PIA (private internet access) Referral Code

Before comparing Private Internet Access against ExpressVPN or CyberGhost, there is a fact that makes the comparison less useful than it looks: the same company owns all three, and some of the sites that review them.

Private Internet Access is a VPN service. The thing worth knowing before anything else is who owns it, because in a product category whose entire value proposition is trust, ownership is not trivia.

PIA is owned by Kape Technologies. Kape also owns CyberGhost, ZenMate/Intego, and — since a September 2021 acquisition for close to $1 billion — ExpressVPN. Those are four of the most heavily marketed VPNs a consumer is likely to encounter, under one owner.

Kape was previously named Crossrider, a browser-extension and adtech business. Companies change direction and a former name is not by itself an argument about a current product, but in a category sold on privacy the history of the corporate entity is legitimately part of the assessment, and it is rarely mentioned in the material that recommends these services.

Which leads to the more consequential point. Kape also owns a collection of VPN "review" websites. If you research VPNs the way most people do — searching for comparisons, reading a "best VPN" list, checking a review site — there is a real chance that the product, its main competitor, and the site ranking them all report to the same owner. That does not mean any particular review is dishonest. It means the independence you were relying on when you chose the review may not exist, and there is no reliable way to tell from the page itself.

There is a second consolidation alongside it, covered on our NordVPN and Surfshark pages: Nord Security merged with Surfshark on 2 February 2022, so those two are also one group. Between Kape and Nord Security sit a substantial share of the VPNs a consumer will ever be shown. "Compare a few VPNs" often means comparing two owners.

A note on the referral, which HANDOFF-level readers of this site will recognise. Consumer VPN programmes in this category are usually affiliate arrangements rather than referrals: commission paid on a sale, often at rates that are a large fraction of the first payment, with tiered structures for volume. That is a commercial relationship, generally carrying a disclosure expectation, and it is the reason VPN recommendations are so abundant online. When you read a VPN comparison, the useful question is not whether the reviewer liked it but what the reviewer is paid if you click.

If you want to assess a VPN rather than a marketing funnel, the things that actually differentiate them are: who owns the company and under which jurisdiction, whether the no-logs claim has been tested by an independent audit or in court, whether the clients are open-source, and what happens to your session if the connection drops. PIA has a longer public record on some of those than most, which is a fair point in its favour — and it is separate from who owns it now.