As the protests in Venezuela over rising inflation, violence, and government censorship of the internet continue, the Venezuelan government has responded by blocking social media like Twitter, and censoring other parts of its state-owned internet network to lessen the damage to its own regime.

One company is helping dissidents network with each other and report what's happening by skirting the Venezuelan government's attempts to censor the internet. AnchorFree provides an internet service called Hotspot Shield, the premium, paid version of which it is making available for free to those who need it in Venezuela.

"AnchorFree's mission is to provide freedom to access all of the world's information for every person on the planet," said the company's CEO David Gorodyansky to Business Insider. "We made our premium Hotspot Shield for the iPhone free for users in Venezuela to be able to get to Twitter and other Internet services without any censorship. We continue to be committed to provide secure access to the world's information for 7 billion people."

Hotspot Shield is a virtual private network (VPN) service, which reroutes internet traffic through AnchorFree's servers, which is then delivered directly to anyone securely connected through their app. People generally use VPNs to enhance their security or privacy on the internet. But VPNs can help prevent internet censorship by masking the content and traffic from users, and by bypassing any government blockades on the internet. It also works to mask the end user's geographic location as well -- something that could be especially advantageous to Venezuelan dissidents.

When the Venezuelan protests took off in Feb. and the Venezuelan government began blacking out the internet in some regions and blocking twitter, Mountain View, Calif.-based AnchorFree suddenly became popular in the country. "We saw a huge spike in our mobile usage in Venezuela, said Gorodyansky to Forbes at the time. "On Android, PC and Mac people are just using our regular free version, not the elite [paid] one. But on iPhone we don't have a regular free version so basically we gave everyone access to elite on iPhone."

The company's VPN service has previously seen popularity in China, where the government regularly blocks content from sources in the outside world it sees as a threat, and was used widespread during the 2011 Arab Spring when erstwhile Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak similarly shut down Facebook, Twitter, and other sites in an effort to curb protests and stop information flow.

In Venezuela, reports of internet blackouts lasting as long as 30 hours, along with censorship of Twitter and other communications apps like Zello, began spreading in mid-February, shortly after which the Venezuelan President ordered CNN journalists to leave the country. Venezuela has a very connected citizenry compared to other countries in the region, with 83 percent of Venezuelans with internet access using social media, 83 percent owning a cell phone, and a third having a smartphone.