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Users

We estimate the number of users by analyzing the requests induced by clients to relays and bridges.

  • Relay users
  • Bridge users by country
  • Bridge users by transport
  • Bridge users by country and transport
  • Bridge users by IP version
  • BridgeDB requests by requested transport
  • BridgeDB requests by distributor
  • Top-10 countries by relay users
  • Top-10 countries by possible censorship events
  • Top-10 countries by bridge users
  • “The anonymous Internet”
Bridge users by transport graph

This graph shows the estimated number of clients connecting via bridges. These numbers are derived from directory requests counted on bridges. Bridges distinguish connecting clients by transport protocol, which may include pluggable transports, so that graphs are available for different transports. For further details check the documentation on Reproducible Metrics.

Source:

Download graph as PNG or PDF.

Download data as CSV.

Learn more about the CSV data format or how to reproduce the graph data.

Related events

The following events have been manually collected in the metrics-timeline Git repository and might be related to the displayed graph.

Dates Places/Protocols Description and Links
2016-07-21 to 2017-03-03 Brazil meek Unknown Sustained increase in meek users in Brazil. Locals believe that they are not actual users, rather bots or something like that. End date coincides with shutdown of meek-azure before migration. Would pick up again 2017-06-07.
graph
2016-07-18 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "July 6 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 19FC902B6A860BA7E4BADCB5404482995F7E0763, geoip6-db-digest 7E717154718F2065240B90F8132F305AF78C9A9D).
commit
2016-07-15 Turkey <OR> Coup attempt in Turkey. A paper (§ 4.1) reports a decline in Tor users.
paper relay graph
2016-07-07 Zimbabwe Four-hour block of WhatsApp in Zimbabwe.
article
2016-06-12 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "June 7 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest DA31976A9C7D48C2C16EA70BCE9006772A0F4A34, geoip6-db-digest FF1DD08CA9EB6528E1A6389E7154BD9586F24370).
commit
2016-06-01 Kazakhstan <OR> obfs4 Kazakhstan blocks vanilla Tor TLS. Users mostly switch to obfs4.
ticket
2016-05-30 fte Tor Browser 6.0 released, which lacks the fte pluggable transport on Mac.
6.0 blog post ticket
2016-05-13 meek meek-google's App Engine instance is suspended and meek-google stops working.
mailing list post
2016-05-11 to 2016-05-13 Uganda Social media blackout in Uganda following presidential inauguration.
advox article OONI report Freedom House report
2016-05-09 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "May 4 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 76631C314A048A59A1D801515CC7FD55CE719499, geoip6-db-digest C9392F0337A7509F1187890925CF7006F884ECBA).
commit
2016-05-02 to 2016-05-03 Brazil <OR> WhatsApp block in Brazil
blog post OONI report bloqueios report
2016-04-28 fte Tor Browser 6.0a5 and 6.0a5-hardened released, which lacks the fte pluggable transport on Mac.
6.0a5 blog post 6.0a5-hardened blog post ticket
2016-04-07 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "April 5 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest F9DFB82B6F1A480F07F4B87992CBFB7A48CB8DA2, geoip6-db-digest 769B499E6AE9FE0C2366141B931A3DB1B5489114).
commit
2016-03-27 to 2016-03-31 meek Temporarily ran an experimental branch for IPv6 counting on the meek-azure bridge.
task-18460-2 branch
2016-03-27 meek Outage of meek-azure bridge, caused by an expired TLS certificate.
2016-03-04 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "March 3 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest A34F49E5A871FA4D243C46C04B67BB3CAAFE6F74, geoip6-db-digest 9C8C4F7C7612849C88206726FCDA8CB85B8D27F3).
commit
2016-02-24 Turkmenistan <OR> Unknown Large drop in direct users in Turkmenistan.
