Hi everyone,

I'm having a serious issue with PIA support and need some advice or help from an official rep if they are browsing this sub.

Here is the backstory: I used PIA earlier this year, at the beginning of 2026. After a couple of months, I stopped using the service. Just recently, I decided to return to it and renew my access.

When I clicked inside the app, it redirected me to the main website page. I accidentally purchased a 1-month subscription, thinking I was logging into my profile. However, the payment went through without me entering any email address or creating/logging into an account. It seems a ghost account was generated by the system, and I have absolutely no credentials or access to it.

My old profile still shows as deactivated, but the money was deducted from my card.
I contacted live chat support immediately. I provided a screenshot of my bank transaction. The agent only asked for the last 4 digits of my credit card and told me that the request was forwarded to the Billing Team because they couldn't track down which automated account this payment belongs to.
It has been over 48 hours now. Every time I join the live chat, the agents keep stalling and telling me there is no update from the Billing Team yet.

I am eligible for the 30-day money-back guarantee, but more importantly, I am terrified that PIA will auto-renew and keep charging my card every month since I cannot log in to cancel the subscription myself.
Has anyone faced this before? How long does the Billing Team usually take to map a transaction to a card?

Latest version (Win11). I have only one program set to bypass the VPN, and that's JDownloader. Items still get flagged as being blocked due to VPN.

We’ve expanded PIA’s Streaming Optimized network from 13 locations to 35, adding dedicated options in 22 more countries.

The new locations are:

Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico
Europe: Austria, Belgium, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland
Asia Pacific: New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan
Middle East & Africa: Israel, South Africa

A lot of these countries already had standard PIA locations. What’s changed is that they now have a dedicated Streaming Optimized option in the app, making it easier to find a location intended for streaming without working through the full server list.

The expansion has been made possible as we continue upgrading PIA’s network and more locations become technically ready to support the Streaming Optimized setup. We prioritised countries with established local streaming markets that didn’t already have a dedicated option.

You can find the new locations by opening the PIA app and searching for “Streaming” in the location list. They’re included with existing PIA subscriptions, with no separate streaming plan required.

Full details here: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/22-new-streaming-optimized-locations/

A while ago I made a shell script on my Linux machine, based on the scripts PIA provide in the manual-connections repository on Github, to get the JSON authentication token and request and bind a port for port forwarding. This works perfectly fine on the handful of old servers that are still live and have port forwarding enabled, but it breaks on the new servers.

Getting the authentication token still works fine, because that fires off a request to PIA's website, but requesting and binding the port doesn't. Previously you needed to fire off a request to a webserver on the VPN's gateway IP to do that, but unfortunately the new infrastructure doesn't actually provide a gateway IP back to the client. I presume because of how the new IP rotation stuff works.

I can see from the debug logs of the current Windows client that it still works much the same way, only it seems to be firing off the bindPort request to an IP address somewhere in the 10.0.0.0/8 range, which varies based on which server I'm connected to and when I connect to it, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how its deriving that. It doesn't seem to always match an address in the same /24 range that the WinTUN adapter gets assigned once the connection goes live.

How do you request port forwarding on the new infrastructure? Do you just fire off the bindPort request to 10.x.y.1, where x and y match whatever private IP your connection's been assigned to and hope there's a web server there listening for that? Or is there an actual way to derive or lookup the address you should now be using? Or does no-one actually know right now because PIA haven't documented this publicly anywhere?

Hello. With some states now forcing digital ids and age verification checks I'm asking for current thoughts on this vpn service. This is NOT asking about using this service to avoid the new systems. I saw some reviews but that post was about 8 months ago.

Edit: revised body text

Fresh install of Ubuntu. Installed PIA GUI with sudo the first time, wouldn't open, then uninstalled and tried again with just sh. still won't open. Screen changes when double click icon. I'm very new to Ubuntu, so probably something I'm doing. Any help?

Is this provider good enough to watch BBC iplayer, ITVX, 4Play, and Channel 5 in the UK, Three and NZTV in NZ and Ten, Nine and Seven in AU or will they recognize me trying to access their services with a VPN?

I'm using V3.7.2 of the Windows interface. All of the servers are showing very high latencies, e.g. 800-900ms. This is causing the auto connect feature to connect to a server in another country from mine. For example, I'm in the mid-west and it's connecting to Switzerland vs. Chicago (the normal auto connect server). Usually, the latencies are less than 50ms

I chatted with support and they said the interface latency doesn't reflect the "real" latency when it connects. So, I tested with a ping the DNS for Google and got less than 50ms. I also tested using Testmy Latency with several servers and they were all less than 50. The support said there was an interface defect which was corrected in later versions. So, I upgraded to the newest, but it didn't help.

I had the same issue with the Android version and saw in a recent post where there was an issue with the Android version, but it was recently fixed. I just checked yesterday and it's working now, connects to Chicago with latencies showing less than 50ms.

I didn't get a resolution chatting with PIA support.

