Hi! Below is my January’25 report! In January, I resolved a total of 904 tickets, a decrease of 775 from the previous month (total: 1679): - RT (frontdesk@tpo) - 191 (↓28) - Telegram (@TorProjectSupportBot) - 712 (↓747) - WhatsApp (+447421000612) - 1 (1) - Signal (+17787431312) - 0 (0).
My main focus in January (and always) was supporting Russian-speaking users in bypassing internet censorship. So I shared censorship circumvention instructions, helped users resolve any issues they are facing with Tor Browser, and collected their feedback on what worked for them and what didn’t. I also took part in Tor Forum moderation and worked on reviewing Google Play Store users' reviews.
For the first in the last six months, we observed a decrease in support tickets from Russian-speaking users. Despite this decrease, the number of tickets is still higher than in July-2024, when new censorship activities by Roskomnadzor were detected[1]. I created a new ticket to track censorship in Russia in 2025[2].
## Elections in Belarus
In January there were Presidential Elections in Belarus [3]. On the eve of the elections many VPN services and websites were blocked in the country [4]. It seems Tor remained accessiblewith bridges[5],however some users reported difficulties in finding working bridges.
*##**Google Play Reviews for Tor Browser**(TBA)**and Tor Browser Alpha**for Android*
- Tor Browser for Android (TBA) had a Google Play rating of 4.389 (↑) stars in January 2025, which is higher than in December. - Tor Browser for Android (TBA) got 774 (↑17) reviews out of 60,429 for the lifetime. - Tor Browser for Android Alpha (TBA-Alpha) app had a rating of 4.219 (↓) which is lower than in December. - In January, Tor Browser for Android (TBA-Alpha) got 37 (0) reviews out of 8,448 for the lifetime.
## Most common issues on the Google Play store reviews
- “Tor Browser doesn’t work”: - often from Russian users, who are struggling to find a way to connect to Tor; - “Tor speed is too slow”: I use a template asking to refresh the Tor circuit or contact Tor Browser support.
In the reviews I also encountered an issue of Tor Browserfor Androidfreezes when used on Realme GT NEO 3 smartphone[6].
[1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issu... [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issu... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Belarusian_presidential_election [4] https://news.zerkalo.io/life/89461.html?tg=4 [5] https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-combined.html?start=2024-10-... https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-combined.html?start=2024-10-31&end=2025-02-03&country=by [6] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/43444