Private Internet Access For Mac

These days, simply accessing the Internet means giving up on your privacy. Almost every online service collects some personal information and uses it either for profit to improve your experience. Don’t despair, however, because there are steps you can take to minimize the amount of information these companies have access to, such as using a VPN service.

Private Internet Access is an old name on the VPN scene, as they have been around since 2010. All these years, the company has managed to provide a good, reliable service and maintain their promise of not keeping traffic logs, which is why their VPN is one of the most popular on the market.

Most of you are probably familiar with the details, but they are still worth covering. When you connect to the Internet without a VPN, your traffic is not encrypted and can be accessed by your ISP or anyone else trying to spy on you. No matter what you are doing on the web, no one wants their actions to be monitored.

The second main reason is anonymity. Online services love to collect any bit of information they can get their hands on and use it for various purposes. A lot can be learned just from your public IP, including your location and browsing habits. VPNs not only help you remain anonymous, but they can unlock access to content that is not available to visitors from certain countries.

As I’ve already mentioned, PIA has been around for quite a while. The company has always claimed that it stores no traffic logs, which is probably the main deciding factor when choosing a VPN service. There have been two cases, in 2016 and 2018, when London Trust Media was asked by the FBI to provide the traffic logs of users involved in court cases, and on both accounts the company had no information to provide, thus proving their claims to be true.

Private Internet Access has numerous servers around the world, and it always ranks very well when it comes to download speed. You shouldn’t expect to be slowed down much by using the VPN, which is great news for users who like to transfer a lot of files. On a related note, the service also supports P2P.

You can connect from up to 5 devices simultaneously, and apps are available for macOS, Windows, Linux, Android and iOS, as well as extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Opera.

While the company has kept their word when it comes to not storing traffic logs thus far, it is worth remembering that they are located in the United States, a founding member of the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance. The US doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to respecting the privacy of their own or other countries’ citizens, so it is something to keep in mind.

The macOS PIA client is a very well designed app, allowing you to connect to any region easily and create a list of favorite servers that you use regularly. It is controlled from an unobtrusive menu bar icon, and it can be configured to establish a connection as soon as your open your Mac.

The app is very intuitive, but it also allows advanced users to customize a wide range of security-related parameters. You can turn on PIA MACE, the service’s ad, tracker and malware blocker, enable the VPN kill switch and IPv6 leak protection, as well as reduce IP packet size. Of course, you also have the option of using your preferred data encryption method.

If you’re looking to start using a VPN or switch to a new one, Private Internet Access should be one of your main candidates. It is fast, secure and relatively cheap, and it can help you maintain some semblance of privacy in a word where pretty much everything you do online is being monitored.