[tor-project] User Feedback Report - February 2021

[Joydeep Sen Gupta]

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 --- 

This includes tickets created between 11th to 28th February, 2021.  

Tickets created: 112 

Tickets resolved: 156 (we resolved a lot of tickets that we were
backlogged on)

# 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. Can't upload files on Tor Browser for Android 
2. Tor Browser displaying webpages in foreign language 
3. Unlisted obfs4 bridges 
4. My Bank's website is blocking Tor 
5. How to download 32-bit version of Tor Browser

Here is a list of issues which got the most attention (at least 2 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 Vista) - 30 
MacOS - 7 
GNU/Linux - 4 
Android- 8 

(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. 11 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. 3 RT tickets - Tor Browser doesn't run on Arch/openSUSE Tumbleweed/Fedora
Rawhide. [1] 

3. 3 RT tickets - DuckDuckGo doesn't redirect to it's html page on "Safest"
Security Setting. The issue has been covered by the following ticket.[2] 

4. 2 RT tickets - Cannot upload files on Tor Browser for Android. Regarding this
we have a ticket open on our GitLab [3]. Last month, we also added this issue to
the 'Known Issues' section in the Tor Browser User Manual.[4] 

5. 2 RT tickets - Questions on how to import/export bookmarks in Tor Browser. We
direct users to the article in the Tor Browser Manual.[5] 

6. 2 RT tickets - Webpages show up in foreign languages. We have made the
response to this into a template on RT taking help from the article in our
Support portal.[6]

# General Issues

1. 3 RT tickets - Enquiries on relay setup. We direct users to the relay guide
we have on the Community Portal.[7] 

2. 2 RT tickets - Users unable to subscribe to the Newsletter since some major
email services are bouncing our emails. We are running into this issue again
this month. There's some discussion on this ticket.[8]

# UI/UX and documentation 

1. 2 RT tickets - Users unable to donate via our donation page. We are still
investigating the issue with the concerned users.  

2. We have now updated all of our documentation (including screenshots and
screencaps) in accordance with Tor Browser 10's interface.[9] 

3. Since Tor Browser Developers Key is now available on keys.openpgp.org, we
have accordingly updated our documentation around this.[10] 

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, reviews mostly revolve
around- 'Can't keep Tor Browser for Android  running in the background', 'cannot
launch urls in Tor Browser without having it running and connected first',
'can't upload files with the browser' and 'Tor Browser is slow'. Although in
terms of ratings we have quite a good amount of 4-star reviews.  

5. Tor Stack Exchange - Statistics of what the discussion has been about (5 most
active tags):

tor-browser-bundle- 23 questions 
configuration (questions about configuring Tor software)- 11 questions 
hidden-services- 12 questions 
anonymity- 8 questions 

6. Reddit- Discussion has mostly been around DNS leaks while using Tor in Brave
Browser and issues related to censorship. General discussion on using Tor and
also a peak in interest regarding Snowflake. 

# Anti-censorship and metrics 
 
1. Including RT and #tor, we got a total of 6 requests for private bridges which
have been from China (two requests), Middle East (two requests), Belarus (one
request) and Thailand (one request).  

2. 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.[11][12]

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/40328 
[2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/torbutton/-/issues/40030 
[3]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40283 
[4]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/mobile-tor/#known-issues 
[5]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/export-and-import-bookmarks/ 
[6]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-43/ 
[7]: https://community.torproject.org/relay/ 
[8]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/40164 
[9]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/ 
[10]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/how-to-verify-signature/ 
[11]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/outreach/-/issues/40001 
[12]: 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