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

[Joydeep Sen Gupta]

Hello everyone!

Here are my updates from November. Continuing my work
with helping users in Iran amidst the heavy censorship[1], I was able to
respond to a little over 200 user support requests from Iran. We have established
a user feedback loop with the users and constantly monitoring any new developments.
In light of the recent changes to the circumvention map of Connection Assist[2]
for users in China and Hong Kong, I have been working to get
feedback from users in this region. Although I haven't got a ton of user
feedback, the most of the users I have interacted with have confirmed of
better connectivity confirming the surge in users we have seen on
Metrics[3].
In preparation[4] for the next major Tor Browser stable release (Tor
Browser 12), I did a alpha testers call during the Tor localization hangout[5] and
along with Nina (@nina13) review of all
the internal support documentation we maintain.


Now, a quick overview of our user support channels:

Timeline: 01 - 30 November 2022

# Frontdesk

tickets created: 899
tickets resolved: 933

Most frequent tickets by numbers:

1. 70 RT Tickets - Private Bridge requests from China[6]

2. 31 RT Tickets - Circumventing Censorship with Tor in Iran.

3. 30 RT Tickets - How to use a Tor Bridge in Russia[7]

4. 5 RT Tickets - Tor Browser for Android 11.5.9 crashing on launch[8]

# Telegram and Signal Support channel (cdr.link)

tickets resolved: 536

The other most frequent ticket we received have been about:

1. 198 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Iran.

2. 157 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russia

3. 17 tickets - Using unlisted obfs4 bridges in China

# Tor Forum

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

1. "Snowflake proxies for Iran"[9]

2. "Cannot visit Reddit through Tor Browser since most recent update?"[10]

3. "Is there a list of blocked websites?"[11]

4. "Cannot Connect Tor Browser"[12]

5. "Big drop in Snowflake traffic"[13]

Thanks,

-- Joydeep


[1]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/iran-circumventing-censorship-with-tor/4590
[2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/99
[3]: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2022-09-06&end=2022-12-05&country=cn
[4]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40096
[5]: https://community.torproject.org/localization/hangouts/
[6]: https://support.torproject.org/censorship/connecting-from-china/
[7]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-censorship/982
[8]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41481
[9]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/snowflake-proxies-for-iran/5373/
[10]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/cannot-visit-reddit-through-tor-browser-since-most-recent-update/5411/
[11]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/is-there-a-list-of-blocked-websites/5527/
[12]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/cannot-connect-tor-browser/5588/
[13]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/big-drop-in-snowflake-traffic/5640/