BBC and Sky news pages no longer viewable via PIA VPN

[stagger321]

Hi there,

I have had PrivateInternetAccess configured on my RT-AC86U (Merlin f/w) for a year or so now - no issues - connected to a London PIA server
A while ago iplayer stopped working, which was annoying - but not the end of the world.

What is more annoying a couple of weeks ago BBC and Sky news web sites stopped being accessible for any of my router connected devices.
At first I thought it was a glitch with the BBC, but no, it continues.

When I check on the PIA forum, someone else has also mentioned this, and PIA admin says:

I was able to establish a connection to bbc.co.uk while using the PIA application using any endpoint. To make this work, you will need to go into the PIA application settings, select the network tab on the left pane, and under the drop down menu for "Name Servers", select "Handshake"

Now thats fine and dandy, but I am not using a client based app to get to the VPN, I'm using the ASUS.
Is there a way round this for the ASUS?

Cheers, and Merry Christmas

 

[ColinTaylor]

Looking at this thread someone with asuswrt said:

What about the people that don't use the app?I have PIA set up on my router so everything in my house is covered. https://www.privateinternetaccess.c...rs/asuswrt-3/asuswrt-firmware-openvpn-setup-2

Is there a Custom Configuration tag to that forces a different DNS?

Edit:
Add the following to the Custom Config. (this is for Cloudflare change if you would like something else)

dhcp-option DNS 1.1.1.1
dhcp-option DNS 1.0.0.1

 

[frooty]

PIA have hit rock bottom & are in trouble - see my post about them here:

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/h...er-vpn-providers-384-5-07-10-18.30851/page-31

More info:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21584958

https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInt...erger_with_kape_technologies_addressing_your/

I advise you to cancel your subscription asap if you value your privacy & security like I & hundreds of other customers have.

I chose Mullvad btw.

 

[jegesq]

• @frooty

Nonsense. There is no verifiable evidence that PIA is engaging in any behaviors that were previously attributed in 2012 and prior to one of the other companies that Kape acquired several years ago (that other acquired entity was a known bad actor). In the 7 years since that acquisition, Kape (the parent entity of a number of formerly independent companies, which recently acquired PIA) completely refocused its business practices. All of the articles cited in your other post on SNB (and the sources linked within that post) reference not any activity or bad acts by PIA, but simply refer to other Kape subsidiaries that occurred long before Kape purchased those other entities.

Frankly, I don't trust any third party VPN provider completely, but PIA is among the better "least-worst" alternatives when it comes to third party VPN's.

 

[frooty]

@jegesq: You're entitled to your opinion of course. If you're happy trusting a company that has been dubbed "Israel's NSA", who is known to have injected malware/spyware, who has previously collected & sold user data with mentions in the panama papers leak, that is unable to access various websites (as OP mentioned above) etc, etc then that's fine - but 1000's of customers prefer not to.

https://www.hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-israel-privacy-concerns/

If you also think that every link I have provided is nonsense, that's fine too.....