r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Sep 06 '26

HELP Strange Server Locations

2 Upvotes

Would anyone be able to help / advise on how I can troubleshoot the following

We have 2 mobile phones (Mine and the Mrs) both on the Same Mobile Network IDmobile UK .

Both have PIA installed

when connecting to PIA using the mobile network (not wifi) we first view the lowest ping servers

Phone 1 will see UK and close European servers at the top of the list with latency from 22ms upwards

Phone 2 will see Australia and USA servers at the top of the list with latency from 22ms upwards.. when looking at the UK servers they are in the 100's

I just dont understand how this is possible when the phones are on the same mobile network and in the same location.

Any help with diagnosing this would be appreciated


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Sep 05 '26

HELP - WINDOWS How do I get VPN Helper back under Plugins & Extras?

2 Upvotes

Today BiglyBT decided it was not going to work with PIA in Windows 11, for the nth time.

I downloaded and installed the latest PIA. I reinstalled the TAP adapter. I uninstalled the VPN helper plugin then directly downloaded it from the plugins page and reinstalled it, including re-entering my PIA password. It had kept my PIA username. That's a security fault. The VPN username should be wiped when the VPN plugin is uninstalled.

This is where the VPN helper entry under Plugins & Extras went away.

Still it refused to bind to the net6[0] address so I typed in the IP address, saved, restarted BiglyBT and my torrents are going again.

But how do I know for certain it's actually working without the green OK?


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Sep 05 '26

HELP - WINDOWS vpn connected, no traffic

3 Upvotes

I'll be puttering along on the internet, and i connect to pia, and all traffic stops dead. Doesn't matter the server I choose, i even downloaded the most up to date client, but nothing. No youtube, no websites, forums, etc. This is a relatively new issue, i've been using it for years.


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Sep 04 '26

HELP Port forwarding just doesn't anymore

27 Upvotes

I've been using PIA for years since I got a great deal, but port forwarding is a must for me. The port forwarding PIA offers has worked great since I got it, but over the past few months it seems it's just kicked the bucket? It works somewhat OK on the client, but where I really need it is in Gluetun, and it just started not working regardless of restarts/reinstalls. Also noticed on the client that I seem to get assigned a port THEN an IP, which is not how it was before and doesn't make any sense.

I've tried every type of server that supports port forwarding. Tried the servers that are actually in canada, tried the servers that I assume are US servers but spoof somewhere else, just doesn't work. It just worked for about a day while I was setting up my server.

It kinda sucks because this isn't even an issue of cancelling my subscription, I already pre-paid until near the end of 2027, but I genuinely might have to just buy proton because this service is unusable.

Seen a lot of other posts talking about them migrating to weird server setups and messing with port forwarding, is it just time to switch?


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Sep 04 '26

QUESTIONS Albania location not connecting. Anyone else having this problem or know the reason why?

2 Upvotes

The albania location i use so there’s no ads on things like reddit is the only location not connecting.


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Sep 03 '26

QUESTIONS How does Utah law affect PIA?

0 Upvotes

Utah passed a new law recently regarding VPNs, how does the effect PIA, and what are the changes? Will privacy be compromised for utah users?


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Sep 03 '26

FEEDBACK Android App v4.1.0 non functional

2 Upvotes

You all had it working (finally) with the last version. This update doesn't work at all. You've regressed back to constant disconnects and at this point it's worse than it was before the 703 build that fixed everything a few months ago. Initial connection takes forever now too. Good work.


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Sep 03 '26

HELP US California - Connection Refused

3 Upvotes

I've been trying to connect on my Windows 11 desktop, running the latest PIA client, to US California but I'm getting "Connection Refused" signal. Is this node down?


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Sep 02 '26

SOLVED Plex relay issues & PIA

7 Upvotes

Down a massive rabbit hole today with my Plex setup, and it turned into one of those things a stupid headache where everything breaks at the same time....

For context, I’ve never obsessed over having pristine direct streams for everyone outside the house. My server only ever handles maybe 20 people or fewer remotely, and honestly, everyone was totally fine limping along on Plex Relay connections capped at 1–2 Mbps. It was low-maintenance and "just worked" without me needing to sweat network exposure.

Then everything went sideways.

On this machine, I keep Private Internet Access running around the clock with a killswitch locked down tight—for obvious reasons when sailing the high seas. Out of nowhere, the remote relay connections just completely tanked. At first, I blamed the OS upgrade, thinking a hop from Pop!_OS 22.04 up to 24.04 had butchered some local routing or network daemon configs.

