[tor-project] User Feedback Report - December 2020

[Joydeep Sen Gupta]

Hello everyone!

This is a report of some of the work done by the Community Team in the past month (December 2020) and general user feedback that we've received across our official support channels.

--- Request Tracker --- 

Tickets Resolved in the past month: ~230 (December 2020)

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

# Tor Browser  
Breakdown with respect to operating system: 

Windows (10,8,7 ..all the way upto XP) - 31
MacOS - 21
GNU/Linux - 8
Android - 26
(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. 24 tickets - Failure to launch Tor Browser. We created a "Six-point basic troubleshooting" article (a template) on the RT to help users.
2. 9 tickets - Tabs crashing on Tor Browser running on Apple Silicon (M1) chip on the latest Macbooks. We opened an umbrella ticket [1] covering this issue and also to collect user responses. This ticket also got a mention in Mozilla's bugzilla [2]. 
3. 4 tickets - Cannot upload or download files on Tor Browser for Android. Issues with download was fixed with the latest release but issue with uploading files still persists. Here's a GitLab ticket [3]. 
4. 4 tickets - Tor Browser for Android not working on older versions of Android (reports for 5.1, 6, 7 and 8). Gus and myself couldn't reproduce this issue on our older Android devices, i.e. running Android 5.1,6 and 7.

Feedback -  
5. "Can't set Tor Browser as default on Android because urls won't directly open in the browser. Either you have to have Tor Browser running in the background or launch (the browser) and manually paste the url in the url bar." 

# UI/UX and documentation 

1. Lot of discussion around the new UI after the latest releases of Tor Browser for Android. 
1.1 On Google Play Store, the responses have been mixed. Mostly negative (with 1-2 star ratings) but the 'top'(most 'liked') responses are positive responses with a 5 star rating. 
1.2 On RT, there were 2 tickets related to this topic. Negative reviews.
We updated the 'Tor Mobile' documentation [4] in mid-December and have not been receiving any UI related tickets on RT ever since.
 
2. Complaints about wiki pages on GitLab. "Cannot search for something specific. We miss trac." 
3. Some complaints about 'Relay Operators' documentation. We have a ticket on our GitLab covering one aspect of this issue. [5]
4. Some complaints on "verifying Tor Browser signature" documentation.


# Anti-censorship and metrics 
 
1. In the aftermath of the Meek-Azure and Moat issue [6] we got 3 private bridge requests on RT and 2 on IRC. 
2. In general, including RT and #tor, we got a total of 10 requests for bridges which have been mostly from China (six requests) and Iran (two requests). 
3. 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. [7][8]   

We created/updated the following articles (templates) on the RT:
1. Six-point basic troubleshooting (to launch Tor Browser)
2. Fake Tor Browser apps on iOS
2. How to help us with Translations 
3. Tor Browser Signing Key update
4. Tabs crashing on M1 Macbook

# Tor Stack Exchange

Unfortunately we haven't been officially providing support here but these are the statistics of what the discussion has been about (10 most active tags):
1.tor-browser-bundle- 1263 questions
2.configuration (questions about configuring Tor software)- 873 questions
3.hidden-services- 546 questions
4.anonymity- 482 questions
5.security- 459 questions
6.relays- 437 questions
7.tails- 315 questions
8.windows- 291 questions
9.exit relays- 279 questions
10.onion-routing- 224 questions  

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

Thanks,
Joydeep

Links: 
[1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40262 
[2]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1682976#c3 
[3]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40283 
[4]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/mobile-tor/ 
[5]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/community/-/issues/72
[6]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/meek/-/issues/40001 
[7]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/outreach/-/issues/40001
[8]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40005

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