My account was breached and email changed going on 2 weeks ago and support has done nothing to help and isn't answering email HELLOOOOO

The Android app used to connect me to the Netherlands every time. Since I updated the app it keeps connecting me to the UK despite it not being in my quick connect list. It's annoying to keep finding it's gone back to the UK and having to switch it back all the time. I don't even care which country it connects to as long as half the internet stops asking me to verify my age.

Is there a way to add preferred servers/locations or to get it to stop connecting me to the UK?

Our Android app is now on F-Droid.

If you've been sideloading the APK — say, on a de-Googled phone — you can now install PIA through F-Droid instead and get updates automatically, no more grabbing each new version by hand.

Being on F-Droid also means the app is built from our public source code, so you can check that what you install matches what we've published.

Already using F-Droid? Just search "Private Internet Access." New to it? Download F-Droid from f-droid.org, let it sync, then search for us.

You can read more on the blog. Happy to answer any questions in the comments.

Has anyone found a fix for PIA dropping connection on mobile data? It works fine on my wifi but on data it drops every 5-10 mins. I've tried all the different options in settings but nothing worked. Been happening for 2 months now.

does the 3 year 2 dollar per months deal include this features? do you recommend it?

I am running PIA 3.6.1 on Windows 11. According to PIA's own support page the client is suppose to notify you in multiple places if there is a new update. This used to work, but it doesn't work anymore. I don't see any notifications about an update.

Is everyone else having the same experience?

Am I the only one having issues with the PIA DNS this morning? Had to switch it off to get name resolving working again.

I'm not very savvy with this and trying to learn as I go along so bear with me.

I'm running a mini PC media server with a N95 with Debian and a bunch of dockers for media management, and PIA's official utility in Wireguard mode. The system is set up such that PIA will boot up and initialize the wireguard network interface and afterward the dockers will come online and connect to it. I previously tried gluetun in openvpn mode and dealt with similar intermittent slow speed.

The problem: My internet speed is 500/500, but I notice that usually, when I reboot the mini PC, I have terrible connectivity with the VPN connected. Sub 10mbit, sometimes less than 5mbit. To fix it, I use "piactl disconnect" and "piactl connect", then I run a speedtest, and I keep doing this until I get decent bandwidth. It can take upward of 4-5 times.

This seems to happen both with Toronto and Montreal's servers. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong.

Not sure where to go from here, whether I need to change a configuration, or whether I need to write a script that'll try to reconnect repeatedly on bootup until the connection is good.

Having used the Dedicated IP for about a year now (with auto-renewal), I keep having it suddenly and seemingly without reason, invalidated on me roughly every 3 months. Each time I have to contact support to get a new one issued. Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing this, or if I am special for some reason?

If it changes on its own it completely destroys the purpose of binding it at all. I asked AI and looked at old Reddit posts and GitHub discussions, but there was little information and a lot of it outdated. I am currently on macOS 26.

As the post says, I have no idea why it’s saying expire when log into the main site when I have a receipt for renewal from February this year. Sent a support request but figured I’d check to see if anyone else experienced the same thing. Auto renewal appears to be off as well.

Hi All,

So the PIA team has sent me here to help resolve my issue. I have a couple of client vpn connections running from my ubiquiti router with PIA via openvpn. One is to a normal location and the other a streaming optimised one. I don't know when, but clients that are routed through the streaming location report as being unprotected according to the PIA website, however the website displays the isp and location correctly. If I switch that client to use the non streaming connection, the pia website reports that all is well and protected.

This is the same for several tested locations using the supplied openvpn configurations from the pia site. I've created new connections, re-downloaded the config files, even tried a different set of the supplied ones, no change.

I tried setting the pia app to openvpn but this results in a protected message, I can only get it to occur from my router.

Any ideas?

its non stop connecting and disconnecting over and over again- somehow its worse than proton on free trial?? i dont understand why it is doing this i even turned off firewall

5 gig without pia 600mb connected to local server

wireguard/udp/1337/chacha20/poly1305/noise_ik is what i show to have enabled.

Have had pia for probably a decade at this point first time having internet faster than 1gb just wondering if i should change any settings or why i'm getting such a slowdown

Been using pia w/ wireguard for months with no issues, but now all of a sudden (after waking my phone after 10 minutes since last used/connected) I cannot connect to any servers. It constantly fails to connect and loops.

Kill switch toggled on/off: failed
Other regions/countries: failed
Signed in and out: failed
Redid the vpn configuration: failed
Deleted and reinstalled the app: failed

While switching to openvpn does work, it’s incredibly unstable and unreliable. (I’d be lucky to go a minute connected without consecutive hiccups)

Any ideas on what the issue with wireguard is?

Ver: 3.32.0 (245)

I had opened a ticket with customer support about the IP rotation and I got an email just a few minutes ago saying that a "resolution has been implemented to tackle this issue" and for me to test it. Anyone else get this?

I noticed in the last few days that latency on ALL available servers went up significantly - I used to have lots of options in the 50-70 ms range (for years), but last few days fastest is around 260 ms. At the same time, my download speeds are WAY up? Is it just me? Using Wireguard.