[tor-project] Notes from user feedback at training in São Paulo [mobile and desktop]

[isabela]

hello Tor,

I thought of sharing this with y'all since it touches different things.

In São Paulo we did a Tor training, Gus explained how information about
you and your computer can be collected online and used to identify you
and learn your online behavior.

Then he explained how Tor can help you to protect your online identity
and we spend some time with people installing Tor on desktop (linux and
mac mostly) and on mobile (Android and iOS).

After everyone had installed I did a quick exercise with everyone where
I asked them to write their impressions, could be complains of things
that didn't work as expected or just feedback related to how they would
like to the tools to behave or missing features.

This is a compilation of that feedback :) you will notice that we are
already working on fixing some of this stuff which is great, it shows we
are on the right path. But some things were new and could even be a bug
(which in this case I hope you help me confirm that and I will create a
ticket).

- surprised with the speed of the network, had used it before and gave
up on it because of how slow it was, but now it seems faster
- could not install it due to old OS version
- plug-ins that are already installed as part of Tor Browser made the
person confused (should Tor Browser come with plug-ins when it
recommends to not install plug-ins)
- Orfox + Orbot: settings for both are quite confusing and complicated
to understand
- on iOS app store - apps that are not recommended by Tor has Tor's logo
while OnionBrowser doesn't
- it wasn't easy to know that some sites (with javascript or http only)
was not working because of security reasons (this lead the person to
give up on Tor Browser - before this training - thinking it was bug not
a feature)
- Didn't understood what is the need of Orbot, besides using it to
connect Orfox to Tor
- It's not clear when you download Orfox that you need Orbot too
- could not find the apk for Orbot and Orfox on the torproject.org website
- Debian stable (backports) did not find the Tor Browser pt-br version
for installing the package
- information is all in English - need to be translated to Portuguese BR
- could not find the circuit it was using on Android (neither on Orfox
or Orbot)
- could not find how to change the languages settings of Orbot
- it's hard to verify that you are downloading the right build from
torproject.org website (signature verification process)
- OnionBrowser is crashing every time you go away from browser or lock
your phone; the browser crashes and you need to restart it all over
again and reestablish the Tor network connection
- could not understand why the sites were not behaving as expected
(didn't make the connection of it with TB security features that was
blocking things to protect them)
- on Debian the security slider configurations were not sticking - user
would pick a configuration i.e. safest close the browser, re-open it and
the browser was back on 'standard'
- what does Tor recommends? Is not clear if we recommend standard or
safest (higher security) when using Tor Browser. User would like to
follow our recommendation since they aren't sure what to use
- language settings on Orbot was not sticking (user had to pick it again
after closing the app)

cheers,
isabela