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

[ebanam]

Hello everyone!

Here are my updates from the month of May. Like past few months, most of
my work has been concentrated on helping users from regions where Tor is
censored. I resolved 384 tickets across our user support channels on
email, Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal.

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

Timeframe: 01 - 31 May 2023

# Frontdesk (email)

* 490 RT tickets created 
* 495 RT tickets resolved

Most frequent tickets by numbers:

1. 143(↓) RT tickets: private bridge requests from China.
2. 65(↓) RT tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries.
3. 7(↑) RT tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Iran.
4. 3(-) RT tickets: Tor Browser doesn't run with Mandatory ASLR on Windows (the issue
is fixed with the 12.0.5 Tor Browser release and the users just had to
update their browser)[0]

# Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel

* 661 tickets resolved

Breakdown:

* 627 tickets on Telegram
* 27 tickets on WhatsApp
* 7 tickets on Signal

The most frequent tickets on cdr.link have been about:

1. 373(↑) tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russian speaking
countries.
2. 43(↓) tickets: Circumventing censorship in Iran.
3. 22(↓) tickets: Circumventing censorship in China. 
4. 3(-) tickets: Windows installer for Tor Browser from our website is outdated 
(We are in the process of updating our build signing infrastructure, and unfortunately 
are unable to ship code-signed latest installers for Windows systems currently.
Automatic build-to-build upgrades from 12.0.4 and 12.0.5 should continue
to work as expected)[1] 

# Tor Forum

1. "Threat secured in snowflake firefox add-on"[2]
2. Some users in China reported that Snowflake wasn't working for them [3]
3. "How to enable Firefox Account Sync?"[4]
4. "How can I get an onion domain email address?"[5]
5. "Why does Tor network not use certificates issued by CAs?"[6]

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://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/40822
[1]: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-1206/
[2]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/threat-secured-in-snowflake-firefox-add-on/7688/
[3]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/snowflake-bridge-does-not-work-in-china-since-days-ago/7635/
[4]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/how-to-enable-firefox-account-sync/7735/
[5]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/how-can-i-get-an-onion-domain-email-address/7486/
[6]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/why-does-tor-network-not-use-certificates-issued-by-cas/7600/