How to Access Websites, Messengers and Social Media in Vietnam?

Unlike China, Vietnam doesn’t have any internet censorship policies. There is no Great Firewall in place, and most of the time it feels like there is no censorship at all in the country. And then one day Telegram becomes unreachable or Reddit starts timing out, and you come to realize that the list of blocked websites has been expanding quietly for a while already.

I saw this process unfolding before my eyes. That’s why I decided to put together this guide explaining to my clients why their favorite messenger disappeared without a trace and how to bring it back to life.

You don’t need any complicated tools like a VPN for that. Proxy works perfectly well in Vietnam, and the setup shouldn’t take more than five minutes. I will explain what websites are blocked in Vietnam, why they are blocked and how to unblock each one.

TL;DR: Send your traffic through a proxy server located in a country where the service is still available. Since Vietnam blocks the sites at the DNS level, it will bypass the block. Telegram has a built-in proxy setting – SOCKS5. To access Reddit and other services, set up a proxy for Firefox, a browser extension for Chrome, or configure your smartphone. Select Singapore as the proxy destination for a quick access.

Blocked Sites and Apps in Vietnam: Comprehensive List for 2026

There is one important feature about this censorship that may surprise some. The bans usually do not come with any kind of an official statement. The service becomes unavailable on one ISP, then another, and nobody announces that to the public. It comes to your knowledge when you cannot load your news feed.

Vietnam is among the “Countries with No Internet Freedom (39-0)” category in our 2026 report on internet censorship and blocking. The list of currently blocked websites and applications in Vietnam is as follows:

• Telegram: blocked on all major ISPs from May 2025
• Reddit: DNS-blocked; Viettel was the first, then others followed in 2024-2025
• Steam: blocked by the big ISPs from May 2024
• Medium: blocked since 2020 Blogger and WordPress.com: blocked since the mid-2010s RFA, BBC Vietnamese, HRW: patchy, hard to reach
• Facebook: not blocked, slow during sensitive periods

In the majority of cases, this comes down to the Cybersecurity Law of 2018, according to which platforms have to keep data of their Vietnamese users locally and take down any flagged content. Failure to do so results in blocking, as Telegram was blocked by the order given to ISPs in May 2025, according to Reuters.

However, it is time for the practical solution of unblocking the messenger in question. The blocks are DNS-based – when typing Reddit.com, one should wait for an answer from ISP’s DNS to display the website. If it doesn’t come, nothing will be displayed. However, using a proxy will result in one not asking for permission from ISP’s DNS, as the request will go through a proxy in another country.

Just one little note before starting. Each of the following methods will require the user’s name and password (Dashboard>Settings), host geo.g-w.info, and a port number. Choose 10080 for HTTP protocol and 10800 for SOCKS5. That’s all you need.

What Messengers Are Blocked in Vietnam and How to Unblock Telegram

Some quick clarifying before getting to business, as there is a great deal of confusing information on the topic. Zalo, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Viber are unaffected. Only Telegram has been blocked nationwide since May 2025.

And it stung. The estimated number of Telegram users in Vietnam was 17.6 million, and Telegram was the fourth most popular messaging service in the country. The crypto community, agencies, communities of creators – many relied on Telegram.

Fortunately, Telegram is built to work with proxies out of the box, so no additional software is required. Let’s figure out how to bring it back:

Create an account on Floppydata and buy a residential plan. Since messaging does not require too much internet traffic, even the smallest plan will last for ages. Log into Dashboard > Settings and copy your username and password. Put smart parameters to your username to make sure the exit country is locked (like user123-type-residential-country-SG). I choose Singapore, being relatively close to Vietnam, since it provides minimum lag. Any country where Telegram is available will do.

Telegram > Settings > Data and Storage > Proxy. Press Add Proxy and choose SOCKS5. Type geo.g-w.info as the server, 10800 as the port and your username with the parameters and your password.

And your connection gets re-established almost instantly. You’ll see the proxy icon appear in the top bar. What I appreciate about this trick is that it only routes Telegram traffic. All other services remain untouched, which is essential if you have local banking applications on your phone that get triggered by suspicious foreign IPs.

How to Unblock Reddit in Vietnam and Other Blocked Websites

Reddit is the anomaly here. Viettel began blocking it without reason, the other ISPs followed suit, and there was no public word on why. My hunch is that it is a temporary and reactionary measure and not an official one, but it is just that – a hunch and I have made the wrong ones before.

