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

[Joydeep Sen Gupta]

Hello everyone! These are my updates from September.

In the past month our support channels have received a unprecedented
number of user support requests from Iran. Across our official support
channels - email, Telegram and Signal - we have resolved more than 4000
support tickets! With help and inputs from my fellow community team
members and the localization team, I drafted a user guide on how to
circumvent censorship with Tor in Iran[1]. This is very much ongoing
work and we are actively monitoring the situation and will keep updating
the user guide.

With such large volume of support requests there have been some
challenges as well. Our cdr.link (Telegram and Signal support channel)
has been running into some issues with message reception and delivery
through the @TorProjectSupportBot on Telegram and I have been in touch
with the cdr.link support team about this (massive shout-out to them for
the prompt response to this!) More details in the ticket[2].

While the questions have been mostly around using pluggable transports
with Tor Browser, Orbot and Onion Browser in Iran, I have helped a
number of users with instructions to verify their Tor Browser install,
setting up F-Droid to download Tor Browser for Android (as a result of
our main website and mirrors being blocked) and as part of our
campaign[3] to run more snowflake proxies, to setup snowflake proxies
for folks where internet is not censored.

Apart from this, with two Tor Browser Alpha releases I have been
involved with testing and overall quality assurance and added
documentation about the Telegram GetTor bot to the Tor Browser
Manual[4].

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

Timeline: 01 - 30 September 2022

# Frontdesk

Tickets:

open: 58
resolved: 1273

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

Breakdown of most frequent tickets by numbers:

1. 1059 RT Tickets - Circumventing Censorship with Tor in Iran.

2. 172 RT Tickets - Private Bridge requests from China[5]

3. 69 RT Tickets - How to use a Tor Bridge in Russia[6]


# Telegram and Signal Support channel (cdr.link)

tickets resolved: 2925

Most of these tickets have been about circumventing censorship in Iran.
The other most frequent ticket we received have been about:

101 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russia

9 tickets - Using unlisted obfs4 bridges in China

9 tickets - Help with setting up snowflake and other general
questions about the pluggable transport

# Tor Forum

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

1. "Iran: Circumventing Censorship with Tor"[1]

2. "Snowflake Chrome extension doesn’t seem to be working for me"[7]

3. "Two-layered access"[8]

4. "Snowflake standalone proxy: NAT behaviour"[9]

5. "Your server has not managed to confirm reachability for its
ORPort(s)"[10]

Thanks,

-- Joydeep


[1]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/iran-circumventing-censorship-with-tor/4590
[2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40092
[3]: https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1573670895696183303
[4]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/downloading/
[5]: https://support.torproject.org/censorship/connecting-from-china/
[6]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-censorship/982
[7]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/snowflake-chrome-extension-doesnt-seem-to-be-working-for-me/4737
[8]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/two-layered-access/4783
[9]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/snowflake-standalone-proxy-nat-behaviour/4885
[10]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/your-server-has-not-managed-to-confirm-reachability-for-its-orport-s/4528