Hello everyone!
Here are my updates from November. Continuing my work with helping users in Iran amidst the heavy censorship[1], I was able to respond to a little over 200 user support requests from Iran. We have established a user feedback loop with the users and constantly monitoring any new developments. In light of the recent changes to the circumvention map of Connection Assist[2] for users in China and Hong Kong, I have been working to get feedback from users in this region. Although I haven't got a ton of user feedback, the most of the users I have interacted with have confirmed of better connectivity confirming the surge in users we have seen on Metrics[3]. In preparation[4] for the next major Tor Browser stable release (Tor Browser 12), I did a alpha testers call during the Tor localization hangout[5] and along with Nina (@nina13) review of all the internal support documentation we maintain.
Now, a quick overview of our user support channels:
Timeline: 01 - 30 November 2022
# Frontdesk
tickets created: 899 tickets resolved: 933
Most frequent tickets by numbers:
1. 70 RT Tickets - Private Bridge requests from China[6]
2. 31 RT Tickets - Circumventing Censorship with Tor in Iran.
3. 30 RT Tickets - How to use a Tor Bridge in Russia[7]
4. 5 RT Tickets - Tor Browser for Android 11.5.9 crashing on launch[8]
# Telegram and Signal Support channel (cdr.link)
tickets resolved: 536
The other most frequent ticket we received have been about:
1. 198 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Iran.
2. 157 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russia
3. 17 tickets - Using unlisted obfs4 bridges in China
# Tor Forum
Most popular topics in the Support category (in terms of no. of views):
1. "Snowflake proxies for Iran"[9]
2. "Cannot visit Reddit through Tor Browser since most recent update?"[10]
3. "Is there a list of blocked websites?"[11]
4. "Cannot Connect Tor Browser"[12]
5. "Big drop in Snowflake traffic"[13]
Thanks,
-- Joydeep
[1]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/iran-circumventing-censorship-with-tor/4590 [2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/99 [3]: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2022-09-0... [4]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40096 [5]: https://community.torproject.org/localization/hangouts/ [6]: https://support.torproject.org/censorship/connecting-from-china/ [7]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-censo... [8]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41481 [9]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/snowflake-proxies-for-iran/5373/ [10]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/cannot-visit-reddit-through-tor-browser-since... [11]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/is-there-a-list-of-blocked-websites/5527/ [12]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/cannot-connect-tor-browser/5588/ [13]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/big-drop-in-snowflake-traffic/5640/