Just an example – China government has the most sophisticated real-time censoring firewall. There is over 400 millions Chinese surfing the internet every day. It’s just needed to write a banned word in the address bar or in the search box or open a web site containing banned words and bang, it’s blocked. It really doesn’t take much thinking to figure out the enormous computing power is behind this firewall. Now think what stops the NSA to build a super computer just like Chinese have and which can break easily any commonly used encryption.

I took a quick look at PIA service for curiosity shake. They claim they have 657 Gbps+ network and 657 servers. I downloaded their openvpn configurations to see how they configure their servers. Simple counting shows there is 17 nodes. Just to mention 657 gbit connection would cost shit loads of money. My friend is working for a datacenter and they do bandwidth wholesale so I asked him for some estimate how much PIA pays for their Internet bill.

Now when a company lies you upfront about some simple facts anyone can verify, can you trust them when they say they don’t log anything ? I don’t think so.

I opened a few of their openvpn profiles, they all contain only “comp-lzo”, there’s not a single reference to AES-256!!!! A quick check in openvpn manual reveals comp-lzo is just compression. Therefore these openvpn profiles lack encryption. So much about “alien tech” encryption.

They have lost any credibility so far. Let’s dig a bit further. A simple googling reveals London Trust Media, Inc, a company behind PIA, is an USA based company with headquarters in Los Angeles. The owner, Andrew Lee, is also an USA citizen. That’s no-no for privacy – USA based company operated by an USA citizen.

No matter how strong encryption PIA uses or even if they employ an alien tech for encryption, it’s just one letter from the NSA required to get a hold of all data they have.

Honestly, my impression about PIA as a privacy provider is not so great and I would not be surprised if NSA is behind this company and advertising here their “alien tech” encryption just to get more naive people to use them.

For anyone who wants true privacy, it’s best to avoid all these “VPN providers” and their “alien tech” and build up your own setup. Setting up openvpn software is really not complicated, there are many tutorials on the web.