airvpn vs pia for example? whats the main advantage

[kyrusdemnati 1]

ive been with airvpn for 3 years and wondering if i should change
are there better value services?

[BlueBanana 39]

No.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

You are asking whether you should change from AirVPN to PIA in AirVPN's forums? Did you expect a differentiated comparison?
Look around you. We're all biased here.

[LZ1 672]

6 hours ago, giganerd said:

You are asking whether you should change from AirVPN to PIA in AirVPN's forums? Did you expect a differentiated comparison?
Look around you. We're all biased here.

Hello!

One could say, that the real high stakes power move is to recommend that he switch to PIA, to find out why AirVPN is better .

[Rein874 2]

I think PIA was recently bought by the company that owns Cyberghost: Kape, which, for several reasons, has an extremely bad reputation.

[NoiselessOwl 26]

I see you're explicit with word value. If you are interested in saving a bit of money, then PIA would be your best interests. There are multiple advantage to remain on AirVPN over PIA:

• Torrenting are allowed on any server. PIA only allow torrents on specific server, I don't know if this policy changed.
• Remote Port Forwarding. If you torrents, AirVPN have port forwarding process in place and still hide your IP. When the peer connect to you, it will communicate to your torrent client via AirVPN server as a middlemen. It will direct the communication request to AirVPN server, then the server will redirect it to you. I believe only 3 VPN providers (including AirVPN) out of thousands of VPN offers this service. And best of all, you don't need to configure it in the router.
• AirVPN's Network Lock over PIA's Kill Switch. Network Lock is vastly superior over other VPN's Kill switch. Network Lock use strict firewall rules (via Windows Firewall) that handle the traffic than relying on other VPN's monitoring. That mean every single bit (even sub-bit if there is a thing) of traffic will go through Window Firewall via Network Lock. VPN only can kill the connection as long the VPN client is active. If the other VPN client crashed, then you are SOL since the floodgate will open which will expose you back. Network Lock put the control in Window Firewall. If Eddie crashed, you are remain safe since Window Firewall handle the traffic. Even it persist through restart until you start up Eddie then deactivate the network lock. That is why Kill Switch is ineffective.
• Local LAN in Network Lock. Even with Network Lock, I can print to my printer in my local LAN as long I have "Allow Lan/Private" enabled. My phone communicating with my laptop. My Emby client communicating with Emby Server in computer. If "Allow Lan/Private" is disabled, LAN and outside are fully blocked and cannot communicate to my laptop as long the Network Lock is active.
• Protocols. Based on my experience with PIA (more than 4 years ago), it didn't have the flexibility of protocols of what AirVPN have. If Eddie attempt to connect to AirVPN server, it will attempt to use the first protocol which is UDP 443. If Eddie detect a block, it will move on to the next line which is TCP 443. If that is block, it will keep going through the list until it successfully connect to the server. PIA's UDP is blocked in my university, they blocked the majority of UDP. And it seem that PIA does not have a fallback option which cause PIA to keep going through the server name which cause it stuck to be in a loop. My first attempt with AirVPN that it successfully connected to the server after the first protocol failed (UDP). I don't know if PIA recently expand their protocols. AirVPN have over 20 protocols as a fallback option.
• OpenVPN. AirVPN offer OpenVPN config files if the device you are using don't have Eddie.
• Personal Support from Staff and Community. You get a personal support from the staff and the community to ensure you get the support you need. Staff might be slow to respond, usually a day or two. But you also get a support from the community like us who through the similar experience and guide you to the right place.
• Transparency. AirVPN is transparent with their mission and their goals. If something happen to the server, they will let us know within reasonable time. They don't do what NordVPN handled with their server recently. Even AirVPN immediately informed us about the Russian server shutdown, Recently PIA informed their consumer of South African server is being removed. Consumers there seem to be upset that they are not informed a reasonable time about it.

That is so far I know in my head. There are likely to be more but this is what I know for now. I never had issues with AirVPN and they always provide the highest quality of services as possible to us. That why I am their consumer for more than 4 years.