In either case, the solution is exactly the same, and it is a browser or system setting and not an app setting. Once configured, Reddit, Steam, Medium, and the news websites will all work.

On the desktop: Firefox or Chrome extension

Firefox is the easy solution, since it automatically does the proxy logins for you:

Settings > then Network Settings > click Settings. Select Manual proxy configuration. Put geo.g-w.info as the proxy server, port 10080, and check “Also use this proxy for HTTPS”. Click OK. Open any website. Firefox will prompt for the username and password for Floppydata.

But Chrome and Edge are worse, and I’ll tell you why. They use Windows or Mac OS system proxy, which is unable to authenticate your login properly and throws you a 407 error. Don’t spend your afternoon dealing with this nonsense. Just install FoxyProxy, put there the same geo.g-w.info with port 10080 and your login information, and switch it on right from the toolbar.

First of all, check whoer.net or ipinfo.io, where you want to see the country of your proxy, not Vietnam. Take a look at the WebRTC row as well. WebRTC can reveal your real IP even if the proxy is working flawlessly, and it’s the first and foremost problem, which people report to me because “it’s not working”. If you have some different setup, the browser and extension manual will guide you through all possible tools.

On iPhone and Android:

It’s simple with iOS devices because it allows for authenticating proxies directly:

Go to Settings > Wi-Fi, tap on the (i) icon for your Wi-Fi connection. Go to HTTP Proxy, select Configure Proxy, choose Manual. Type in geo.g-w.info, port 10080, enable Authentication, enter your credentials. Done.

Now, all apps including Safari should work on this connection. The thing about Android devices is that it’s really annoying. Built-in Wi-Fi proxy has no place for typing a password and therefore can’t use an authenticated proxy. And you’re doing nothing wrong here – it just lacks this feature. Install SocksDroid from Google Play Market and make it connect to the same geo.g-w.info, but using port 10800 with your credentials.

How to Unblock Social Media in Vietnam Without Getting Blocked

Facebook and X are not actually blocked in Vietnam, but when there is a need, they are throttled down. So, being “usually reachable” is never enough for those who make money with social media.

The second problem arises in case you work with accounts for a living. If you switch your IP between three different countries within a week, verification checks will follow and eventually you’ll be locked out. Overcoming the lockout is only half of the work. When you are unblocked, you have to keep consistency. And smart parameters will help you to do that. The session ID keeps your account connected to a single IP address at all times.

To solve this issue I use Gologin and 1Browser. Both do the same: there should be only one browser profile per account and only one proxy per profile:

First of all, in Gologin you need to click Create Profile. Then go to the Proxy tab and choose SOCKS5 as the protocol, geo.g-w.info as host and 10800 as the port. Login: user123-type-residential-country-SG-session-acc01. Do the same for session-acc02. Each session ID gets its own separate IP.

Each profile gets a distinct fingerprint and a unique and stable IP address. There are some guidelines that I never bend, such as not using the same proxy server for linked accounts and not changing the country setting for a created account. The accounts you cannot afford to lose get mobile IPs because carriers’ addresses are the most trusted ones.

How to Pick the Perfect Proxy for Vietnam Users

Here is a short version of my process, based on different tasks:

Residential proxies for Telegram, social media accounts, and everyday Internet use. The real home IPs, highly trusted, rarely rejected. Mobile proxies for the accounts you cannot afford to lose. The most trusted ones are carrier IPs, but their availability is limited. Datacenter proxies for Reddit, Steam, news websites, and simply browsing the web. The cheapest and the fastest ones, overkill proof for just browsing through content.

Floppydata operates in 195+ countries, offering city level targeting, with residential proxies starting at $1/GB. For a single user, who needs only unblocking Telegram and Reddit, a small plan will be enough for a month of trouble-free use.

One last thing that I’ll warn you about because you’ll see them ranked up there, too: Free Proxy Sites. I tested several of these last year when writing the Telegram guide, and I’d never send someone to them. They were slow, ad-filled, and didn’t encrypt a thing. Great if you just want to look at one webpage. A terrible idea from the moment you sign into anything.

Your Next Step

If you find yourself in Vietnam being blocked now and want to get around the block quickly, you could buy a cheap residential proxy, set your exit point to Singapore, give it five minutes, and then put the info into Telegram’s SOCKS5 settings if you only need to send messages, or into your Firefox, FoxyProxy, or smartphone proxy settings otherwise.

After that, run an IP check on whoer.net before signing into anything. If you can’t keep a connection, the troubleshooting guide lists the typical offenders, starting with that 407 error.