[tor-project] Joydeep's Monthly Status Report for January 2023

[Joydeep Sen Gupta]

Hello everyone!

Here are my updates from January 2023. In total, I resolved 1275 tickets
across our email, telegram and signal user support channels. Most of my
work last month has been around helping users in regions where Tor is
censored. There has been another massive uptick in user requests from
China. I have been working with users to get feedback, help them use
pluggable transports and troubleshoot Tor.

On Tor Browser front, we had one major stable release and with that some
post-release user support work. I received a few reports of users on Apple
Silicon-based Macs unable to fetch Tor Browser updates[1] since Tor
Browser 12. The issue is resolved in the latest update i.e. 12.0.2. I
also made a small update to the documentation about our GetTor
distributor in the Tor Browser Manual[2].

Now, a quick overview of our user support channels:

Timeline: 01 - 31 January 2023

# Frontdesk

tickets created: 816
tickets resolved: 1461

Most frequent tickets by numbers:

1. 308 RT Tickets - Private Bridge requests from China

2. 96 RT Tickets - How to use a Tor Bridge in Russia

3. 59 RT Tickets - Circumventing censorship with Tor in Iran

4. 9 RT Tickets -  Unable to update to 12.0.1 on Apple Silicon-based
Mac[1]

# Telegram and Signal Support channel (cdr.link)

tickets resolved: 650

The most frequent tickets we received have been about:

1. 195 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russia

2. 166 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Iran

3. 92 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Turkmenistan

4. 19 tickets - Circumventing censorship in China

# Tor Forum

Most popular topics in the Support category (in terms of number of
views):

1. "Changing operating system changes browser fingerprints?" [3]

2. "Wanted to run something like tor network in china"[4]

3. "Road from restricted to unrestircted!"[5]

4. "Do Snowflake Proxies Reveal Tor Traffic to ISP?"[6]

5. "Snowflake standalone proxy in Docker: How to make NAT
unrestricted?"[7]

Thanks,

-- Joydeep

[1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/40716
[2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/issues/138
[3]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/changing-operating-system-changes-browser-fingerprints/6345/
[4]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/wanted-to-run-something-like-tor-network-in-china/6163/
[5]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/road-from-restricted-to-unrestircted/6409/
[6]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/do-snowflake-proxies-reveal-tor-traffic-to-isp/6170/
[7]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/snowflake-standalone-proxy-in-docker-how-to-make-nat-unrestricted/6211/