PIA is banned in my location. Any solution?

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1

I’m trying to use PIA in an authoritarian sh!thole whose authorities are hell-bent on blocking all public VPN services. I have an active subscription plan and PIA worked fine until recently. A couple of weeks ago they finally blocked PIA. Now it looks like this in the latest Windows app:

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Servers are unreachable

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All servers are greyed out, nothing can be selected and connected to. It’s the same for both OpenVPN and Wireguard protocol.

Even PIA’s website is not accessible from the browser:

Secure Connection Failed
An error occurred during a connection to www.privateinternetaccess.com. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR
Error code: PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR

I assume it has been blocked by DNS and/or IPs.

Is there anything I can change in the settings to make it work again? I would appreciate any suggestions.

2

I would try running PIA through a socks proxy. I don’t know where you are but I just got back from Egypt, and it worked pretty well there. I followed this guide:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/s/Jk7bhNP3go

3

Change dns on your router and/or on your pc to a public DNS like cloudflare or google maybe.

4

A place I worked at did the same thing.

I was able to get around it by connecting to PIA while on cell data and then connect to the wifi at work. Never had a problem doing it this way.

5

Did you try openVPN (separate program) and configs from Pia?
Helped me, when couple mouth back it stop working via client.

6

maybe you can try a decentralized vpn like https://www.sentinel.co/

7

Any luck with tor? Maybe renting a cheap server somewhere else and setting up your own vpn could work?

8

If you’re able to (hard to do if the domains are completely blocked) try sending an email to the support team. When I was at PIA we could sometimes supply files to bootstrap the initial server list and work past this kind of issue! (or supply openapi/wireguard files with direct IPs instead of hostnames to use with generic vpn clients)

9

Tried that. No luck. Google and Cloudflare DNS don’t work. But if I enable DNS-over-HTTPS in Firefox then PIA’s website opens. My ISP is definitely messing with the connection (is it called DNS poisoning?)

10

So PIA client can get connection information on an unaffected network, successfully connect to a server and reconnect when you switch to a restricted connection, is that right? Interesting idea. The problem is cellular providers also have blocked PIA and other VPNs here.

11

I didn’t try OpenVPN app with PIA configs yet. But my router has OpenVPN support and I have PIA configs installed there. It also fails to connect now. I can try Windows app for OpenVPN but I doubt this will help.

12

Tor or private VPN is a valid solution for a problem of getting access to blocked resources. But then I wouldn’t need PIA. I hope I can get PIA working.

13

Thanks for the suggestion. But the list of servers on the Multi Hop page in settings is empty. It looks like PIA client can’t reach its command servers to get connection configs and does nothing to circumvent the block.

14

If you aren’t using their DNS, there shouldn’t be a way for them to poison it.

15

Maybe just try connecting on your wifi at home and then moving out of range to see if the connection persists when you transfer to cell data or work wifi.

I think the problem is that the blocking networks are preventing the initial handshake.

16

What do you mean? Every ISP is forced by the law here to install DPI hardware. That’s how they block most of the resources and protocols. For example it resets HTTPS connections to banned websites as I mentioned earlier. Only enabling DNS-over-HTTPS in Firefox allowed me to open PIA’s site right now.

17

You can nat rewrite it if you are in control of the pipe

18

DNS is entirely unencrypted and unauthenticated

19

Windows 11 has native OS-wide support for DoH. If you are still on Windows 10, check YogaDNS