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

[ebanam]

Hello everyone,

We saw a uptick in user support requests from Chinese speaking users in
the past month, but in general most of my work focussed on providing
help to users in regions where Tor is censored.
With the release of Proof of Work (PoW) defense for Onion Services[0], I also
worked on gathering some initial feedback.

# PoW defense for Onion Services feedback

Most of the initial feedback and questions have been about
(1) how it will affect user's connecting to Onion Services,
(2) whether users will have to solve a captcha puzzle, and,
(3) discussion about the underlying algorithm used.

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

Timeframe: 01 - 31 August 2023

# Frontdesk (email)

* 1041 (↑) RT tickets created
* 942 (↑) RT tickets resolved

Most frequent tickets by numbers:

1. 650 (↑) RT tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking
countries.
2.  284 (↑) RT tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese
speaking users.
3.   1 (↓) RT ticket: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi.

# Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel

* 642 (↓) tickets resolved

Breakdown:

* 609 (↓) tickets on Telegram
* 22 (↑) tickets on WhatsApp
* 11 (↑) tickets on Signal

The most frequent tickets on cdr.link have been about:
1. 393 (↓) tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries.
2. 16 (↑) tickets: Circumventing censorship in Chinese speaking users.
3. 16 (↓) tickets: Circumventing censorship in Farsi.

# Highlights from the Tor Forum

1. Proof of Work (PoW) defense for Onion Service is released.[1]
2. "How Snowflake works?"[2]
3. EFF’s university Tor relay campaign[3]
4. New Alpha Release: Tor Browser 13.0a3 (Android, Windows, macOS, Linux)[4].
Help us test the 13.0ax series of Tor Browser for Alpha prior to the Tor
Browser 13 stable release.

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://blog.torproject.org/introducing-proof-of-work-defense-for-onion-services/
[1]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/proof-of-work-pow-defense-for-onion-service-is-released/8887
[2]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/how-about-snowflake-works/8710
[3]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-relays-effs-university-tor-relay-campaign/8706
[4]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-13-0a3-android-windows-macos-linux/8898