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Hi everyone,<br /><br />There seems to be a sharp rise in the number of direct Tor users:<br /><br /><a href="https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2016-10-22&end=2017-01-20&country=all&events=off" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2016-10-22&end=2017-01-20&country=all&events=off</a><br /><br />By looking at the graphs of heavy Tor use countries (US, Russia, ...) I was not able to spot the source of this rise. So I decided to look at the top 10 countries in a shorter interval (01-07->01-20):<br /><br /><a href="https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-table.html?start=2017-01-07&end=2017-01-20" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-table.html?start=2017-01-07&end=2017-01-20</a><br /><br />By comparing it with the previous list it seemed that  United Arab Emirates was standing out, so I looked at the number of direct Tor users there and OH MY GOD<br /><br /><a href="https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?graph=userstats-relay-country&country=ae" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?graph=userstats-relay-country&country=ae</a><br /><br />Does anyone have an explanation for this massive enormous increase?<br /><a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?graph=userstats-relay-country&country=ae"></a>  </body>
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