graph
2016-02-17 to 2016-02-21 Uganda Social media blackout in Uganda during presidential election.
Freedom House report
2016-02-04 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "February 2 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 9E16EDBB826B958A7B8B84674EA98B78C13F1177, geoip6-db-digest DF9538534517275080F8335DDEE4B879A3314ED4).
commit
2016-01-29 to 2016-02-02 China meek Temporary blocking of an Azure edge server in China.
mailing list post
2016-01-16 meek Increased rate limit of the meek-amazon bridge to 3 MB/s, from 1.1 MB/s.
2016-01-15 meek Increased rate limit of the meek-google bridge to 3 MB/s, from 1.1 MB/s.
2016-01-14 meek Increased rate limit of the meek-azure bridge to 3 MB/s, from 0.8 MB/s.
2016-01-11 meek Enabled client IP statistics on the meek-amazon bridge.
comment
2016-01-07 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "January 5 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 44FC92E4D3F8C9A3A49EE9A594790C52E684298A, geoip6-db-digest BB261912C96611967FE5C1AE2700C965DBB8D61C).
commit
2015-12-31 to 2020-06-04 Mexico The Telmex ISP in Mexico blocks seven directory authorities.
mailing list post article
2015-12-25 meek Established an unthrottled bridge C20658946DD706A7A2181159A1A04CD838570D04 for people who set up their own meek CDN configuration.
2015-12-20 meek Enabled client IP statistics on the meek-google bridge.
comment
2015-12-14 meek Enabled client IP statistics on the meek-azure bridge.
comment
2015-12-05 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "December 1 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 6346E26E2BC96F8511588CE2695E9B0339A75D32, geoip6-db-digest 43CCB43DBC653D8CC16396A882C5F116A6004F0C).
commit
2015-11-18 to 2015-12-10 Bangladesh <OR> obfs3 obfs4 Bangladesh blocks Facebook, WhatsApp, and Viber.
news article (archive) relay graph
2015-11-04 meek Tor Browser 5.0.4 and 5.5a4 released, containing a fixed fingerprint for meek-amazon.
5.0.4 blog post 5.5a4 blog post ticket
2015-10-30 meek Altered the performance settings on the meek-google App Engine instance. Set max idle instances to 2 and min pending latency to 1000 ms. This used to be configured through the web interface but is now configured in an application file, which at some point caused the settings from 2015-02-28 to be lost.
2015-10-30 meek Further rate-limited the meek-azure bridge to 0.8 MB/s, from 1.1 MB/s.
2015-10-09 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "October 9 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 5BF366AD4A0572D82A1A0F6628AF8EF7725E3AB9, geoip6-db-digest 212DE17D5A368DCAFA19B95F168BFFA101145A93).
commit
2015-10-09 meek The fingerprint of the meek-amazon bridge changes, as a result of begin rebooted. Released Tor Browsers with the former fingerprint are unable to connect. The fingerprint changed from 4EE0CC769EB4B15A872F742EDE27D298A59DCADE to 6DDD1DB8526282837C50E9AB5D14AB50150CD624, then again to B9E7141C594AF25699E0079C1F0146F409495296. The new fingerprint shipped with Tor Browser 5.0.4 and 5.5a4 on 2015-11-04.
ticket
2015-10-02 meek Rate-limited the meek-azure bridge to 1.1 MB/s. (Azure grant expired.)
2015-09-30 to 2015-10-09 meek Outage of meek-amazon caused by an expired certificate. As a result of being rebooted, the bridge also changes its fingerprint from 4EE0CC769EB4B15A872F742EDE27D298A59DCADE to 6DDD1DB8526282837C50E9AB5D14AB50150CD624.
mailing list post about start mailing list post about end ticket
2015-09-24 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "September 3 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 022B9BADD23D743E51F165FB4C87E78E59F0BCB8, geoip6-db-digest DE13219FCF0F27999D1F91174CF80291B1746C95).
commit
2015-09-23 meek Upgraded meek-azure bridge from KVM to Xen.
blog post
2015-08-11 meek Tor Browser 5.0 and 5.5a1 released. They have an updated configuration to work around the meek-azure outage that started 2015-07-20.
