[tor-project] ebanam's monthly status report for July 2023

[ebanam]

Hello everyone,

Most of my work, during July, revolved around helping
users in places where Tor is censored. This, in general, involved
helping people use Connection Assist, use Pluggable Transports in Tor
Browser and little-t-tor. I also worked to collect Tor logs and general
user feedback during the ongoing webtunnel soft launch. With two Tor
Browser release in this month (one stable, one alpha) some of my work
went into providing post-release user support.

Apart from this, I made some changes to our user-facing documentation on
the Tor Browser Manual and Support Portal. Added updated instructions on
installing, updating and uninstalling Tor Browser for Android from the
Play Store[0] and improved the section about how to prioritize onion
sites in Tor Browser (thanks to feedback from a translator)[1] and
section on how to make Tor Browser work with antivirus software on the
Support Portal[2]. Also helped with reviewing the support templates that
we have for the webtunnel soft release.

Following is a breakdown of tickets our user support team handled in
July:

Timeframe: 01 - 31 July 2023

# Frontdesk (email)
* 648 (↑) RT tickets created
* 514 (↓) RT tickets resolved

Most frequent tickets by numbers:
1. 203 (↑) RT tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries.
2.  61 (↓) RT tickets: private bridge requests from China.
3.   6 (-) RT tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Iran.

# Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel

* 959 (↑) tickets resolved

Breakdown:
* 932 (↑) tickets on Telegram
* 20 (↑) tickets on WhatsApp
* 7 (↑) tickets on Signal

The most frequent tickets on cdr.link have been about:
1. 653 (↑) tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries.
2. 41 (↓) tickets: Circumventing censorship in Iran.
3. 10 (↓) tickets: Circumventing censorship in China.

# Highlights from the Tor Forum

1. We updated the instructions on the Support Portal regarding how to
make Tor Browser work with antivirus[2] owing to some user feedback on
the Forum[3]
2. Update about censorship in Turkmenistan (thanks to
Gus)[4]
3. "How do I connect to a WebTunnel bridge?"[5]
4. (Upcoming Event) "Tor Project sessions for the Feira at Global Gathering"[6]
5. Outgoing email outage on Forum (issue resolved. thanks to TPA!)[7]

Thanks!
e.

Note: (↑), (↓) and (-) are indicative if the number of tickets we
received for these topics have been increasing, decreasing or have been
the same from the previous month respectively

[0]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/mobile-tor/
[1]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/onion-services/
[2]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-10/
[3]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/new-release-tor-browser-12-5/8105/4
[4]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-relays-help-turkmens-to-bypass-internet-censorship-run-an-obfs4-bridge/7002/8
[5]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/how-do-i-connect-to-a-webtunnel-bridge-i-wish-to-test-it-to-see-its-speeds-and-reliability/8564
[6]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-project-sessions-for-the-feira-at-global-gathering/8242
[7]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/outgoing-email-outage-on-forum-resolved/8412