Russia blocked Viber

As of 13th December 2024, OONI data suggests that Russia started blocking access to Viber – one of the most popular instant messaging platforms in the country. Recent data suggests that the block remains ongoing.

The following chart aggregates OONI measurement coverage from the testing of www.viber.com on more than 200 networks in Russia between 5th December 2024 to 17th January 2025.

As is evident, the testing of www.viber.com previously showed that the website was accessible in Russia, and mainly started presenting anomalies from the evening of 13th December 2024 onwards. The fact that most measurements thereafter continued to present anomalies provides a signal of Viber being inaccessible on most tested networks in Russia.

Overall, most of the anomalous measurements from the testing of www.viber.com result in connection timeout errors after the first write operation during the TLS handshake, suggesting TLS level interference. This is consistent with the tendency of Russian censors to implement blocks in a more centralized way using DPI equipment that we documented in our latest report on media censorship in Russia.

If you are in Russia, you can test Viber and contribute more measurements by running OONI Probe.