Signal App Blocked In Russia And Venezuela; Company Advises The Affected Users To Activate Censorship Circumvention Feature

Signal app which is a widely famous choice for encrypted messaging is being blocked in Russia and Venezuela. It is reported that in Venezuela, the app has been blocked due to the disputed results of the country’s presidential election last month which led to protests and arrests in the country.

While in Russia, reports reveal that as per the country’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, Signal App has violated Russian legislation leading to the restriction of the app, also people in Russia can’t register a new Signal account without using a VPN.

Reacting to this situation, Signal has officially posted on X, “ We are aware that access to Signal has been blocked in some countries. As a reminder, Signal’s built-in censorship circumvention  feature might be able to help if your connection is affected.”

The company has further mentioned that they have started working on more advanced censorship circumvention techniques but for these efforts to be most effective they need the big companies who are dragging their feet on moving away from plaintext SNI headers to start taking this problem more seriously.

Signal has talked about solutions like Encrypted Client Hello that removes the plaintext server name from TLS handshake, which makes it far more difficult for hostile ISPs to block access to the sites and services but this solution is not widely supported yet. The company has promised to come up with all the possible measures to maintain and restore access to Signal.