Hi everyone!
Our next User Experience team meeting will be held on Tuesday September 7th at 1400 UTC in #tor-meeting.*
During this meeting we'll share an update on the UX team’s ongoing work across key projects, including the planning for our upcoming VPN user survey which will ask the community which VPNs they use, why they use a VPN, and how it fits into their browsing experience. If you'd like to get involved please feel free to add your items to the pad:
https://pad.riseup.net/p/1D8sK8Zy74b_0qclC97I-ux-team-monthly-2020-keep <https://pad.riseup.net/p/1D8sK8Zy74b_0qclC97I-ux-team-monthly-2020-keep>
Remember: User Experience team meetings are an open space for discussion around ethical user research, user interface design and the user experience of privacy-enhancing products.
See you soon!
Duncan
[*] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team/-/wikis/home <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team/-/wikis/home>
***
Duncan Larsen-Russell
Product Manager & UX Team Lead
duncan(a)torproject.org <mailto:duncan@torproject.org>
Greetings, everyone!
This is a report of the work done by the Community Team
in the past month and general user feedback that we've received across our
official support channels.
Report Period - July 31 upto 31 August, 2021
Tickets resolved in the past month: 165
Here is a list of issues which got the most attention (at least 2 tickets on
RT):
# Tor Browser
Breakdown of number of RT tickets received with respect to operating system:
Windows (10,8,7 ...all the way upto Vista) - 24
macOS - 5
Android - 8
GNU/Linux - 2
iOS - 4
(Note: This includes tickets where the user mentioned the operating
system or it
was evident from the issue they were running into or enclosed screenshots.)
1. 12 RT tickets - Unable to access websites; Login fails.
Users also reported issues with payment on sites like eBay, PayPal etc.
Regarding websites blocking Tor users, Hackhard GSoC project is tracking
the top 500 websites.[1]
2. 5 RT tickets - YouTube not accessible renders the error "Our system
have detected unusual traffic from your computer network".
We point users to the "Basic Troubleshooting when users can't access any
particular website" article (template) on the RT.
3. 5 RT tickets - "Tor Unexpectedly Exited": Failure to launch Tor Browser.
We direct users to the "Seven-point basic troubleshooting" article
(template) on the RT to help users.
4. 5 RT tickets - Installation Issue (OS - Windows)
We ask users to make sure they've downloaded the correct version of TB
depending on their Operating System 32-bit or 64-bit. [2]
5. 4 RT tickets - Fake Tor App on Apple Store.
Users are being charged after installing a fake Tor Browser app on iOS.
We educate users about fake apps and recommend them to solely use the
Onion Browser for iOS.
6. 3 RT tickets - Cannot download files on Tor Browser for Android.
Regarding this we have a ticket on our GitLab. [3] A workaround for this
recurring issue is to make a new Tor connection and relaunch the download.
7. 3 RT tickets - Error "Proxy Server Refused Connection".
We ask users NOT to set TBA as their default browser and point them to
the article on the Support Portal. [4]
8. 2 RT tickets - Reporting bad onion sites.
The Tor Project doesnot host or control onion sites, we answer users
taking help from the article on our Support portal. [5]
9. 1 RT ticket - Error "RSA_get0_d could not be located in the dynamic link
library tor.exe" on Windows. We have a GitLab ticket regarding this long
standing issue. [6]
# Onion Services
1. 9 RT tickets - v2 onion deprecation.
Users were confused 'how' to upgrade v2 onions to v3. They were asking
for a direct link/button to upgrade.
We help users identify v2 and v3 onions, point them to the "v2 onion
deprecation" article (template) on the RT and FAQ on the Support Portal. [7]
# UI/UX and documentation
1. Google Play Store - In terms of user experience, reviews mostly revolve
around- 'Unable to access to YouTube and other sites', 'Tor freezes',
'Can't download anything files/images', 'Tor Browser is slow', 'can't
upload files' and 'too many captchas'. However, in terms of reviews we
have quite a good number of 4 and 5 star ratings.
2. Tor Stack Exchange - Statistics of what the discussion has been about
(6 most
active tags):
hidden-services- 17 questions
anonymity- 12 questions
security- 9 questions
configuration (questions about configuring Tor software)- 6 questions
tor-browser-bundle- 6 questions
onion-routing - 4 questions
3. Reddit
Discussions have been around:
* Tor browser is Looping same exits.
* Hidden Service for Minecraft
* Can't access YouTube and other sites over Tor
* Tor is very slow
* VPN and Tor - How does using VPN decrease anonymity?
* fdroid version from the guardian project not updated
* Onion sites
# Anti-censorship
1. 5 RT tickets - Bridges not working
Tor logs revealed that it was caused by users editing their torrc file;
overriding the exit nodes and 'general SOCKS server failure' errors.
We educate users NOT to modify their torrc file and one gets the best
security Tor can provide when they leave the route selection up to Tor.
Then point them to the FAQ on the Support Portal. [8]
2. 4 RT tickets - Bridge requests
We got users requesting help to connect to Tor which have been from
Iran, China and other countries. We provided private bridges for them.
3. In the past month, there have been instances of censorship and
internet shutdowns in countries like Iran and South Sudan. We're
following up on their situation.[9]
There has also been a decrease in users connecting directly to Tor from
Turkmenistan. We've a ticket open to track the status. [10]
If you have any suggestions, questions or want to discuss anything in detail
please feel free to reach out to me and/or anyone from the Community Team!
