Is it at all possible to use PIA without installing any software on Windows and/or Mac? I am pretty sure that a few years ago (~2013) when I first signed up this was possible. Is it no longer possible, or do they just no longer publish how to do it?
Depends on what you mean by install. There is an OpenVPN configuration you can use for compatible software. You also can configure the VPN on compatible routers, or there are browser extensions for Firefox & Chrome.
IIRC you can use an OpenVPN client instead of PIA’s own.
Does PIA no longer support IPsec tunnels?
The only way I can see to do this without any added installations to your computer is to simply use a router that has OpenWRT for example and set it to assign a given mac address on the network to only use the VPN if you don’t want the VPN to cover the whole network. This would of course be using a router’s built in OpenVPN systems which the majority do have and some of them may have options for Wireguard available as well. Not very many routers have the ability to assign a VPN on a per mac address basis though, some pre bought ones that do have this functionality include routers from Gl.Inet that I’ve personally tried, and they do run off of OpenWRT.
Yes. I do that already on my NAS. But both Windows and Mac don’t include OpenVPN in the OS.
When I say no install It doesn’t preclude configuring what comes with the OS, just no 3rd party software.
So that limits me to IKEv2, IPSec, and L2TP on Mac and iOS. And similar on Windows. I know they might not be as secure as Wireguard, or OpenVPN. But they don’t require me to trust and install anything other than the OS.
That’s my question. I haven’t been able to find any docs on their site. They only seem to support their app and open vpn.
Linux doesn’t have an OpenVPN client by default either, but most distributions have it in their repositories.
There’s plenty of open source OpenVPN options for MacOS and Windows.
For MacOS with homebrew, you can just
brew install openvpn
Not sure about Windows, but you can get the source for the “official” OpenVPN client. https://openvpn.net/source-code/
They have a few other options but none of them meet your requirements and generally by PIA’s own admission are simply not good solutions.
It’s also not just about trust. It’s about being able to walk up to any computer and start tunneling my traffic. Sorta like I can walk up to any Unix system and start editing text with vi. I don’t have to install anything.
But any Unix system won’t have the clients either.
Ok. It’s like walking up to any Windows system and being able to use Notepad. Or any Mac and being able to use vi.
My original question didn’t include *ix systems because it’s truly rare for me to come upon one in the wild.