PIA blocked by country

PrivateNomad

Howdy,
  Trying to setup PIA app on my Android, but apparently the country I live in have blocked all of PIA domains & subdomains. So trying to login to my account using PIA Android app continuous to fail.

Any idea how to go around this?

Cheers

Khariz

Unfortunately PIA doesn't support any of the methods you could use to circumvent this (especially over Android), which include SSL/SSH support (stunnel support) and obfsproxy support.  Both would "hide" the fact that you are trying to connect to PIA in its own encrypted connection.

There are many VPN providers that provide stuff like this.  I'm courteous enough not to mention them out loud on a competing forum.

paddy

Khariz said:

Unfortunately PIA doesn't support any of the methods you could use to circumvent this (especially over Android), which include SSL/SSH support (stunnel support) and obfsproxy support.  Both would "hide" the fact that you are trying to connect to PIA in its own encrypted connection.

There are many VPN providers that provide stuff like this.  I'm courteous enough not to mention them out loud on a competing forum.

Is there a reason why PIA doesn't offer these features? And would such features mask the use of a VPN from websites that try to detect it, such as Netflix?

Khariz

I can't attest to why PIA doesn't offer some of the most popular and requested features that many of their competitors do.

But no, that won't help with Netflix.  It's just encapsulating your connection the VPN service itself and hiding from your ISP/Government, etc.  It's not preventing the destination server from seeing that the IP address is from a VPN service/Hosting Company/etc.

HawkTroy

I'm only speculating here, but providing reliable obfuscation to circumvent government censorship can be an uphill battle, that maybe PIA doesn't have the resource to get into.

For example, China has been continuously upgrading its "Great Firewall" to block all foreign VPNs. VPN providers that do provide obfuscation have to keep up in this virtual arms race, and even then they fail from time to time. They typically charge at a much higher price than PIA.

Khariz

Yeah, legit points.  As long as PIA is okay with this type of customer going to another provider, that's fine.  The price point argument can be true, but there are providers out there that offer both a low price and these services.  Just depends on what you need.