November 2018 - ooni-talk - lists.torproject.org

OONI FAQ: Please tell us which questions you want us to answer :)
by Maria Xynou 29 Nov '18

29 Nov '18

Hello friends, The OONI team is creating a (long-postponed) Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section to publish on our site. The aim of the FAQ will be to address any questions you (and/or the communities you work with!) have in relation to OONI Probe, OONI data, test lists, etc. (basically, all components under the OONI-verse). So far, we have compiled the questions that are listed in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-faq Please help us better serve you and the broader community by … [View More]

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OONI Community Meeting: Tomorrow, 27th November
by Maria Xynou 26 Nov '18

26 Nov '18

Hello, The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us tomorrow for our monthly community meeting. Where: https://slack.openobservatory.org/ (OONI Slack channel) When: Tuesday, 27th November 2018 at 14:00 UTC (for 1 hour, until 15:00 UTC) Do you have questions related to OONI Probe/OONI data/OONI methodologies? Do you have censorship research you would like to share with the community? Do you have ideas/thoughts/feedback you'd like to share? Are you just curious to learn more about … [View More]

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Public beta testing of OONI Probe mobile apps
by Maria Xynou 19 Nov '18

19 Nov '18

Hello, Thanks to great feedback provided by the community, the OONI team has been working on revamping and improving upon the OONI Probe mobile apps. Today, we are excited to announce that we have released the public beta! To further improve upon the apps before the stable release, we invite you to become beta testers and to report any bugs/issues. # Becoming a beta tester On Android: * Sign up to the beta: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.openobservatory.ooniprobe * Update your … [View More]

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[New report] Uganda's Social Media Tax through the lens of network measurements
by Maria Xynou 12 Nov '18

12 Nov '18

Hello, Today, in collaboration with our Ugandan partners, DefendDefenders, OONI co-published a new research report: "Uganda's Social Media Tax through the lens of network measurements". Our research report is available via: * OONI site: https://ooni.io/post/uganda-social-media-tax/ * DefendDefenders site: https://www.defenddefenders.org/publication/Uganda%27sSocialMediaTax/ As of 1st July 2018, Uganda has introduced a new OTT (Over The Top) tax - commonly referred to as the Social … [View More]Media Tax - which requires people in Uganda to pay taxes to the government in order to access several online social media platforms. Unless this tax is paid, access to these specific social media platforms is blocked. Civil society groups in Uganda have expressed concern that this new Social Media Tax will affect marginalized communities the most. Thanks to OONI Probe users in Uganda, internet censorship has been measured in the country since 2014 (previously enabling the detection and examination of social media censorship during the 2016 elections). In light of the new OTT tax, we joined forces with DefendDefenders to test the taxed social media platforms and to run a series of experiments, testing VPN blocking as well. Our key findings include: * Ugandan ISPs primarily implement internet censorship by means of HTTP blocking, resetting connections to taxed and banned sites. * MTN appears to block Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Snapchat by means of TCP/IP blocking. The TCP/IP blocking of Snapchat may have caused collateral damage, possibly affecting thousands of sites hosted on the same CDN. However, even if this is the case, it doesn't affect most MTN users since MTN's proxy circumvents IP-level blocking. * Social media censorship varies across ASNs. Africell, for example, attempts to block Telegram, while MTN doesn't. Different social media sites were blocked by different ISPs. Some Ugandan ISPs don't block access to social media sites at all (such as Smile Communications and state-owned Uganda Telecom). * The blocking of circumvention tool sites also varies across ASNs. MTN blocks access to VPN servers using the OpenVPN protocol and to torproject.org, but not to the Tor network. The above findings are based on the collection and analysis of OONI network measurements from multiple local vantage points in Uganda: https://api.ooni.io/files/by_country/UG To reproduce and expand upon our study, you can: 1. Run OONI Probe: https://ooni.io/install/ 2. Use OONI Run to test the sites of your choice: https://run.ooni.io/ 3. Download OONI data for your own analysis: https://api.ooni.io/ Warm thanks to all the volunteers in Uganda who have run OONI Probe, making this research possible! Best, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E [View Less]

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