Albania blocked TikTok

TikTok is blocked in Albania.

In December 2024, Albania’s government announced a one-year ban on TikTok, following the killing of a teenager. In March 2025, Albania’s government requested local ISPs to block access to TikTok, citing concerns over the safety and security of children using the platform. The email shared by the Electronic and Postal Communications Authority (AKEP) of Albania with all national ISPs includes an exhaustive list of domain names and IP addresses related to the service. According to the order from Albania’s National Cyber Security Authority, ISPs in the country were required to block access to TikTok by 13th March 2025.

Very few OONI measurements from the testing of TikTok in Albania have been collected over the last month. But the few measurements available provide signs of TikTok blocking on a few networks.

Between 12th to 26th March 2025, the TikTok website (www.tiktok.com) was tested on 5 networks in Albania, presenting anomalies on 3 of them: Vodafone (AS21183), Digicom (AS35444), Vodafone (AS50973). As only one measurement was collected from Digicom during this period (limiting our confidence in the finding), we primarily observe the blocking of TikTok on Vodafone, where OONI measurements present signs of DNS based tampering. Specifically, OONI measurements collected from the testing of www.tiktok.com on Vodafone (AS21183, AS50973) show that NXDOMAIN errors are returned as part of DNS resolution.

At the same time, OONI data shows that the testing of multiple TikTok endpoints (required for TikTok app functionality) presented DNS anomalies on 13th March 2025 on Vodafone (AS50973).

Overall, even though very few measurements have been collected from the testing of TikTok in Albania, the few measurements that are available suggest TikTok blocking because:

• On Vodafone (AS21183, AS50973), DNS resolution returns the NXDOMAIN error;
• We observe signs of DNS based tampering for the TikTok website (www.tiktok.com) and multiple TikTok endpoints from 13th March 2025 onwards, which correlates with the date by which ISPs in Albania were required to block access to TikTok.

It’s worth highlighting though that TikTok does not appear to be blocked on all networks in Albania, as OONI data suggests that it’s still accessible on a few networks.

If you are in Albania, you can contribute more measurements by running OONI Probe.