Thanks,
Kulsoom
IRC - kulsoom_z
Links:
[1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/woswos/CAPTCHA-Monitor/-/wikis/GSoC-2021
[2]: https://www.torproject.org/download/
[3]:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/31013
[4]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/#tbb-32
[5]: https://support.torproject.org/abuse/remove-content-from-onion-address/
[6]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/33702
[7]: https://support.torproject.org/onionservices/#v2-deprecation
[8]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/#tbb-16
[9]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40034
[10]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40030
Hey everyone!
This is a little late, but here were our logs from the meeting last week:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2021/tor-meeting.2021-08-26-15.59.html
and here is our meeting pad:
Anti-censorship work meeting pad
--------------------------------
Next meeting: Thursday August 19th 16:00 UTC
Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC
(channel is logged while meetings are in progress)
== Goal of this meeting ==
Weekly checkin about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor.
Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor.
== Announcements ==
Job opening on the anti-censorship team:
https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/software-developer-anticensorship-2/
\o/
== Discussion ==
== Actions ==
== Interesting links ==
USENIX Security 2021 papers
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/technical-sessions
"Domain Shadowing: Leveraging Content Delivery Networks for Robust
Blocking-Resistant Communications"
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/presentation/wei
"How Great is the Great Firewall? Measuring China's DNS Censorship"
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/presentation/hoang
"Balboa: Bobbing and Weaving around Network Censorship"
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/presentation/rosen
"Weaponizing Middleboxes for TCP Reflected Amplification"
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/presentation/bock
"Defeating DNN-Based Traffic Analysis Systems in Real-Time With
Blind Adversarial Perturbations"
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/presentation/nasr
== Reading group ==
We will discuss "" on
Questions to ask and goals to have:
What aspects of the paper are questionable?
Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work?
Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work?
Is there future work that we want to call out, in hopes that others
will pick it up?
== Updates ==
Name:
This week:
- What you worked on this week.
Next week:
- What you are planning to work on next week.
Help with:
- Something you need help with.
cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2021-08-26
Last week:
- hiring tasks for ac team and network team
- mostly just s28 integration/scrimmage
- more work on making OONI's tor tests look more like tor
- helped plan tor's autoconnect feature
This week:
- more hiring and s28 meetings
- censorship measurement tests and tools
- reviews
- snowflake!52 followup
- snowflake#25595 followup
- lots of miscellaneous gitlab TODOs
Needs help with:
arlolra: 2021-08-12
Last week:
- Migrate to v3 of the webextension manifest
Next week:
- Maybe get back to snowflake-webext #10
- Write up the pitch for our use case for supporting creating
PeerConnections in background service workers
https://github.com/w3c/webrtc-extensions/issues/77
Help with:
-
dcf: 2021-08-19
Last week:
- snowflake CDN bookkeeping
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Snowflake-co…
- posted a summary of the Turkmenistan situation
https://ntc.party/t/recent-drop-in-tor-users-from-turkmenistan-testers-want…https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40030
Next week:
Help with:
agix:2021-07-15
Last week:
-Off due to final exams
Next week:
-Work on bridgebox for rdsys
-More research on httpt #4
Help with:
-
hanneloresx: 2021-3-4
Last week:
- Submitted MR for bridgestrap issue #14
Next week:
- Finish bridgestrap #14
- Find new issue to work on
Help with:
-
maxb: 2021-07-15
Last week:
- Opened
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
re: utls for broker negotiation
- Worked on github.com/max-b/nat-testing for
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
- Added a snowflake-proxy-no-nat and a snowflake-client-no-nat to
help with debugging
- Successfully making connections from snowflake-client and
snoflake-client-no-nat through the snowflake-proxy-no-nat, but not
having any success with the snowflake-proxy (with nat).
- Added a local dockerized STUN server
Next week:
- Use wireshark to figure out the difference between successful
snowflake-proxy-no-nat and unsuccessful snowflake-proxy-nat
- Work on implementing different NAT types, particularly in a way
that's conducive to automatic testing
- Add testing wrapper w/ "pass/fail" conditions
meskio: 2021-08-26
Last week:
- make bridgestrap CollecTor metrics resistant to restarts
(bridgestrap#22)
- change bridgedb to send obfs4 bridges by default over email
(bridgedb#50)
- review gettor upload script mr (gettor!17)
- review docker-obfs4-bridge multi arch build (docker-obfs4-bridge!4)
- review docker-obfs4-bridge fix for the new debian release
(docker-obfs4-bridge!3)
- review new translations for GettorWeb (gettor-web!7)
Next week:
- make censorship snapsot available on moat (bridgedb#40025)
- act on comments on rdsys-gettor (rdsys!11)
Help with:
-
Hi All,
This is my monthly status report for work complete during August 2021. This will be my last status report for this contract, please direct all queries about metrics tooling going forward to the network health team.
I released and deployed updates for CollecTor to archive bridgestrap data. This is currently disabled until the bridgestrap results can be declared stable by the anti-censorship team. If you're interested in following this, see:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/25
I completed an update to Onionoo that reads in this data from CollecTor and will use the bridgestrap test result to override the Running flag from the bridge authority, such that bridges with their OR ports hidden do not always show as offline, instead using the reachability of their PT port.
I have spent time focussed on getting hiro up to speed on working with the Metrics codebases. During August, we saw releases of metrics-lib and Onionoo, including work on the overload-* lines in server/extra-info descriptors, that should give new insights into bottlenecks in the network.
Finally, I have been around in Matrix/IRC to answer Metrics questions and on occasion to provide a little end-user support in #tor.
Thanks,
Iain.