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

[David Fifield]

On Fri, Nov 24, 2017 at 03:30:23PM +0200, Laimonas Vėbra wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 09:16:26AM -0700, David Fifield wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Any updates? Could someone investigate and clarify this issue, cause
> anomalies still persist.

Karsten suggested some potential ways to investigate. I don't think
anyone has had time to investigate.
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/metrics-team/2017-August/000433.html
	- look out for single relays reporting unusually high numbers of
	users/directory requests from these countries;
	- compare geoip file digests reported in extra-info descriptors to
	files shipped with tor to spot any unusual files; and
	- try to find similar downturns in other countries that coincide with
	these upturns and that together keep the total number of users
	relatively stable.

> Latvia, Bulgaria, Austria & Switzerland (in the past) were (or are)
> affected too.
> 
> https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2017-06-25&end=2017-11-23&country=lv&events=on
> https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2017-06-25&end=2017-11-23&country=bg&events=on
> https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2017-06-25&end=2017-11-23&country=at&events=on

Good job finding these. I will help if you can add them to the "Unknown"
table at https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/MetricsTimeline