[metrics-team] Queries about user statistic on Tor Metrics

[Iain R. Learmonth]

Hi,

Updates are automatic. *Update pings* and *update requests* are requests made by Tor Browser to check whether a newer version is available or to download a newer version respectively.

I believe the UX is designed to push users towards updating their browser but that it is possible to not update. I'm not familiar with that mechanism. Older versions of Tor Browser can be downloaded from https://dist.torproject.org/torbrowser/ and I'd encourage you to try out for yourself what happens when it then detects an upgrade is available.

We get update pings by locale because that is included in the ping. When a user installs Tor Browser they will choose a language for the browser, e.g. English or French, and then when they update they'll want the same language again. The update pings and the update requests themselves run over Tor so we can't say where the users are, only what language they speak.

This list is very low-traffic and basically abandoned now, you can instead use the network health list: https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/network-health

Thanks,
Iain.

On Mon, Aug 16, 2021, at 9:34 PM, Nowshin, Nafisa wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am a graduate student at Oregon State University doing research on digital privacy and security. My advisor (cc’d to this email) is Dr. Glencora Borradaile. We are trying to use tor metrics data in order to understand the reason why people are connecting to tor and if it is because of some external motivation (the topic of our research) or because they are regular users. Looking at the user statistics available in tor metrics website, we had a few questions we wanted to clarify.
> 
> 1. Are the updates offered in the tor browser automatic or can a user opt not to install them and keep using an older version of the browser? 
> 2. If a user can choose to install an update, is that the count shown on the graph? 
> 3. What data is represented by "update ping"? How are you getting update pings by local? Are they not going through the tor server? 
> 
> Thank you for your time. 
> 
> Regards
> 
> Nafisa Nowshin
> Graduate Assistant
> School of EECS, Oregon State University 
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