Despite the huge increase in VPN usage across the United States following the news of the TikTok ban, it appears that even the best VPN services are not a safe solution for millions of Americans trying to access the popular social media platform. .
The message “Sorry, TikTok is not available at this time” will likely linger in the minds of the 170 million affected Americans for a while yet. The Chinese video-sharing service imposed the block in the early hours of Sunday, January 19, 2025, shortly after the TikTok ban or sale law expired. Many had anticipated that the TikTok block could be bypassed using a virtual private network, however, it turned out that this was not the case.
While TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, began restoring service on Sunday, questions remain. Why the best VPNs didn’t work? Furthermore, what could be a solution for Americans if this were to happen again?
TikTok VPNs and Bans
A virtual private network (VPN) is security software that encrypts all your Internet connections and masks your real IP address. The latter is a unique string of numbers that identifies your device on the Internet, primarily including its location.
Connecting to a VPN server located outside the country you are in is generally an easy way to bypass geo-restrictions online. It tricks your Internet Service Provider (ISP) into thinking you are browsing from somewhere else.
This is why Americans downloaded dozens of VPNs over the weekend of the TikTok ban. Proton VPN reported a 490% increase in US signups during that time. NordVPN also saw about eight times more new users than during a typical weekend, a company spokesperson told TechRadar.
Research by Top10VPN recorded an overall 827% increase in VPN demand as of the early hours of Sunday morning (local time). Experts at vpnMentor (see chart below) recorded an increase in demand starting on January 18, the day before TikTok was banned in the United States. “The surge in demand peaked with a massive 1,566% increase within minutes of the app closing in the country,” the experts noted.
Spikes in VPN usage are very common after widespread social media bans.
In 2024 alone, Proton VPN recorded 19 VPN spikes in 13 countries around the world. Less than a month into 2025, we’ve already seen VPN signups skyrocket in Venezuela as authorities blocked TikTok, Telegram, and other online resources.
So why wasn’t a VPN enough to bypass the US TikTok ban?
How the US TikTok ban is different
While it’s unclear how the TikTok ban was implemented in the US, it appears to be more of the usual IP-based blocking. Many American TikTok users have complained that they were unable to access TikTok even when using a VPN provider.
“While I’m just speculating, it appears they marked accounts as US based on SIM card details and literally shut them down,” Simon Migliano, head of research at Top10VPN, told TechRadar.
Migliano explained that this meant that regardless of whether you accessed TikTok from outside the US, whether your phone had a US SIM, or whether you had US geolocation data associated with your account, you couldn’t access your account. This may also be why people might be able to access TikTok better from a desktop computer than through a mobile device.
ok so vpn works ONLY IF you are on the tiktok website, not the app, and you can’t log in to a US account either lol pic.twitter.com/3oscHut46eJanuary 19, 2025
According to David Peterson, CEO of Proton VPN, the difference with similar social media bans lies in who does the blocking in the first place.
He said: “If the blocks are implemented by the applications themselves, they have more visibility into user accounts and can make decisions to block certain clients based on information that goes beyond a simple IP address.”
After all, internet watchdog NetBlocks saw no signs of widespread network-level restrictions imposed by US internet providers, indicating that the blocking was simply due to TikTok turning off its own service in USA
When Venezuela blocked TikTok, for example, the government actively blocked TikTok’s domain throughout the country. VPNs, therefore, had no problems for users to bypass the ban.
How to access TikTok in the US
TikTok is slowly coming back online in the US, meaning you’ll soon be able to access the app as usual without the need to find a workaround. However, in case more crashes occur, it is important to note that some additional steps need to be taken.
Proton’s Peterson recommends that people use their VPN and sign up for TikTok from a different country.
He said: “For some users, if they registered a new account outside the US and re-uploaded their content, they were able to get around the ban in the US while using a VPN. For content consumers, this is a workaround. That might be pretty easy to implement, but not for content creators.”
To make things easier, whenever possible, you should also use the VPN on a computer or device that is not linked to a SIM card.
