Private Internet Access - Port Forwarding

[Weggy]

Hi,

I'm trying to make my NAS accessible when utilising my Private Internet Access VPN. I assume to do this I need port forwarding?

I've found the below, which I believe might be what I'm looking for:
Manual PIA VPN Connections

GitHub - pia-foss/manual-connections: Scripts for manual connections to Private Internet Access

Scripts for manual connections to Private Internet Access - pia-foss/manual-connections

github.com

However, it doesn't appear to be that simple to follow. I was wondering if someone here might be able to give me more guidance on how I could achieve this?

Many Thanks

 

[Weggy]

Bah! I've just seen that above link requires wireguard which I know doesnt function on my router. So I guess that's that?

 

[eibgrad]

Last I checked, you should be able to use it w/ OpenVPN.

But imo, you couldn't have picked a worse provider than PIA for port forwarding. They make it incredibly complicated and constraining. I even wrote a script for it a few years ago, then just got tired of supporting it given the constant changes to their API (yes, you need to implement their API!).

Last time I used it, you had to use specific servers. And you only get one port. And it's dynamically assigned at runtime! Imagine the difficulty of communicating that assigned port back to the remote user. And you need some kind of keepalive if you don't want to lose it.

Compare that to something like AirVPN, which makes it simple.

You provide Remote Port Forwarding, what is it? - AirVPN

 

[Weggy]

Yeah I did read that they make it, painful

The thing is I'm not sure how much I trust other VPNs. For example, I'd never trust Express VPN. Is AirVPN any good in terms of logs?

 

[eibgrad]

I only referenced AirVPN to make it clear that there are others who make this far easier to implement. Other than that, I know no more about them than you.

FWIW, I'm currently an ExpressVPN user, and they don't offer port forwarding for security/privacy reasons (so they say). And my subscription expires *today*! And I'm hesitant about renewing w/ them given their recent acquisition by Kape Technologies (ugg). So I was looking into Mullvad, and they seem pretty interesting. You can even pay anonymously w/ cash! And it appears they support port forwarding too (like all, they have certain restrictions, but *anything* is better than PIA in this regard).

 

[festus77]

@Weggy - been using AirVPN for quite some time now - no issues, although I don't use port forwarding. I trust them more than anybody I've tried. Read up about them and peruse their forums - I think you'll like them.

About us - AirVPN, the story so far: a magniloquent tale <img alt="Smile" src="/static/img/icons/32x32/smile.png"> - AirVPN

Privacy Notice and Terms - AirVPN

 

[Cornel]

I moved from PIA to Torguard for the port forwarding alone.

 

[eibgrad]

BTW, to be fair to PIA, I understand why they're doing it this way.

Port forwarding (at least in theory) might make it possible for someone to backtrack your activity, should they be so inclined. And so by making the process dynamic and complicated, the idea is to make it that more difficult to tie any activity back to you. But in the process, it means the user's life has become that much more complicated as well. It might be one thing to implement this directly on the client, but the router? You can do it (I know because I did it), but it's such a pain to implement in that environment, esp. given its remote from the client.

Most other providers have decided to offer the feature in a much simpler fashion and let the user worry about whether it might compromise their anonymity/privacy. I consider PIA's solution only suitable for the truly paranoid.