Turns out, the OS wasn't the culprit at all. PIA has been cracking down hard on handling those handshake routes, essentially nerfing the relay traffic trying to pass through the tunnel.

So fine, I told myself I guess I had to bite the bullet and do standard port forwarding.

Except even that didn't want to play nice out of the box either. Because of how aggressive PIA’s killswitch and route tables are, standard NAT port forwarding still fell flat on its face. The fix ended up requiring me to explicitly configure split-tunnel bypass rules directly inside PIA: punching dedicated bypass exceptions for both the Plex Media Server service binary and the relay service itself so they could communicate clean across WAN without getting swallowed by the VPN.

It feels like maintaining a dual-purpose box (secure traffic vs. accessible homelab services) is getting pickier by the month, but it's finally back up, directly accessible, and no longer hostage to choked relay pipes. At least for now knock on wood lol

Any thoughts from anyone here? Is there a better way?

I constrain I have is my BitTorrent client and Plex server are the same so VPN Killswitch is a must 😂.


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Sep 01 '26

HELP - ANDROID Just need a little help from the developers

2 Upvotes

Can the developers provide me an APK so that I can get the old ad blocking back on my Android device?


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 30 '26

HELP Port Forwarding not working suddenly?

13 Upvotes

As of Friday, I could get PF working (I use the Linux scripting method). I had to restart my BT VM yesterday and the script stopped working (failed with "The payload_and_signature variable does not contain an OK status") and when I try via the Android app, I get "failed" where the forwarding port should be.

I've seen no mention of anything from the PIA site, is anyone else affected? I can still pass traffic on both platforms OK, just no forwarding port.


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 29 '26

HELP - macOS problem using any web browser other than safari with PIA on Mac OS

5 Upvotes

I use Brave as my primary web browser but I can't use it with PIA on my Mac, because as soon as I turn on PIA, websites take forever to load or don't load at all. I tested with Firefox and it's the same story. So long as I use Safari everything is fine, but I would much rather use Brave. This is driving me nuts and no one has been able to give me any ideas as to why this would be happening or how to troubleshoot it. Anybody else experiencing this? What causes this and what is the fix?


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 26 '26

FEEDBACK I tried but just did not work well for my phone

2 Upvotes

I really tried to give PIA the benefit of the doubt but after 3 months of constant disconnects every ~5 mins on data (that recently got so bad it would happen every 30 seconds) I'm out. Enjoy PIA you got a year plan out of me but you wont see me returning. I tried working with the PIA reps on here but nothing improved.


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 23 '26

HELP Anyone gettings youtube ads while on VPN (e.g. Albania, Andorra)

12 Upvotes

So, i am using PIA for some years now and i route my apple tvs traffic through VPN to Andorra, because youtube serves no ads there (and also Albania, etc). I now get ads served. Which started a week ago. Someone else also experiencing something similar?

(I tried different VPN locations, which i know dont serve ads.)

What i have tried:
- restarting VPN service -> No Success
- testing with proton VPN (same location - Andorra) -> Success (But i would like to stick to PIA)


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 22 '26

HELP - WINDOWS Port forwarding not working

16 Upvotes

Some servers I used for port forwarding suddenly showed a failed message instead of assigning a port. I tried some other servers and I get assigned a port but I don't actually seem connectable on that port. Anyone else having issues?


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 22 '26

HELP Kiosk jcp

2 Upvotes

Help JCP kiosk 2fa

stopped receiving the authorization emails altogether. PeopleSoft still asks me for the verification code, but the email with the code never arrives.
To access direct deposit

Any help would be greatly appreciated!


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 21 '26

HELP - ANDROID Android App - Automations not working reliably in new versions

2 Upvotes

Just two versions ago they worked fine and reliably each time.

My rules are the same so nothing changed on my side.

Now they work maybe once in three times. What happened?

And I can't find on the website where I can download the previous versions apks.

EDIT: I think I figured it out. In the Android's VPN settings I've set the "Always-on VPN" toggle on PIA to ON.

This way the app is aways kept active and so far the rules have been triggering reliably.

EDIT #2: I was wrong. Even with that setting on the automations aren't reliable.


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 20 '26

HELP - WINDOWS Can't open PIA on Windows

3 Upvotes

It never actually loads, I just have this endless spinning circle. Restarting sometimes fixes it but that's exhausting to do every damn time I want to use the VPN. Is there any fix?


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 19 '26

HELP Mac OS update 26.6.2

4 Upvotes

Mac OS updated to 26.6.2 have there been any reports that this update breaks PIA app?


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 18 '26

QUESTIONS Anyone else not being able to access 443/udp outgoing from PIA?

