Best VPNs for Venezuela

Using a Venezuelan IP

Due to the deep economic and political unrest, overall censorship has been alarmingly increasing, reaching an unprecedented level within the state. In fact, in 2017, Freedom’s House ranked Venezuela as not free.

In a country where most of the population is living on a near-starvation level, VPN providers seem to be the least of their problems. However, since the government is spying on social media, censoring both online and offline media, and restricting foreign websites, the use of a VPN while in Venezuela has become a necessity. Especially when saying the wrong thing may get you up to 20 years in prison.

At the moment, people who try to reach their Venezuelan bank from foreign countries could be denied access or, even worse, have their bank account blocked. In other words, the use of a VPN service with a Venezuelan IP is essential for tricking the servers into thinking that you are accessing your account inside Venezuela.

Essentially, the use of a VPN for Venezuelans, living inside or outside Venezuela, has become a necessity rather than a choice.

Venezuelan online privacy laws

Although there are laws regarding privacy and free speech in Venezuela, they don’t matter if the government does not follow them, at all.

As already stated, when using the internet in Venezuela, you should keep in mind that there is always a wandering eye around. You also need to remember that if you say anything against the government, you may have someone knocking on your door the next morning to reprimand you, fine you, or even imprison you.

You should therefore only use a Venezuelan IP if you really need to use it. Naturally, people living inside Venezuela should use a VPN to use a foreign IP.

Internet censorship in Venezuela

Besides spying, the Venezuelan government has also increased its censorship throughout the years. In December 2004, the Venezuelan government approved a law called “Social Responsibility in Radio, Television and Electronic Media” whose purpose is to control content that could “entice felonies”, “create social distress”, or “question the legitimate constituted authority”. The law also designates website owners as responsible for any content published and that they need to create ways to stop content that goes against the above restrictions.

Although the most popular social media websites are not blocked, they are all censored. Especially Twitter, where the government has blocked images from protests and even blocked the site altogether for 40 minutes after a tweet was made by the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó.

The news website El Pitazo has been blocked through DNS methods and the website El Nacional has been sanctioned with the violation of Article 27 of the Social Responsibility in Radio, Television and Electronic Media. Joining these, many foreign websites were also blocked and are not accessible from Venezuela.

With the blocking of social media applications and political content, attacks of online reports by the police, and even the arrests of internet users taken into account, Freedom’s House declared, in 2017, that Venezuela’s internet was “not free”.

Streaming services in Venezuela

With so much going on within Venezuela, it’s only natural that we won’t get a vast array of streaming services. Mainly because of government censorship, Cable TV is still the most used, and only a few foreign streaming services were able to cross the country’s borders.

In Venezuela, you can access Netflix, YouTube, and Soundcloud. However, it’s necessary to take into account that both YouTube and Soundcloud have been blocked before and were taken offline in the country for several hours. So, if you are looking for a location where you’ll get a wider variety of streaming services, a U.S. IP would be your best bet.

When inside the country, a VPN is essential to get access to the majority of the streaming services, uncensored news outlets, and websites in general.

Free Venezuelan VPN trials

With Venezuela’s situation in mind, while using a VPN inside or outside the country, you need to make sure it offers maximum security.

Ivacy