[tor-project] User Feedback Report - January 2021

Thu Feb 11 18:14:09 UTC 2021

Hello everyone!  

This is a report of some of the work done by the Community Team
in the past month and general user feedback that we've received across our
official support channels.

--- Request Tracker --- 

Tickets received in the past month: 257
Tickets resolved in the past month: 190

# New RT templates

We aggregated statistics of what issues Tor users are frequently running into
and made their solutions into articles/templates on the RT. This will help folks
working on the RT to better support users. We created/updated the following
articles:

1. Basic troubleshooting when users can't access any particular website
2. Antivirus software blocking Tor Browser
3. How to contribute? - code, report issues, help with docs, etc.
4. How Tor works?
5. How to obtain Tor logs and share them with us?
6. How to connect to built-in Bridges?

Here is a list of issues which got the most attention (at least 3 tickets on
RT):

# Tor Browser  
Breakdown of number of RT tickets received with respect to operating system: 

Windows (10,8,7 ...all the way upto XP) - 17
MacOS - 9
GNU/Linux - 3
Android - 14 

(Note: This includes tickets where the user mentioned the operating
system or it was evident from the issue they were running into or enclosed
screenshots.) 

1. 14 RT tickets - Failure to launch Tor Browser. We point users to the
"Six-point basic troubleshooting" article (template) on the RT to help users.

2. 4 RT tickets - Cannot upload files on Tor Browser for Android. Regarding this
we have a ticket open on our GitLab [1]. We have also added this issue to the
'Known Issues' section in the Tor Browser User Manual [2]

3. 4 RT tickets - Questions on how to bookmark webpages in Tor Browser. We
direct users to the article in the Support Portal [3]

4. 3 RT tickets - Error "RSA_get0_d could not be located in the dynamic link
library tor.exe" on Windows. We have a GitLab ticket regarding this long
standing issue [4] 

5. 3 RT tickets - Confusion around what apk to download from
our Download page (under Android) [5]

# Onion Services

3 tickets- v3 onion service outages. All of these tickets have come from folks
who read random clickbait articles on the internet and wanted our comments on
the same. 

# General Issues

1. 5 RT tickets - Lot of queries around Mozilla's blog post in January and how
that 'affects' Tor Browser. [6]

2. 3 RT tickets - Users unable to subscribe to the Newsletter since some major
email services are bouncing our emails. There's some discussion on this ticket.
[7]

3. 3 RT tickets - Users unable to subscribe to the newsletter when visiting it's
onion address. We have a ticket to cover this issue [8]

4. This is an issue **we** are facing. We are receiving a large amount of spam
on the RT every day. In the past month, 1770 spam tickets were either detected
by the filters or we had to sort them by hand (the actual number of spam tickets
is much larger than that) :)

# UI/UX and documentation 

1. 7 RT tickets - Reddit blocking Tor. Youtube making it very difficult for
users to connect to while using Tor. We are covering this issue under a ticket
to document websites, especially the ones in the top 500 in terms of traffic,
which are blocking or making it difficult for users to connect to while using
Tor [9]. Also see a post on Reddit regarding this issue [10]

2. Before the launch of the survey regarding Snowflake with the next version of
Tor Browser Alpha [11], we have added some FAQ entries on Snowflake in the
Support Portal [12]

3. We also made some notable changes to the documentation and updated the 'Known
Issues' page [13] and added instructions on how users can obtain their Tor logs
and share them with us [14]. 

We have been unable to officially provide support in the following channels but
here's what the discussion was about in the past month:

4. Google Play Store - In terms of user experience, I am happy to report that
unlike last month, we have received more positive reviews. The 'most liked'
comments either have a 4-star or 5-star rating reviews. We still have some
heavily liked comments with one 1-star and negative reviews though.

5. Tor Stack Exchange - Statistics of what the discussion has been about (5 most
active tags): 
tor-browser-bundle- 27 questions 
configuration (questions about configuring Tor software)- 10 questions 
hidden-services- 8 questions 
anonymity- 15 questions 
security- 7 questions

6. Reddit- Discussion has mostly been around the v3 onion service outages,
censorship and internet shutdown events in the Global South and Reddit itself
blocking connections over Tor. 

# Anti-censorship and metrics 

1. Including RT and #tor, we got a total of 8 requests for private bridges which
have been from China (three requests), Turkmenistan (two requests), Turkey (one
request), Iran (one request) and Eastern Europe (Russian locale) (one request).

2. In the past month, there have been numerous instances of censorship and
internet shutdowns in the Global South - namely in Uganda, India and Myanmar.
For one user in Uganda who was using an iOS device and didn't have OnionBrowser
installed on their phone before Apple's App Store was censored, we collaborated
with folks to provide them with configuration files to activate VPN natively on
their device in order to access the App Store and download OnionBrowser (for
some context, apps cannot be sideloaded on iOS and therefore the GetTor method
doesn't work in this case). 

3. Ongoing issue of users unable to connect to some of the bridges and/or relay
statistics not showing up on metrics. We have the following GitLab tickets to
cover this issue. [15][16]

If you have any suggestions, questions or want to discuss anything in detail
please feel free to reach out to me and/or anyone from the Community Team!

Thanks, 

Joydeep

Links: 

[1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40283
[2]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/mobile-tor/#known-issues
[3]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/export-and-import-bookmarks/
[4]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/33702
[5]: https://www.torproject.org/download/#android
[6]: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/
[7]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/40164
[8]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/newsletter/-/issues/13
[9]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40013
[10]: https://old.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/l4cexf/tor_and_reddit_problems_faq/
[11]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40007
[12]: https://support.torproject.org/censorship/
[13]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/known-issues/
[14]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/troubleshooting/
[15]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/outreach/-/issues/40001
[16]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40005

-- 
Joydeep Sen Gupta
IRC: championquizzer
GPG: C8C8 6A4B E247 2D2D C345 9046 5B57 1AA7 D685 E67D