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 across all major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country.
Despite the lifting of the ban on Telegram, the Internet remains restricted in Venezuela. The video sharing application TikTok has notably entered its seventh day of blocking.
⚠️ Confirmed: Live measurements show that the Telegram messaging app is now disrupted in Venezuela, corroborating user reports of problems accessing the service; the incident comes as Nicolas Maduro is sworn in for a third presidential term, a move identified by the opposition as a coup #10Ene 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) started lifting the ban between Saturday evening and Sunday morning – around a day after the block was applied. All other ISPs slowly unblocked Telegram on Monday, January 13.
“This is not the first time Telegram has been blocked [in Venezuela]. Telegram was blocked for one 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
Venezuela’s latest wave of restrictions began last week when authorities restricted TikTok on January 8 for failing to appoint a local representative.
The government’s decision has caused a surge in VPN usage across the country as citizens look for ways to avoid disruption.
The internet disruptions were then extended the next day to the official websites of some of the top VPN providers, in an attempt to prevent citizens from circumventing government restrictions.
The blockage targets more than 20 VPN websites, including Proton VPN (which was blocked ahead of 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 to share online. Signal, the Tor browser and more than 30 DNS services are also reportedly blocked.
