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

[David Fifield]

On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 09:16:26AM -0700, David Fifield wrote:
> Perusing recent Metrics graphs, and looking at recent anomaly reports,
> 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.
> 
> In Lithuania, from 2,000 to 70,000:
> 
> In Romania, from 8,000 to 40,000:
> 
> In the Netherlands, from 50,000 to 125,000:
> 
> 
> 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, 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.

On 2017-10-07, user estimates returned to previous levels in the
Seychelles, Lithuania, and the Netherlands.

https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/metrics-country.html?start=2017-07-01&end=2017-10-30&country=sc
https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/metrics-country.html?start=2017-07-01&end=2017-10-30&country=lt
https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/metrics-country.html?start=2017-07-01&end=2017-10-30&country=nl

While Romania is doing its own thing, perhaps going back to normal for
one day, before starting a rapid linear increase for the past three
weeks.

https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/metrics-country.html?start=2017-07-01&end=2017-10-30&country=ro