[john56 0]

On 11/21/2019 at 5:52 PM, NoiselessOwl said:

I see you're explicit with word value. If you are interested in saving a bit of money, then PIA would be your best interests. There are multiple advantage to remain on AirVPN over PIA:

• Torrenting are allowed on any server. PIA only allow torrents on specific server, I don't know if this policy changed.
• Remote Port Forwarding. If you torrents, AirVPN have port forwarding process in place and still hide your IP. When the peer connect to you, it will communicate to your torrent client via AirVPN server as a middlemen. It will direct the communication request to AirVPN server, then the server will redirect it to you. I believe only 3 VPN providers (including AirVPN) out of thousands of VPN offers this service. And best of all, you don't need to configure it in the router.
• AirVPN's Network Lock over PIA's Kill Switch. Network Lock is vastly superior over other VPN's Kill switch. Network Lock use strict firewall rules (via Windows Firewall) that handle the traffic than relying on other VPN's monitoring. That mean every single bit (even sub-bit if there is a thing) of traffic will go through Window Firewall via Network Lock. VPN only can kill the connection as long the VPN client is active. If the other VPN client crashed, then you are SOL since the floodgate will open which will expose you back. Network Lock put the control in Window Firewall. If Eddie crashed, you are remain safe since Window Firewall handle the traffic. Even it persist through restart until you start up Eddie then deactivate the network lock. That is why Kill Switch is ineffective.
• Local LAN in Network Lock. Even with Network Lock, I can print to my printer in my local LAN as long I have "Allow Lan/Private" enabled. My phone communicating with my laptop. My Emby client communicating with Emby Server in computer. If "Allow Lan/Private" is disabled, LAN and outside are fully blocked and cannot communicate to my laptop as long the Network Lock is active.
• Protocols. Based on my experience with PIA (more than 4 years ago), it didn't have the flexibility of protocols of what AirVPN have. If Eddie attempt to connect to AirVPN server, it will attempt to use the first protocol which is UDP 443. If Eddie detect a block, it will move on to the next line which is TCP 443. If that is block, it will keep going through the list until it successfully connect to the server. PIA's UDP is blocked in my university, they blocked the majority of UDP. And it seem that PIA does not have a fallback option which cause PIA to keep going through the server name which cause it stuck to be in a loop. My first attempt with AirVPN that it successfully connected to the server after the first protocol failed (UDP). I don't know if PIA recently expand their protocols. AirVPN have over 20 protocols as a fallback option.
• OpenVPN. AirVPN offer OpenVPN config files if the device you are using don't have Eddie.
• Personal Support from Staff and Community. You get a personal support from the staff and the community to ensure you get the support you need. Staff might be slow to respond, usually a day or two. But you also get a support from the community like us who through the similar experience and guide you to the right place.
• Transparency. AirVPN is transparent with their mission and their goals. If something happen to the server, they will let us know within reasonable time. They don't do what NordVPN handled with their server recently. Even AirVPN immediately informed us about the Russian server shutdown, Recently PIA informed their consumer of South African server is being removed. Consumers there seem to be upset that they are not informed a reasonable time about it.

That is so far I know in my head. There are likely to be more but this is what I know for now. I never had issues with AirVPN and they always provide the highest quality of services as possible to us. That why I am their consumer for more than 4 years.

Stay away from PIA, they truly have shot themselves in the foot with the sale to Kape Technologies, I think air and a lot of other vpn providers are going to get a lot of new customers, I  will be subscribeing  to air soon, unfortunately I still have 12 months to go with PIA on my contract. PIA's  subreddit page is full of very unhappy customers, and I am one of them

[rheasearch 2]

Only thing i can think of is PIA offers proxy, ad blocking dns and has been proven in us courts not to keep logs
In terms of security I'm going to quote this article by torrentfreak https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/

Who would you trust with your data more based of the answers given?

Question:
11. Are any of your VPN servers hosted by third parties? If so, what measures do you take to prevent those partners from snooping on any inbound and/or outbound traffic? Do you use your own DNS servers? 