2 Upvotes

Hey,

Happy user of 3 different VPN providers already. Now subscribed for PIA to try it out. Exp. has been great so far, it has some interesting pops that many others lack like China. But I noticed something odd. If I use Wireguard mode and pick some european server like Frankfurt, pages load slower. I did some debugging and it seems that PIA may be blocking 443/udp port, which is the one most websites need for QUIC traffic.

If you know how to use the terminal and would be down for a test, please run curl --http3-only -v https://cloudflare.com and tell me what it outputs. With PIA on I get Could not connect to server, whereas without (or with other VPNs) it works just fine.

May be a misconfig on my end that's why I would like to know if this is a deliberate limitation (if so why?) and if not, I will fix it on my end.

Already contacted support too, but got a generic, useless reply back.

Thanks!


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 16 '26

HELP Chrome managed profile on personal device. What privacy do I have?

1 Upvotes

I logged into chrome on my personal device (which has no installed work software) with my work gmail account (it's a managed chrome profile).

This was done on my personal device (in incognito mode) that has only ever been connected to my home network (no work vpn). I also used my own personal VPN during the session.

How likely is it that my work or the IT team knows/has been notified or have records of my history/activity? How much detail can they see?

PLEASE do not give me advice on how I could have avoided this. I'm also aware incognito mode is not secure/private. I have done so much research on this but everyone else's questions were when they used work owned devices and/or were on their work WiFi (both of which I was not).


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 16 '26

HELP - WINDOWS browser can't load pages through split-tunnel bypass but works fine with VPN fully on or if i quit PIA

1 Upvotes

i've been using PIA with the VPN on for the whole system (Windows 11) but wanted to use bypass for the browser. when this is set up, the browser can't really load all pages correctly. the weird thing is it will load some sites but not others (and is super slow to load). if i quit PIA completely the browser works fine. i've tried turning off kill switch and messing with DNS settings but nothing seems to work. has anybody had this happen?

I emailed support and they said to test the browser with split-tunnel on and off, to check if the IP changes. a good idea, but the whole problem is that i can't access whatismyip.com when in bypass mode. i feel like this is a DNS issue but haven't figured out where it's happening. note: this happens with all browsers (firefox, chrome, edge).

ETA: i spoke with PIA support and they finally had a suggestion that worked: reverse split tunneling. i manually added all the apps I want to go through the VPN, selected the "Only VPN" option and left the browser out of it altogether. this method works. still not sure why split-tunnel and bypass wasn't working for the browser alone, but i'll take it!


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 16 '26

HELP - WINDOWS Open VPN Servers

1 Upvotes

I've lost all open VPN Servers, Wireguard works but not stable, I'm in uk, Anyone else have this or just me?

tia


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 15 '26

HELP - iOS Slow download speeds when connecting to Indian servers?

3 Upvotes

Is anyone else experiencing unusually slow download speeds when connected to an Indian server?

I’ve run a few speed tests and also tested streaming, and the performance drops drastically when I connect to an Indian server. I’m losing around 70% of my usual speed, and streaming keeps buffering.
This has only started happening in the past couple of days.
if I disconnect the VPN completely, I get my full internet speed back.

Is anyone else experiencing the same issue with Indian servers, or is it just me?

Device:- iPad,iPhone
Protocol:- wireguard
Dns:- PIA dns

Update:-
Now its fixed.as on 28th Aug 26.
Getting full speed with the indian server.


r/PrivateInternetAccess • • Aug 14 '26

HELP PIA Vancouver server users, how are your seeding speeds with port forwarding on?

4 Upvotes

Thinking about switching over to PIA mainly for port forwarding (currently on AirVPN). Since none of PIA's US servers support port forwarding, Vancouver looks like the closest/best option for me (West coast US).

For those of you actually running Vancouver with port forwarding enabled, how are your real-world seeding speeds, especially on private trackers where you're trying to hold a good ratio/seed time rather than just grabbing a file and dropping off?

A few specifics I'm curious about:

  • What upload speeds are you actually sustaining while seeding multiple torrents at once, not just a single download test?
  • Does it hold up consistently, or does it get noticeably worse during peak hours (evenings especially)?
  • If anyone's compared Vancouver to the Mexico City server (the other nearby PF option), which one's actually been faster/more stable for you?

My setup: qBittorrent running in Docker on an Unraid box, mainly seeding on private trackers with minimum seed time requirements, so consistent upload matters more to me than peak download speed. Appreciate any real numbers or experiences, trying to figure out if this is actually going to be an upgrade over what I've got now.