[tor-project] Joydeep's Monthly Status Report for March 2022

[Joydeep Sen Gupta]

Hello everyone!

This is my monthly report for the month of March. Much like in February, we
saw a even greater uptick in the number of requests for unlisted obfs4
bridges. We received 72 unique requests in one month. Understandably so,
since some of the obfs4 bridges we were sharing with users went offline
at the end of February. Within a month of launching the Telegram User
Support Channel for users in Russia, we are seeing more and more
questions from users who are new to the Tor ecosystem and curious how
all of it works. I am mostly helping with these questions and other
technical questions related with little-t-tor, snowflake, Tor Browser
design and usability.

There were a number of Tor Browser releases last month, namely, 11.5.a5
(Android), 11.0.7, 11.5.a7 (Android), 11.5.a6, 11.0.8 (Android), 11.0.9
and 11.5.a8. A lot of my work was around testing and user support around
these specific releases. We received a few reports of the "Tor Browser
for Android 11.0.8 crashing on launch" bug [1] and after consulting with
the applications team, I posted the workaround [2] on the forum / blog
post. I also authored a article (shout-out to @nina13 for the
translation!) on the forum [3] encouraging users in Russia to keep their
Tor browser up-to-date in light of (1) critical security updates that
shipped with Tor Browser 11.0.7 and (2) a lot of users in Russia were
unable to update and GetTor for some time was handing out links to Tor
Browser 11.0.4. In the past month, I was also able to help some new Tor
relay operators setup bridges.

That pretty much sums up the highlights from last month and following
are some quick stats and highlights from our official support channels.

## Frontdesk

Timeline : 01 Mar - 31 Mar 2022

Tickets:

new: 26
open: 15
resolved: 792

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

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

Windows - 11
macOS - 6
GNU/Linux - 6
Android- 13

Breakdown of most frequent tickets (at least 3 RT tickets):

1. 443 RT Tickets - How to use Tor Bridges in Russia. [4]

2. 72 RT Tickets - Private Bridge requests. This is not related to the
.ru censorship but requests from Tor users in China, Iran, etc. [5]

3. 7 RT Tickets - How to circumvent geo-based restrictions with Tor?

4. 8 RT Tickets- How to change the default SE and add a new search
engine to Tor Browser? [6]

5. 6 RT Tickets - Tor Browser Android 11.0.8 crashes on launch [1]

6. 5 RT Tickets - Help with setting up a Tor Bridge.


## Tor Forum

Most popular topics in the Support category (in terms of no. of views):

1. "What is still blocking my IP address? (IP address on various block
lists since running a non-exit Tor relay)". [7]

2. "Can we expect a stable Tor Browser release soon? ESR 91.6.1 appears
to fix some critical security issues". [8]

3. "Have I Correctly Set Up My Bridge?" [9]

4. "Snowflake does not work anymore" [10]

5. "I have seen x unique clients (on my Tor Bridge)" [11]

Thanks,

-- Joydeep

[1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/fenix/-/issues/40212
[2]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/new-release-tor-browser-11-0-8-android/2527/4
[3]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-browser-11-0-7/2484
[4]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-censorship/982
[5]: https://support.torproject.org/censorship/connecting-from-china/
[6]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/custom-search-engine-in-tor-browser/2574
[7]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/what-is-still-blocking-my-ip-address/2564
[8]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/can-we-expect-a-stable-tor-browser-release-soon-esr-91-6-1-appears-to-fix-some-critical-security-issues/2430/
[9]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/have-i-correctly-set-up-my-bridge/2637/
[10]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/snowflake-does-not-work-anymore/2650
[11]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/i-have-seen-x-unique-clients/2755