[tor-talk] Many more Tor users in the past week?

[mirimir]

On 08/27/2013 07:08 AM, Roger Dingledine wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> Check out
> https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html
> (for posterity, the longer-term link will be
> https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=direct-users&start=2013-05-29&end=2013-08-27&country=all&events=off#direct-users )
> 
> The number of Tor clients running appears to have doubled since August 19:
> https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=direct-users&start=2013-08-12&end=2013-08-27&country=all&events=off#direct-users
> 
> And it's not just a fluke in the metrics data -- it appears that
> there really are twice as many Tor clients running as before:
> https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html#dirbytes
> 
> There's a slight increase (worsening) in the performance measurements:
> https://metrics.torproject.org/performance.html
> but it's hard to say if that's a real difference. So while there are a
> bunch of new Tor clients running, it would seem they're not doing much.
> 
> Anybody know details? It's easy to speculate (Pirate Browser publicity
> gone overboard? People finally reading about the NSA thing? Botnet?),
> but some good solid facts would sure be useful.

I suspect PirateBrowser, given that PirateBay users probably outnumber
privacy lovers by 2-3 orders of magnitude.

If that's the case, PirateBrowser is truly doing evil.

> --Roger
>