blog post blog post ticket
2015-07-29 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "July 8 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 6882B8663F74C23E26E3C2274C24CAB2E82D67A2, geoip6-db-digest F063BD5247EB9829E6B9E586393D7036656DAF44).
commit
2015-07-22 meek Published a workaround for the meek-azure outage that started 2015-07-20.
mailing list post
2015-07-20 to 2015-08-14 meek Outage of meek-azure.
mailing list post about start mailing list post about end
2015-06-09 ipv4 geoip database updated to "June 3 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest D095D62E8A1607C2C3AF61366929BCAD0E6D3184).
commit
2015-06-09 ipv6 geoip6 database updated to "June 3 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip6-db-digest AC1BE3D0707D16AB04092FE00C9732658C926CD8).
commit
2015-06-08 meek Rate-limited the meek-amazon bridge to 1.1 MB/s.
2015-06-02 meek Further rate-limited meek-google to 1.1 MB/s, from 1.5 MB/s.
2015-05-22 meek Rate-limited the meek-google bridge to 1.5 MB/s.
2015-04-27 obfs4 Release of Tor Browser 4.5, the first stable release with obfs4.
blog post
2015-04-24 ipv4 geoip database updated to "April 8 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 0A1F9C09E08F6F2490E8880664D4E863D1680A12).
commit
2015-04-24 ipv6 geoip6 database updated to "April 8 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip6-db-digest A6E9B5DE6F887315749B29F9C9F698215BE5240A).
commit
2015-04-19 meek obfs4 Release of Orbot v15 alpha 5, first release with obfs4.
mailing list post
2015-04-15 meek Tor Weekly News covers the meek-azure performance improvement.
blog post
2015-04-08 meek Implemented persistent connections for meek-azure, increasing performance.
mailing list post
2015-03-09 ipv4 geoip database updated to "March 3 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest C1EB5237F2FBAF63381D8551157F13D12EFCCA25).
commit
2015-03-09 ipv6 geoip6 database updated to "March 3 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip6-db-digest 1F99B6B0EC78E9DB34D61AE7E0FC261D558E8E5D).
commit
2015-02-28 meek Altered performance settings on the meek-google App Engine instance in an effort to reduce instance hours. Set max idle instances to 4 and min pending latency to 500 ms.
2015-02-14 meek Release of Orbot v15-alpha-3, first release with meek.
mailing list post
2015-01-22 ipv4 geoip database updated to "January 7 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 49D309B9663C4EFB8D126D84BBB373D7C84658C3).
commit
2015-01-22 ipv6 geoip6 database updated to "January 7 2015 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip6-db-digest 9B26276EA470137894566882885AD82701D38D62).
commit
2014-11-24 ipv4 geoip database updated to "November 15 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest DC1A94D962AE165EF4AA1F14857A23C34875F39D).
commit
2014-11-24 ipv6 geoip6 database updated to "November 15 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip6-db-digest 923BA7ED922B2A4B30C9B76EE7E72D1D1714BFAF).
commit
2014-11-17 obfs4 Release of Tor Browser 4.5-alpha-1, first alpha release with obfs4. (Tor Browser changelog says 2014-11-14.)
blog post
2014-11-15 meek Moved the meek-google bridge to better hardware.
2014-11-08 meek Changed the meek-google App Engine instance back to the F1 class, from F2.
2014-10-31 meek Changed the meek-google App Engine instance to the F2 class again, from F1.
2014-10-27 meek Changed the meek-google App Engine instance back to the F1 class, from F2.
2014-10-25 meek Changed the bridge backing meek-google.
2014-10-25 meek Changed the meek-google App Engine instance to the F2 class, from F1.
2014-10-15 meek scramblesuit Tor Browser 4.0 released. This is the first stable release with meek and ScrambleSuit built in.
blog post
2014-10-14 meek Enabled PublishServerDescriptor on the meek-amazon bridge. Between 2014-09-29 and 2014-10-14, meek-amazon users were not being counted.
