Venezuela has been in the news like never before; the main reason being the deep political and economic unrest living within the country, which is leading the state to famine and suffocating censorship. Multiple websites have been blocked, social media is being both censored and spied on, and people are being fined or arrested when they say something that goes against the government. In such an environment, it’s essential to use a VPN to protect yourself and hide your location. The same goes if you are accessing your Venezuelan bank account from outside the country since there have been reports that this has been restricted. Consequently, the most crucial features the VPN provider needs to have are strong security and 100% reliability, even if they end up costing a little more.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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 was founded in 2007 and over a decade later it can already say that it has conquered its space in the VPN market thanks to a fast, worldwide network of servers. On top of that, the Singaporean company provides the best encryption level and even some additional tools – like split tunneling, a kill switch and IPv6 leak protection – that will make all its users happy but especially those interested in torrenting. In fact, Ivacy is an active supporter of P2P and file sharing and its attractive client is built to accommodate such activities, and covers a host of platforms ranging from computers and mobile devices to routers and more. Ivacy is also a title-winning contender when it comes to pricing, too, since it has a very nice price/quality ratio, as well as allowing those that want to try the service without commitment to do so with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
First of all, please do not feel intimidated: the perhaps vulgar name of the UK-based company is intended to be a pun. HMA VPN has a mascot in the form of a donkey, and thus this little wordplay is nothing to worry about. You should rather pay attention to the fact that HMA VPN is easily one of the best VPN companies today; they offer much more than a standard package. You are also welcome to try out the free web proxy, an anonymous e-mail service and an IP:Port premium service, which is essentially a more elaborate proxy product. On top of this, you also have VPN browser extensions for Chrome and Mozilla to use. HMA VPN does all this while still maintaining decent speeds and healthy prices. These are coupled with the fact that HMA VPN remains one of few providers who still enable access to Netflix. But the most impressive thing about this organization is the number of locations provided – it is unprecedented today.
With an extensive server network spanning 105 countries, apps for all major platforms, and even extra security tools like an ad blocker, ExpressVPN delivers all you need for a private and secure online experience.
The software is easy to use across all devices, and the speed trumps many of its competitors, making it one of the fastest VPNs on the market. Android and iOS customers can make the most of a 7-day free trial with unlimited bandwidth and everyone can enjoy three months for free when opting for annual billing.
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