My honest objective PIA Review
u/newslooter - For the reputation score, I also disagree.
A person can change so does a company. We can’t keep PIA hounded by KAPE’s reputation after years of no scandal to their VPN owned companies.
PIA only get a major drop on the reputation score because it’s owned by KAPE who had a management team who got involved to the malware scandal of their ad-tech business.
The new CEO was tasked by the major shareholders to change the direction of the company by exiting ad-tech and offer service to the cybersecurity market for end user customers.
So far we haven’t heard any scandals ever since for the following VPNs acquired by KAPE
- CyberGhost
- Zenmate
- and now Private Internet Access
Plus KAPE is a publicly listed company and reputation is the major basis of their stock price. It’s one of the few companies who operates a VPN Business that is publicly listed, that should be something, right?
You can check their financial report and presentation summary here, they mentioned a lot of about PIA there for this year’s report:
https://investors.kape.com/reports-and-presentations/2020
Changing the score from 2 to 3 would be ideal since this at least the middle line score.
PIA shouldn’t go below 3 on their reputation score unless they’re caught doing bad stuff by their own or of association with KAPE.
PIA is innocent until proven guilty. Thus, the score 3 is fair for the service.
Major change that could get the score higher.
- Change to 4 if PIA have an audit.
- This will reinforce that their service, operation, server and app keeps no log even after KAPE acquired PIA.
- Change to 5 if PIA joined the RVP Program (which I have question here myself)
- Will PIA get even a score of 5 if they joined your RVP Program?
PIA does have scripting support via the “piactl” command line tool.
To summarize this thread for any new users and to present an argument why this review should be taken with a huge grain of salt and is generally a disservice to consumers:
The reviewer gave PIA a large score in nearly every area except “reputation”. This score is low because of *alleged* actions taken by the parent company *many* years ago when it was involved in a completely different business (ad-tech) and had different senior management.
This low reputation score tanks the overall score for PIA. Without the low reputation score PIA’s overall score would be significantly higher.
Those alleged actions involved the company providing an SDK for advertisers that may have enabled mitm style traffic manipulation for nefarious ends. The reviewer contends, based on third-party commmentators (he has not used the SDK himself) that this was a deliberate/intentional design of the API. In the defense of the company, however, they claim this was an exploitation/mis-use of the API by nefarious actors.
At this point, it’s impossible to know the truth on this matter. Someone needs to actually locate and find the SDK to uncover its capabilities - but relying on unreliable drama-focussed third parties for information who just repeat the same story is not doing anyone a service.
In any case, it’s been many years since Kape was in the ad-tech business. Since that time it has re-invented itself, taken a different approach, replaced its management team, and entered a very different business space. Since that time there have been no scandals or disreputable under-hand activities alleged against it or any of its VPN businesses including PIA (or Cyberghost or Zenmate0
When the reviewer was asked if there’s any process for PIA to recover its reputation score, his only answer was “if Kape sold to another company or PIA never sold to Kape in the first place”.
I find that truly bizarre and also a mis-service to consumers. He has even stated that even if PIA was to:
- Have no scandals or disreputable behaviour for many years
- Have a complete code audit done
- Be exceptional in every other area
He would still not improve the reputation score so that the overall score of PIA is still much lower than it otherwise would be. He offers no road to redemption, no practical steps to improve the score.
So even in the absense of any objective facts that negatively impact the PIA VPN service over multiple years, it will be forever condemned to a lowered review score.
He claims that it isn’t important, that users can look at the tier lists themselves and choose their VPN based on criteria that is important to them.
But everyone knows that is nonsense, the average consumer simply looks at the “top scorers” when making their decision - and the guy himself even spams his “top 4 VPNs” on all his videos, limiting user’s motivation to evaulate VPNs specific review criteria even further.
The reviewer hasn’t listened to a single sentence of feedback; he in fact doubles down on his stubborness.
I understand his argument that many VPN review sites are fake and that by including “reputation” as a criterion he’s able to better guide consumers through the lies and hype -
BUT by offering no road to redemption for companies to improve their “reputation” scores even after multiple years of no scandals, exceptional development work and no disreputable behavior - it’s completely wrong headed IMO and is a huge disservice to consumers.
He seems too stubborn to even reconsider his approach and even referred to it as “perfect” 
.
So until this reviewer provides practical, clear steps for a company to improve its “reputation score”, rather than being locked into a low score for eternity, I would take his reviews with a huge grain of salt.
I take issue with this review.
PIA app did great on nearly all your criteria except “reputation” - in facdt it would be near the top of your list if you took that criterion out.
“Reputation” is also extermely subjective and primarily based on hear-say not on fact- I personally did a bunch of research on Kape after the acquisition and found a lot of the rumor to be nothing more than FUD.
Can you adjust your scoring to put a little less weight on something so subjective as “reputation” ? Maybe use an OBJECTIVE criterion like whether the VPN handed over information due to a court order, or so on, which PIA demonstrably has not done.
It just seems silly that such a subjective criterion can completely tank a review score. At the least, you should weight it less. Just my two cents.
