Venezuelans can now use Telegram without a VPN service.
Authorities restricted access to the popular messaging app starting Friday, January 10, 2024 and blocked its official website on all major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country.
Even though the Telegram ban was lifted, the Internet in Venezuela remains restricted. Notably, video-sharing app TikTok has entered its seventh day of lockdown.
⚠️ Confirmed: Live metrics show messaging app Telegram is now out of service in Venezuela, corroborating user reports of problems accessing the service; The incident occurs while Nicolás Maduro is sworn in for a third presidential term, a measure identified by the opposition as a coup d’état #10Jan pic.twitter.com/7SonpVuAzNJanuary 11, 2025
Venezuelan digital rights group VE sin Filtro shared the news with a post on X (formerly Twitter).
According to data from VE sin Filtro, some ISPs (CANTV, Inter, Airtek, Digitel, G-Network and Movistar) began to lift the ban between Saturday night and Sunday morning, approximately a day after the imposed the blockade. The rest of the ISPs slowly unblocked Telegram on Monday, January 13.
“This is not the first time they have blocked Telegram [in Venezuela]. “Telegram was blocked for a day on September 2, 2024, during the post-election censorship wave,” the experts wrote, adding that the encrypted messaging app Signal is also currently blocked in the country.
Increased censorship on the Internet
The latest wave of restrictions in Venezuela began last week when authorities restricted TikTok on January 8 for failing to appoint a local representative.
The government’s decision sparked a surge in VPN usage across the country as citizens looked for ways to avoid disruptions.
A day later, internet outages spread to the official websites of some of the best VPN providers, to prevent citizens from bypassing government-imposed restrictions.
The blocking targets more than 20 VPN websites, including Proton VPN (which has been blocked since before the July 2024 election), NordVPN, Surfshark, ExpressVPN, and IPVanish. Despite this, all providers contacted by TechRadar confirmed that their VPN apps are still working as usual in Venezuela at the time of writing.
For the first time, the government even decided to block Canva, a free online graphics tool that can be used to create social media posts and other graphics for online sharing. Signal, the Tor browser, and more than 30 DNS services are also reportedly blocked.
