That’s great Steve. Glad it’s working well for you. We only recommend services we love and use ourselves. Glad you’re having a similar experience.

Hi William,

Never used ExpressVPN. I can, however, vouch for PIA. Works great.

Thanks for your very informative posts! As a former university faculty member, we have access to a CISCO VPN that we can connect to on our home computers. Is CISCO AnyConnect the same kind of VPN you mentioned?

Hi Cliff,

Jack just wrote that up for us – https://www.groovypost.com/howto/use-vpn-home-router-protect-iot-devices/

Take it a read. Already getting a few comments to talk about the option.

Thanks!

-S

Steve…Is that promised article up now?

I had previously tried Express VPN, but was not satisfied with the slowdown that occurred. I signed up for PIA based on your article 3 weeks ago and have had absolutely no issues – product works as you described. Thanks for the information.

I know….. It’s on the backlog. I need to get that up on the site! OK – I will get it done (I promise) in December 2017. It’s an awesome feature. Will get that done for ya.

Hi Jim – Yes, I *AM* pushing PIA. And as an affiliate, if you click the link and sign-up, I will get a percentage of the sale. I will add a note to the article so that’s more clear.

That said, the only reason I recommend PIA to my readers here on groovyPost is that I do feel it is the BEST VPN service out there. I’ve tested most of the paid and free services and I can honestly say – PIA is the best and it’s the service I personally pay for and use. It just works, and it works really really well on all my devices including mobile, mac and windows. Its servers are all over the planet and, it’s extremely fast. It has no issues keeping up with my 100 Meg Download/Upload speeds. At work, I use it for testing out IT services from around the planet by jumping into those countries via PIA’s international servers.

For these reasons, it’s on my list of services I personally recommend to my readers of 10+ years here on groovyPost.

Opera just retired its VPN service so it’s no longer available.

Also, for me, I like PIA because it’s high-speed and I can use it for more than just browser traffic. Also, with PIA, you can jump into VPN servers across the planet. Very handy for testing I do regularly for my blog.

When traveling internationally, I use the PIA VPN client on my iPhone and PC so I can tunnel all my traffic back to the USA. Combine this with WiFi calling and it is very handy for using mobile internationally. ;)

Here’s a quick article on Wi-Fi calling: https://www.groovypost.com/howto/enable-wifi-calling-iphone-ios/

Hi Chris. Security tools on your computer will continue to work as normal. The only thing PIA VPN will do is setup a secure tunnel to PIA’s VPN Servers so that when you surf the internet, your ISP and others will not be able to tap into your session and see where you are going/doing.

Some tracking is still possible – For example, if you login to GMAIL through the VPN, Google will see the IP you are using. However, they will see the IP of the Shared VPN Server, not your home address. Your ISP, however, will have no clue where you are going/doing etc…

For me, this is CRITICAL when using Public WIFI. No one will be able to tap into and listen to your connection and harvest your data and account credentials etc… Just an example.

Hi Chris – If you have access to your work computer, you would need to install the VPN client on your work computer and then use it for surfing the internet. To access local resources at work, you would disable the VPN.

IT Administrators at times check to see if VPN’s are being used but most will not block the service. It depends on your company.

I suggest PIA here on gP because it’s a quality product. It has high-speed servers, VPN server spread throughout the world and has a solid policy on not keeping any data on its users. There are other VPN providers out there but, PIA is the best by far that I’ve tested.

Thanks :)

Hi Alex,

Yes… Hulu is the same. I run into that as well when I set up PIA to run on my ASUS router. The issue is with Netflix and Hulu, not the VPN service. Services like HULU and Netflix have restrictions around which content a person can receive based on the country they are living in. It’s a licensing issue which Netflix and Hulu are trying to enforce by blocking the various IP’s from the known VPN services.

Although there are solutions to get around the blacklisting…. they are not exactly simple solutions. Plus, I think that starts to get into a gray area…. which we probably won’t cover here at gP.

I’ve been using PIA for well over a year and really love it except when using Netflix. I’d set up the VPN on a router to save having to install something on every device, but this broke Netflix access which my customers complained about instantly (wife and kids.) Now I have a web proxy running on a server that uses the VPN and configure the browsers to use the proxy.

I’d tried creating alternate routing paths on the router for Netflix, but could never get it all to work.

Shiri

Great points Richards. Thanks for bringing that up. Probably warrants a follow-up article on how to use it, which services don’t like it (HULU for example….) etc…

But great feedback!

-S

Heya Nathan! Yeah – can’t say I disagree. The price is right for the level of protection it gives you on all devices.

Hi Jim,

Understood. I can honestly say, I’ve been using PIA for over a year now and I love it. Great service that just works. Super fast, great features support all devices. A+.

I can 100% recommend it to all my readers for sure.

-S