Good points! I also think the fact PIA is open source should improve the reputation score too – they’re making an effort to be transparent and show their code base is free of back-doors, spyware, and the like. Even ExpressVPN isn’t open source.
Thanks for your feedback.
I wouldn’t change the score based on audits. I don’t believe they are anything besides a marketing tactic. You can “turn off logs” when the auditor comes in, etc. Most VPNs pay for the audits, pick the date, and pick the company, which renders the entire idea pointless.
An audit is suppose to help a company find vulnerabilities and fix them, not use them as a marketing prop to encourage a “good reputation”.
I’d give it one star based on performance alone. Who are you trying to kid, pleading for score on a bad vpn?
Good catch. Will update that.
Open sourcing the app doesn’t mean much for me. OpenVPN and Wireguard are already open source.
Open sourcing a GUI isn’t that impressive.
Open sourcing the back end would be more impressive, but also not really doable. Or open sourcing the company’s investments and history etc.
Why did PIA have so much debt, where was the company spending money? Etc etc. That would be interesting to me.
So if you won’t change the reputation score based on audits, or open source, or the absense of scandals over multiple years, then what WILL cause you to change the reputation score? anything at all?
At this point Kape is a publicly tradec company so you should have access to a lot of CURRENT information to base your decision - based on investments, business dealings, and so on.
Did you even watch the review? he game it 5/5 for speeds.
I never said PIA should have a 5/5 for reputation, just that you should allow the possibility of it increasing from a 2 over time, and explain what it has to do TO incrrease from a 2/5.
It makes sense Nord should have a low reputation as it had an objective event that impacted the VPN users.
On the other hand, PIA has not had any actual event that impacted VPN users. Everything is just “hypothetical” - because you don’t trust Kape you believe something MAY happen in the future to impact VPN users.
All i’m saying is that if there have been multiple years pass and no scandals, no events that negatively impact VPN users (like the case of nord’s hack) - then the reputation score should slowly increase over time - as nothing objectively bad has happened, none of the worst-case hypotheticals have come to pass over many years.
what is the best vpn for privacy then ?
That’s actually not what happened afaiui. The company had a platform with an SDK and that platform was mis-used by nefarious actors in exactly the way you described. It’s like accusing twitter of being responsible for phishing because users of that platform engage in phishing of other users. They shouldn’t be held responsible for how other’s use that platform.
But that’s not the primary point - the point is that it’s a criterion not based on anything objective about the VPN.
Objective criterion is what users need to know — PIA has been bought out by Kape over a YEAR ago. Have any of your concerns about the reputability of Kape come to light in affecting the experience of PIA users? No? then why mention it at all? How long will you hold the “reputation” of Kape against PIA in your review score when literally nothing “disruptable” has impacted VPN users ? 2 years? 3 years? 4 years? Still? even when nothing has *actually* happened?
“Reputation” is comprised of hear-say and rumor and a lot of FUD and games of chinese whispers. A review should cover only those issues of FACT that impact the users of a VPN. And if you *do* include reputation (for whatever reason) it should at the very least be weighted less than the other criteria for this reason.
So what would have to happen for you to increase the reputation score?
I’m sorry if I gave you the idea that I would change the reputation score.
They designed software that allowed app developers to build those injection capabilities into their software, using the Crossrider platform.
I don’t think your analogy to Twitter is quite the same thing. If Twitter made an app that easily provided followed company’s or people to inject ads into your browser or computer then sure, I would say that’s a good comparison. But that isn’t the case.
As to your point about heresay, I agree. I don’t include rumors or anything like that in the reputation category. It’s all stuff covered in the news, not stuff from 4chan or something lol.
They designed software that allowed app developers to build those injection capabilities into their software, using the Crossrider platform.
The question is whether it was *intentionally* designed this way, or whether it was somehow exploited/misused in this way. Neither you nor I are familiar enough with the SDK to answer this question - and relying on biased third party commentators who have themselves likely only had second or third-hand information is not really reliable, is it?
But my fundamental question is this: more than a YEAR has passed and nothing “disruptable” has impacted the end-user’s experience of the VPN.
How many years are you going to keep PIA in this reputation dog box? It’s already been a year but what if 3 YEARS from now still nothing disruptable has occured that impacts users of PIA?
Sure it has.
The price has increased to 12$ per month for one. It use to be $7. That is a substantial price increase. PIA did increase its pricing up until the acquisition but it was never that much.
They are also pushing way more for you to sign up for long term commitments which I don’t like.
Besides that, the service is not changed as much from what I can see, but it’s also not improved much either. Namely the streaming compatibility still sucks. It’s not so much about observational changes though, that isn’t what the rep score is for. That’s why its a different category than the others.
Every viewer can decide what is important to them, and pick a VPN from there. That is why the system is close to perfect IMO.
Reputation is what goes on behind the scene, and how a customer might view that as affecting the company they can trust or not.
For example, as a customer I would rather purchase a VPN that is owned by the same company for its entire life. That shows the company is in it for the long haul and not a silicon valley buyout.
Take IPVanish for example. It was sold numerous times. One time it gave away logs, and customers have no idea if the current company would do that or not. PIA’s ownership held true agaisnt the no logs policy, but who is to say Kape will?