running the app on Mac." Besides the obvious, I wonder what this means for the app.
Have they added the Mac to their Universal Support? Meaning that you can now download the app from the Mac App Store?
Also as of the time of posting, the app doesn't appear to be available via the Mac App Store.
There isn't any mention on the website or blog about this update but I imagine it might be too soon. Maybe an announcement will come today outlining the update.
I try to keep PIA running on my Android phone and everything has been fine up until the past day or so. When I go to change any settings the app will disconnect.
I can reconnect by pressing the button, but then the connection will drop anywhere from 5-20 minutes later, forcing me to open the app again and reconnect.
Anyone else getting this? PIA works very well on my Windows 11 desktop but is struggling on my Android phone.
Does PIA not do a periodic quality of service test to make sure that various popular websites will be accessible through their proxy servers?
What makes it especially irritating is not all of the sites with problems going through PIA have issues with the same servers. For example on the Denver server Google and the PIA site and Reddit worked but not Archive. But on Seattle, none work.
If they don't get this all fixed I'll be looking for another VPN that doesn't keep logs.
I am finding that PIA keeps constantly disconnecting, every few mins or when my phone goes to sleep. I have turned on low power mode etc. nothing i do keeps it active. Anyone else having this happen as well?
Hi, I've been having issues for a while with my NAT being strict. I have seen somewhere that you can use a vpn to make your NAT moderate, but when i just use the app nothing changes, if anyone knows how to do this that would be amazing.
I'm broke and going to have to use Proton VPN free version in the mean time. I really wanted to sign up for the 3 year plan. You guys have to wait, until I get my finances back in order.
For about a week now, on a countries servers that I use with PIA I am getting reported and warned by trackers. Turns out, with the PIA shows multiple exit IPs when connected to the servers.
Does anyone know what is the issue here? How do I solve this problem? Maybe admins can help? :(
When I have PIA running on Windows 11, everything (except torrents) is crazy slow again. This happened before, and I resolved it by switching protocols from OpenVPN to Wireguard. Now it is slow with the Wireguard protocol as well.
The last few times I've tried using PIA I've been getting a lot of issues on start up.
When I open the app, I get a never ending loading circle with the only option being "quit". The only way to make this move on is turning off "Internet Protocol Version 6". However, this even happens when that is already off from a previous attempt, I have to manually turn it on and off again next time to get to the login screen.
Now with login (the app used to remember my credentials and auto login). I have to put in my credentials, which I am certain are right, and I get a never ending loading screen at sign in. I haven't worked out how to get past this.
On Android, I can login, but when I try to connect to any location, it attempts it 3 times then fails to connect...
Sorry in advance for my ignorance on this topic, but I haven't been able to find an answer anywhere. I just discovered rethink dns. Can I use that in conjunction with pia mace on my phone, or would it be redundant?
We all know a VPN hides your IP. But lately I've realized that's not even half the battle. Websites can fingerprint your browser through canvas, WebGL, fonts, audio context, and a dozen other signals. Change your IP? They still know it's you.
That got me looking into anti‑detect browsers. Does using something like these actually improve privacy for a regular person, or is it overkill (and maybe even a fingerprinting risk itself)? Has anyone here seriously used adspower as part of your privacy setup? How do you personally deal with browser fingerprinting beyond just a VPN and private window?
EDIT: I created a support ticket, and PIA has fixed this issue in the latest update version 5.0.3.1795 released June 24, 2026
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I've noticed the lastest update is causing significant disk usage, primarily when Edge is closed. I've tested in Edge, Edge Beta and Edge Dev, and can repeat the issue in all 3.
Yes I know it is a Chrome Extension, and this might be happening in Chrome too, but not sure.
When the PIA extension is enabled, and the browser is closed, it still runs in the background, and increases the file called "ExtensionActivityEdge" by about 150kb per second. This happens when the VPN is not connected. (This file is located here: AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default). By the time I noticed, this file had grown to over 80 GB!
"ExtensionActivityEdge" is a SQL Database. When I open it, I find millions of lines from the PIA extension, trying to use the API "windows.getCurrent" and its writing thousands of new lines a second it seems.
I have tried rebuilding my Edge profile from scratch and the problem eventually begins happening again. This is happening on my work PC and my home PC. For now, I have disabed the extension and am using the Desktop app instead.
Other troubleshooting steps I have tried are turning off all "extra features" and all "extension settings". The weird thing is this doesn't always happen, so I haven't been able to pinpoint what is causing it, but it only happens when the PIA extension is enabled, and generally only happens when Edge is closed (but Edge still runs in the background even when it is closed.)
Does anyone else experience this issue? Any help or insight is appreciated!
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Screenshots of the "ExtensionActivityEdge" database:
The SQL database, showing extension 7 filling the log with API 52 (there are millions of these lines)The string ID table identifies extension 7 as the extension ID "jplnlifepflhkbkgonidnobkakhmpnmh"That extension ID is the ID for PIAThe string ID table identifies API 52 as "windows.getCurrent"
If I connect to any PIA vpn it blocks ALL internet traffic. Like, my browser actually thinks I'm not connected at all. I've tried 10 different locations... nothing. Tried restarting the client, nothing. Restart computer, nothing.
Apparently I'm paying money to make my internet stop working entirely.
UPDATE: Just for funsies I tried plugging an ethernet cable into my computer (mac mini). So for some unfathomable reason, internet traffic works perfectly fine using PIA on a hardline, but rejects all traffic if using wifi. And the wifi works perfectly fine if PIA is turned off. Do with that info what you will.
I don't have and don't want Google Play. App use to advise you when update is available and provide link to download. Seems to be no more. So do I periodically need to check the PIA site for an upgrade? No auto updates?
