All Private Internet Access settings explained
Private Internet Access is a popular VPN provider. The company has a strict no-logging policy which have been verified in court this year.
Customers may download one of the available clients for their operating system. The Windows client ships with a list of features that you may enable to improve your privacy and security while being connected to one of the company servers.
The following guide lists and explains all settings that the Windows client version of Private Internet Access provides currently.
We have used the latest version of the client, version 0.65, for that. We will update the guide when features change. If you notice that before us, let us know in the comments so that we can update the article.
Private Internet Access VPN Settings
You can open the settings by right-clicking on the Private Internet Access icon in the Windows system tray area.
Please note that you can only access the settings if you are not connected to the VPN at that time. If you are, you need to disconnect first before you can do so.
The client uses three configuration pages of which one, simple, is not of much use.
Advanced Settings
The advanced settings page, which you see on the screenshot above, lists several options that you want to check out and configure.
- Username: your PIA username
- Password: the associated password of the account.
- Start application at login: whether the VPN software is started on Windows boot.
- Auto-connect on launch: whether the software connects to the VPN server when it is started.
- Show desktop notifications: whether notifications are shown on the desktop (e.g. on connection or disconnect).
- Region: The region you want to connect to. Tip: You can run speed tests for any server region to find out how well it performs.
- Connection type: Select UDP or TCP as the connection type. Default is UDP.
- Remote port: Set to auto by default, but you may specify a port there.
- Local port: Set a local port.
- Request port forwarding: The port that is being used is shown when you hover over the PIA icon in the system tray area. This can be useful to set it up in applications.
- PIA MACE: This is a new feature of Private Internet Access. It acts as a blocker for advertisement, malware, trackers and other undesirable elements. You have no control currently apart from enabling or disabling the blocker.
- VPN Kill Switch: This terminates the Internet connection if the connection to the VPN drops. Useful if you don't want your "real" IP address to be logged by services you connect to while using a VPN.
- IPv6 leak protection: This disables the use of IPv6 while connected to the VPN.
- Use small packets: If you notice connection issues, e.g. connections that drop frequently, you may want to enable this option to see if it resolves that issue.
- Debug mode: You may be asked to enable debug mode by PIA support. The log is written to C:\Program Files\pia_manager\log.
While it is up to you and your requirements what to enable on the settings page, it is usually a good idea to enable all features but PIA MACE and Debug mode.
Encryption
A click on encryption displays options to set various encryption related parameters.
- Data Encryption: Select one of the available encryption standards. Available are AES-128, AES-256 and None.
- Data Authentication: Select one of the available cryptographic hash functions. Available are SHA-1, Sha-256 and None.
- Handshake: Encryption used to establish a secure connection with Private Internet Access servers. Pia uses TLS 1.2. The default is RSA-2048.
The selection depends largely on your requirements. Want maximum protection? Select AES-256, SHA-256 and RSA-4096. Want all speed and no safety at all? Pick None, None and ECC-256k1.
The default recommendation is AES-128, SHA-1 and RSA-2048.
The client displays warning if you choose none for data encryption or data authentication, or when you chose ECC for Handshake.
Now Read: Private Internet Access rubyw.exe connections explained
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.