Hi browser devs,
On account of being a Tor user, I have been banned from and unable to
connect to OFTC since Tuesday. Hence, I'm sharing my help desk
experiences asynchronously this week.
A common request we see on the help desk is from users asking why they
can't connect to some hidden service site. The reason is almost always
that the site is down. However the message users see is
Unable to connect
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at
abcdefgh23456789.onion.
This adds to the confusion users feel, as many don't understand why they
see the word "Firefox" instead of "Tor Browser".
In fact, any time during the user experience when users see the word
"Firefox", genuine confusion seems to arise. A source of this confusion,
I think, is that users thought they were using Tor Browser, not Firefox,
and they begin to wonder if their current problem is somehow related to
Mozilla Firefox, which may or may not also be installed on their computer.
Actually I have seen users get quite angry from the confusion they feel
at the general branding fail (not always from the "server might be down
message" but from other Firefox references, for example, as seen in
start up error messages).
-------------
Matt Pagan
matt(a)pagan.io