[metrics-team] Sharp rise in users

[Linda Naeun Lee]

On 2017-01-20 04:18, e5f3c2ea895af0f27667 at tutanota.com wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> There seems to be a sharp rise in the number of direct Tor users:
> 
> https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2016-10-22&end=2017-01-20&country=all&events=off
> 
> By looking at the graphs of heavy Tor use countries (US, Russia, ...)
> I was not able to spot the source of this rise. So I decided to look
> at the top 10 countries in a shorter interval (01-07->01-20):
> 
> https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-table.html?start=2017-01-07&end=2017-01-20
> 
> By comparing it with the previous list it seemed that  United Arab
> Emirates was standing out, so I looked at the number of direct Tor
> users there and OH MY GOD

+1 to "OH MY GOD."

> https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?graph=userstats-relay-country&country=ae
> 
> Does anyone have an explanation for this massive enormous increase?

Because the increase is so sudden and so massive, I don't believe that 
this increase is a good thing. My guess is that these users aren't real 
people, but some sort of botnet.

This is definitely something we should add to 
https://metrics.torproject.org/news.html! And if we have any leads or 
inside information about what may be going on in the United Arab 
Emirates, we'll be in touch.

Cheers,
Linda

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