Russia, Venezuela Block Signal Messenger
Russia and Venezuela have blocked access to the encrypted Signal messaging app.
- Russia has blocked access to Signal app "prevent the messenger's use of terrorist and extremist purposes."
"User access to the messenger Signal is restricted due to violations of the requirements of the Russian legislation whose fulfillment is necessary to prevent the use of the messenger for terrorist and extremist purposes," Russia's telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor told Interfax.
- The messenger was blocked in Venezuela following the disputed presidential election results from late July. President Nicolás Maduro has also ordered a block on social media platform X.
- Signal confirmed that some countries block its services and advised users to enable the built-in censorship circumvention feature.
- Signal’s simple TLS proxy is available on both Signal Android and Signal iOS, enabling users to bypass network blocks and securely route traffic to the Signal service. Anyone can set up a proxy, and once deployed, users can provide a URL for others to use.
"We have already started working on more advanced censorship circumvention techniques, but in order for these efforts to be most effective we need the big companies who are dragging their feet on moving away from plaintext SNI headers to start taking this problem more seriously," added the project.
