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

[ebanam]

Hello all,

Last month, I worked on some small documentation updates to the Tor
Browser User Manual[0], Support Portal[1] and the support documentation
that we maintain on our user support channels. With some exciting new
updates to Tor Browser Alpha, I was involved with some testing apart
from the usual user support work around any Tor Browser releases. 

We saw a slight uptick in support requests from Chinese and Farsi
speaking users - involving instructions and help with using pluggable
transports that works best for them and general troubleshooting.

The current Snowflake domain fronting issue with Fastly will be reported
on the next user support report (April 2024).

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

# Frontdesk (email support channel)

* 427(↓) RT tickets created
* 461(↑) RT tickets resolved

Tickets by numbers:

1. 218(↑) RT tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking
users.
2. 105(↓) RT tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian
speaking countries.
3. 13 RT tickets: private bridge and help with
circumventing censorship requests from regions where Tor is not blocked.
The issues were mostly resolved by troubleshooting and analysing Tor
logs and the issues ranged from - firewall, VPN & antivirus interrupting
the connection to having an incorrect system clock.
4. 7(↑) RT tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi.
5. 3 RT tickets: Help with installing Tor Browser on Android.
6. 2 RT tickets: Help with GPG signature verification while installing Tor Browser[2].
7. 3 RT tickets: Reports of website blocking Tor users.

Highlighting some other topics we received questions and feedback:

8. Google showing up in foreign language[3].
9. Help with installing Tor on Fedora and PopOS (Linux)
10. Question about the "New Identity"[4] feature in Tor Browser - what it does
and how it can be used.
11. ExoneraTor suffering from possible denial of service[5].
12. Question about where to find Tor Browser's source code.
13. Modifying Tor circuit to exit from a specific country (the country had no exits
running and, in general, we highly discourage users to modify their Tor circuit)

# Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel

* 508(-) tickets resolved

Breakdown:

* 485(-) tickets on Telegram
* 17(↑) tickets on WhatsApp
* 6(↓) tickets on Signal

Tickets by numbers:

1. 315(↓) tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking
countries.
2. 50(↑) tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi.
3. 26(↑) tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking users.
4. 4 tickets: help with installation and troubleshooting of Tor Browser
on Windows.
5. 4 tickets: Questions about which Tor app to install on
iOS (Onion Browser and Orbot).

Highlighting some other topics we received questions about:

6. 2 tickets: Help with GPG signature verification while installing Tor
Browser.
7. 2 tickets: Reports of onion services (not maintained by us)
being offline. We asked the users to kindly contact the concerned onion
service maintainers.
8. 2 tickets: Help with using pluggable transports with little-t-tor.
9. Help and instructions to install Tor Browser for Android.


# Highlights from the Tor Forum

1. New Tor Browser Alpha Release: Tor Browser 13.5a5[6]. Please help us
test Connection Assist on Android!
2. Installing Tor Browser on Linux[7]
3. Building and installing lyrebird to use pluggable transports with Tor
on Alpine[8]
4. Modifying Tor circuit to exit from a particular
country[9]. Please check metrics before modifying torrc for similar
configurations.


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/-/merge_requests/89
[1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/support/-/merge_requests/198
[2]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/how-to-verify-signature/
[3]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-43/
[4]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/managing-identities/
[5]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41507
[6]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-13-5a5/11724
[7]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/linux-i-cant-find-start-tor-browser-desktop/11687
[8]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/where-to-find-source-of-obfs4proxy-files-to-package-for-alpine/11719
[9]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/i-cant-use-indian-exit-node-are-there-technical-or-laws-problems/11605
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