People in Venezuela can now use Telegram without a VPN service.
Authorities restricted access to the popular messaging app from Friday, January 10, 2024 and blocked its official website across all of the country’s main Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Despite the Telegram ban being lifted, the internet in Venezuela remains restricted. Most notably, the video-sharing app TikTok has entered its seventh day of blocking.
⚠️ Confirmed: Live measurements show messaging app Telegram is now down in Venezuela, confirming 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/7SonpVuAzN11 January 2025
Venezuelan digital rights group VE sin Filtro shared the news with a post on X (formerly Twitter).
According to VE’s Filtro data, some ISPs (CANTV, Inter, Airtek, Digitel, G-Network and Movistar) started to lift the ban between Saturday night and Sunday morning – about a day after the block was enforced. All the other ISPs slowly unblocked Telegram by Monday, January 13.
“This is not the first time that Telegram has been blocked [in Venezuela]. Telegram was blocked for one day on September 2, 2024 during the wave of post-election censorship,” the experts wrote, adding that the encrypted messaging app Signal is also currently blocked in the country.
Increased internet censorship
Venezuela’s latest wave of restrictions started 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 use across the country as citizens looked for ways to circumvent disruptions.
Internet disruptions were then extended to the official websites of some of the top VPN providers the next day to prevent citizens from overcoming government-imposed restrictions.
The block targets over 20 VPN sites, 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 normal 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 over 30 DNS services are also reportedly blocked.
