[metrics-team] Recent weird increases of relay users in sc, lt, ro, nl

[David Fifield]

Perusing recent Metrics graphs, and looking at recent anomaly reports [1],
I found some strange cases of apparent increased numbers of relay users
in various countries. Only relay users are affected, not bridge users.
The increases happened between 2017-07-31 and 2017-08-06.


The most striking is in the Seychelles, where the count went from 400 to
over 100,000.
https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/metrics-country.html?start=2017-06-01&end=2017-08-20&country=sc

In Lithuania, from 2,000 to 70,000:
https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/metrics-country.html?start=2017-06-01&end=2017-08-20&country=lt

In Romania, from 8,000 to 40,000:
https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/metrics-country.html?start=2017-06-01&end=2017-08-20&country=ro

In the Netherlands, from 50,000 to 125,000:
https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/metrics-country.html?start=2017-06-01&end=2017-08-20&country=nl


The increases in the Seychelles and Lithuania seem to large to have a
natural cause. I wonder if this is another case, like Turkey in December
2016 [2], or the U.A.E. in January 2017, where the increase is due to an
artifact of counting. There may even have been a block that
paradoxically appears as an increase.


[1] http://lists.infolabe.net/archives/infolabe-anomalies/2017-August/thread.html
[2] https://bugs.torproject.org/21014#comment:13
[3] https://bugs.torproject.org/21345