mailing list post
2014-09-29 meek Changed the bridge backing meek-amazon.
2014-09-29 China China blocks Instagram in response to ongoing protests in Hong Kong. A research paper by Hobbs and Roberts shows evidence for an increase in circumvention, but the measurable effect on Tor is slight if anything.
relay graph bridge graph BBC article research paper
2014-09-26 to 2014-12-15 Hong Kong "Umbrella Revolution" protests in Hong Kong.
relay graph bridge graph
2014-09-16 meek Switched meek-amazon to HTTPS.
ticket
2014-09-15 flashproxy meek Split the bridge running meek and flashproxy into separate processes in order to avoid spurious correlation in user counts.
mailing list post
2014-08-29 to 2014-09-01 fte Decrease in fte users, perhaps caused by an outage of one of the default Tor Browser bridges.
mailing list post
2014-08-15 meek 'How to use the “meek” pluggable transport' blog post is published.
blog post
2014-08-13 ipv4 geoip database updated to "August 7 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 9EF0A1874377BFB6413ED3F9EB5504B1DB17BE13).
commit
2014-08-13 ipv6 geoip6 database updated to "August 7 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip6-db-digest 542D349827A88738A04332DAFF2516A384BCC8FF).
commit
2014-08-12 Tor Browser 3.6.4 released.
blog post
2014-08-12 meek scramblesuit Tor Browser 4.0-alpha-1 released. This is the first release to have meek and ScrambleSuit built in.
blog post
2014-07-28 meek Set up meek-amazon CDN configuration.
2014-07-27 to 2014-09-23 Iran Iran blocks Tor directory authorities.
ticket
2014-07-18 ipv4 geoip database updated to "July 10 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest F2E34A314F2101E3F5AE0774660C4BA670646B8D).
commit
2014-07-18 ipv6 geoip6 database updated to "July 10 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip6-db-digest 45893A1BDDABACCEB346DE4644A155450FD28B0E).
commit
2014-06-10 ipv4 geoip database updated to "June 4 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest BFC7453BBEAD611B7FF97AD71BE3392AA8BCFBE3).
commit
2014-06-10 ipv6 geoip6 database updated to "June 4 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip6-db-digest E0A79ABC85672AACD47878029C2C383D4C669335).
commit
2014-06-01 to 2014-06-19 Russia <OR> Relays Unknown Rapid increase of relay users in Russia, going from 80K to 200K before settling in around 150K.
2014-05-08 flashproxy meek Reinstalled the bridge running meek and flash proxy.
2014-04-29 flashproxy fte obfs2 obfs3 Release of Tor Browser 3.6, the first stable release with integrated pluggable transports.
blog post transport graph
2014-04-11 Release of Tor Browser 3.6-beta-2.
blog post
2014-03-18 flashproxy fte obfs2 obfs3 Release of Tor Browser 3.6-beta-1, the first release with integrated pluggable transports.
blog post
2014-02-25 ipv4 geoip database updated to "February 7 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 182195DB4DA9A979A829012F71CF128FAF1203F7).
commit
2014-02-15 flashproxy meek Began running meek-server on bridge already hosting websocket-server for flash proxy.
2014-02-13 ipv6 geoip6 database updated to "February 7 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip6-db-digest FB95DF46D6B29167668F4D2CAC9F947C4B2A0C26).
commit
2014-02-08 ipv4 geoip database updated to "February 7 2014 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest FA903A1122A248E107A1C17A5AC50A5852F03966).
commit
2014-01-31 meek First public announcement of meek.
mailing list post
2013-08-19 to 2014-04-28 <OR> Relays Relay users increase globally from about 800K to over 5M, when computers in the Mevade/Sefnit botnet began using Tor to communicate. The user count decreased in the following months through efforts to clean up the botnet. Sometime in 2014-04, the botnet switched from using Tor to using SSH.
blog post tech report analysis switch to SSH

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