[tor-project] ebanam's monthly status report and user support report for May 2024

[ebanam]

Hello all,

This is my monthly report for the month of May. In preparation for the
upcoming Tor Browser 13.5 release I worked on a number of documentation
related tickets both in the Tor Browser User Manual[0] and the Support
Portal[1].

Aside from which much of my focus was helping users in regions where is
Tor is censored, which involves helping users to install Tor Browser
through GetTor or our official mirrors, helping with using bridges and
snowflake, troubleshoot errors and collecting user feedback, in general.

Number of tickets via email from Russian speaking regions are still low
albeit investigating this drop we haven't yet found the main issue. We
plan to run a deeper investigation in June. That said, we have seen a
surge in tickets on our Telegram support channel from the region, which
remains the most popular user support platform for users in Russian
speaking countries.

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

# Frontdesk (email support channel)

* 497(↑) RT tickets created
* 467(↓) RT tickets resolved

Tickets by numbers:

1. 262(↓) RT tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking
users.
2. 79(↓) RT tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking
countries.
3. 6 RT tickets: help with installing and troubleshooting Tor
Browser on Windows.
4. 4 (↓) RT tickets: circumventing censorship with
Tor in Farsi.

Highlighting some other topics we received questions and feedback:

5. 4 RT tickets: Reports of issues with an onion service. This
particular onion service was down and we asked the users to report this
to the onion service operator.
6. 1 RT ticket: Report of website blocking Tor traffic.
7. 1 RT ticket: Report of a fake app on iOS App
Store masquerading as Tor Browser.

# Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel

* 631(↑) tickets resolved

Breakdown:
* 607 (↑) tickets on Telegram
* 23 (-) tickets on WhatsApp
* 1 (↓) ticket on Signal

Tickets by numbers:

1. 378 (↑) tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking
countries.
2. 51 (↓) tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in
Farsi.
3. 43 (↓) tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking
users.

Highlighting some other topics we received questions about:

4. 4 tickets: instructions on how to fetch Tor Browser binaries from
GetTor.
5. 3 tickets: help with installing and using bridges with
little-t-tor.
6. 3 tickets: questions about setting up onion services.
7. 2 tickets: instructions on how to use bridges and snowflake with
Orbot.
8. 2 tickets: help with troubleshooting Tor Browser on Windows.


# Highlights from the Tor Forum

1. Troubleshooting little-t-tor[2]
2. How I can get obfs4 bridges?[3]


Thanks!
e.

Note: (↑), (↓) and (-) are indicating 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/web/manual/-/commits/main?author=ebanam
[1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/support/-/commits/main?author=ebanam
[2]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/little-t-tor-package-linux-not-working-with-bridges/12742
[3]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/how-can-i-get-new-bridges/12635
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