PURE VPN Question

[dddave]

I've been using "PURE VPN" for about 6 months now and am generally satisfied with it's performance but I'm puzzled by the following.

When I open PURE and select "United States" as my connection source, often after a bit of icon spinning, I will get a strong looking connection but the Location bar will say "Bangkok, Thailand", not somewhere in the US, then when I open "Google", it comes up as the "Indonesian" page, though in English.

The connection still seems to function as a VPN should... Sites like "Daily Mail" or other routinely blocked pages load and run normally.  

Can someone explain what's going on?

Edited December 15, 2016 by dddave

[clokwise]

Yeah, just yesterday I explicitly selected my regular preset for Los Angeles, USA and it came back with a IP located in the UK. Not sure what's going on either.

 

 

[DaveBKK]

Just means that whatever site you're using to GEO-locate the IP hasn't updated their database recently. Or the VPN company or whoever was assigned the IP didn't report or update location. 

[Pib]

A couple of things regarding use of the PureVPN app, when you select just the U.S. for a connection (or any country...just using US as an example), the app could connect you to any city in the U.S. that PureVPN has servers at.   Like you might end up being connected to LA, SF, Houston, Chicago, etc., because you did say just connect you to the U.S. when not using their other method of selecting a specific city to connect to.

 

Now if you ask PureVPN tech about this they will simply say they are connecting you to the "fastest" server available in the U.S....whether it's really the fastest is debatable...if you are in Thailand and it connects you to New York I seriously doubt the NY connection is faster than a say an LA connection....and one thing for sure the latency/ping time from Thailand will be significantly longer with an East Coast connection versus a West Coast connection 

 

Now if you just need an IP address anywhere in the U.S., then connecting to any city in the U.S. is OK but if you want/need to connect to a specific city say for video streaming purposes, your U.S. bank ibanking logging an IP connection in a certain area/city of the U.S., etc., then just being connected to any U.S. PureVPN server may not be what you want.  And in some cases even email systems/banking systems/etc., may challenge your logon if your history of logons say had all been from say Los Angeles/west coast and all of a sudden you are now logging in from New York/East coast.  It has happened to me a few times with gmail, paypal, and google accounts.   When I make a VPN connection to the U.S. I want to use LA as first choice and SF as a second choice in case I can't make an LA connection or the LA is slow form some reason.  And I also use Singapore for a lot of VPN connections since some U.S. govt sites don't block connections from Singapore but do from Thailand.

 

Basically, unless I just want to play around with the PureVPN app and connect to a bunch of various countries/cities around the world like doing some speedtesting with and without VPN, I just use Singapore, LA, and SF.    AND I rarely use the app (Windows or Android versions) because I just setup manual PPTP/L2TP/SSTP VPN connections in Windows (a.k.a. Windows dialer) and Android to those three locations.  

 

And to improve the first time connection percentage/reliability in setting up those manual connections I don't use the Host Name server addresses like given at this PureVPN webpage but instead I look up the IP Address for those Host Names and use the IP Address instead of the Host Name when setting up the manual connections.   This seems to improve connection reliability to around 100%.  Whereas just using the Host Name you still on occasions (not often) be redirected to another connection in another city...like you wanted to connect to LA but it connects you to Houston.  Using the IP Address ensures you are connected to the city/server of choice.  I won't go into details on how to do that....but it's easy and you can google up the answers.

 

I also notice when using the app you might actually get a VPN connection to a location, but the PureVPN app still indicates you are connected say to Thailand....this is just a case of the app no being able to correctly retrieve the location info.  And you also need to confirm you truly did connect to a U.S. location by doing an IP location check, because maybe the VPN connection to the U.S. just didn't occur...got redirected to somewhere else.

 

I too am very happy with my PureVPN "when not using their apps';"  instead, just using manual Windows/Android connections.

 

 

 

 

 

[KhunBENQ]

Bumping this just to point to a very reasonably priced offer for PureVPN.

2 year subscription for $70.80 (2.95 per month).

I am considering to order today.

 

My current stuff (CyberGhost) is running until December but I am less than impressed with the performance.

 

[janclaes47]

7 minutes ago, KhunBENQ said:

Bumping this just to point to a very reasonably priced offer for PureVPN.

2 year subscription for $70.80 (2.95 per month).

I am considering to order today.

 

My current stuff (CyberGhost) is running until December but I am less than impressed with the performance.

 

 

If you get it from Neowin deals you will get the exact same for $89 for a lifetime subscription.

 

https://deals.neowin.net/sales/lifetime-of-purevpn

 

And if you let me order it for you, I'll get $10, and you get $10 for a next purchase of anything on Neowin deals

[dddave]

I'm ticked at myself because I let my Pure go into automatic renewal this past month, same price as KhunBENQ, $70/2years.   In March and April, PURE was offering "Lifetime" subscription for $60....I should have cancelled my current subscription and re-subscribed.

 

Of course, the way things are today, most "Lifetime" offers (fitness clubs, travel plans, insurance, marriage) are good only until the purveyor decides that "Lifetime" has ended..".Sorry, cancelled."

[janclaes47]

12 minutes ago, dddave said:

I'm ticked at myself because I let my Pure go into automatic renewal this past month, same price as KhunBENQ, $70/2years.   In March and April, PURE was offering "Lifetime" subscription for $60....I should have cancelled my current subscription and re-subscribed.

 

Of course, the way things are today, most "Lifetime" offers (fitness clubs, travel plans, insurance, marriage) are good only until the purveyor decides that "Lifetime" has ended..".Sorry, cancelled."

 

Pure VPN isn't a Thai company, so i guess they are bound by some consumer protection laws, so they can not just cancel unless the company goes tits up.

 

Of course, and this can also happen during your 2 year subscription, so I would prefer to gamble another $19 just in case they're still there after the 24th month.

 

By the way I purchased a lifetime sub with another vpn more than 2 years ago, much cheaper than this one, and today it's still working and performing well.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 4, 2017 by janclaes47