PIA

Quote

11. We utilize our own bare metal servers in third-party data centers that are operated by trusted friends and, now, business partners whom we have met and on which we have completed serious due diligence. Our servers are located in facilities including 100TB, Choopa, Leaseweb, among others.

Airvpn:

Quote

 

11. We do not own datacenters, so our servers are all hosted in third-party datacenters, either when they are our property or they are rented. Mitigation against data snooping by datacenters is carefully applied. Mitigation includes, but is not limited to:

– no database is kept on the VPN servers
– all logging is sent to /dev/null
– everything is kept in RAM except the parts required for the bootstrap of the server
– any change to the system is recorded and sent encrypted to us (and not stored on the server)
– unnecessary kernel or system parts are discarded
– DH keys are on the server, but they are unique per each server
– IPMI is disabled or access to it is restricted to specific VPN or specific IP addresses
– VPN servers do not communicate directly with backend servers: any necessary communication passes through reverse proxies, so that single datacenters can not know where the databases (client keys, certificates, etc.) are located.

We talk about mitigation because the main threat in this respect is simply inspecting all incoming packets and correlating them with all outgoing packets. There is no known method to ascertain for sure when such “black boxes”, external to the server, are operating, simply because they work “outside”. For such a threat model, again we recommend partition of trust and that’s also the reason for which we support Tor so strongly by running or financing a great number of relays and exit nodes.

 

[NoiselessOwl 26]

equivalent

10 hours ago, rheasearch said:

Who would you trust with your data more based of the answers given?

I'm more of a small provider supporter than the too big to fail providers. PIA is one of the largest VPN providers and they're indeed a bigger target for governments and whatnot. And often when the business get too big, their services suffered which can lead them to ignore the consumers' desire. It is a common theme across all industries. I prefer AirVPN because they are smaller than PIA and they are listening to their consumers. They are willing to take in features and improvement to make AirVPN an amazing VPN. What is interesting is that AirVPN have more features and flexibility than other VPN providers I came across (PIA, TunnelBear, ExpressVPN, BTGuard, and NordVPN)

PIA is recently acquired by company which have a negative reputation. As I stated my point, the largest the provider are, the largest target it will be. It seem this is the case.
 

10 hours ago, rheasearch said:

ad blocking dns

Ad-blocking DNS are indeed nice to have but I rather not to use it on DNS level that are outside of my control. There are several reason for this. 1) some videos are intertwined with ads that prevent them to load the video. If the DNS blocked that then I can't see the video at all. 2) some sites are intertwined with ads and would use anti-adblocker to prevent from viewing the content. Even with uBlock Origin to remove it, it still need to have some ads to allow uBlock Origin (or its equivalent) to block the anti-adblocker elements. 3) There is some sites I whitelisted because they are not obtrusive and I want to support their free contents with ads enabled. It is possible the sites I visited will have their ads blocked.

Yes, I could submit an ticket to the provider to whitelist and it will takes time. That would become a hassle to deal with. However, I will be going against the large users who want it blocked. So they have to serve the largest users who want it blocked. If I have Pi-Hole which use DNS level blocking which is fine for me since I can control and create rules for it. Ad-blocking DNS from providers removes that control from the consumers unless they have an options to allow consumers to control it.
 

10 hours ago, rheasearch said:

PIA

Quote

11. We utilize our own bare metal servers in third-party data centers that are operated by trusted friends and, now, business partners whom we have met and on which we have completed serious due diligence. Our servers are located in facilities including 100TB, Choopa, Leaseweb, among others.

Honestly, I wish providers would give more detail information than boilerplate or one-word/liner response.

Operated by trusted friends and, now, business partners whom we have met. This didn't put my mind at ease. Operated by trusted friends and business partners mean anything. Any person can be called as trusted friends. If they used that line as part of their response, then I have a hunch that something is really off. It felt like I have Mother-in-law gaslighting telling me this and I don't trust that at all. Also it felt is not professional response because who would stated "trusted friends" like that because it is ambiguous and didn't have any weight to it.