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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
2016-11-30 to 2016-12-02 Gambia Internet shutdown in Gambia.
relay graph OONI report Cloudflare blog post
2016-11-22 meek Decreased the rate limit on the meek-amazon bridge to 2.0 MB/s, from 3.0 MB/s.
2016-11-20 to 2016-12-22 Saudi Arabia Bridges Unknown Decrease in direct users and increase in bridge users in Saudi Arabia. The increase in bridge users lasts only about one month while the number of direct users remains down.
ticket
2016-11-20 Saudi Arabia <OR> Unknown Decrease in direct users and increase in bridge users in Saudi Arabia.
ticket
2016-11-18 obfs4 Default obfs4 bridge Lisbeth turns on timing obfuscation (iat-mode=1).
ticket
2016-11-16 Tor Browser 6.5a4 is released. It changes the app.update.url.
blog post ticket
2016-11-15 meek Tor Browser 6.0.6 is released, unbreaking meek on macOS 10.12 (Sierra). (See 2016-09-20 breaking event.)
blog post ticket
2016-11-15 obfs4 Default obfs4 bridges ndnop3 and ndnop5 turn on timing obfuscation (iat-mode).
mailing list post ticket
2016-11-07 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "November 3 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 363C038D0BE61D6E0A63C43DE8EA70771ED7BEA5, geoip6-db-digest 6110A2B794AFF0180FD096A4759434CABD289C40).
commit
2016-11-04 Turkey Turkey orders a block on VPN services and Tor.
Turkish article English article ticket
2016-11-03 to present Turkey Turkey blocks Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp.
article
2016-10-30 meek Increased the rate limit on the meek-amazon bridge to 3.0 MB/s, from 1.0 MB/s.
2016-10-28 meek Decreased the rate limit on the meek-amazon bridge to 1.0 MB/s, from 3.0 MB/s.
2016-10-25 to present Egypt <OR> Relays Egypt blocks Tor directory authorities and public relays by TCP RST. Bridges work.
OONI report
2016-10-19 to 2016-11-10 meek Large decrease in meek users, perhaps caused by problems in Orbot 15.0.2 BETA 1 that were fixed in Orbot 15.2.0 RC8.
ticket initial email followup email Orbot mail
2016-10-09 to 2016-10-25 Israel <OR> Relays Unknown Direct users fluctuate wildly in Israel. Bridge users not affected.
graph
2016-10-08 to 2016-10-09 Turkey Turkey blocks storage services including Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and GitHub. Most (all?) of the blocks were rescinded the next day.
blocking article unblocking tweet unblocking article
2016-10-08 Ethiopia Ethiopia declares a state of emergency and implements network blocks.
OONI report
2016-10-05 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "October 4 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest C14DF5AE94101562DEACDD296278B0EFA3EA26E5, geoip6-db-digest A88A828020A558D37F97CF683D4521270F0511A2).
commit
2016-10-02 to 2016-10-03 Egypt <OR> Relays Reports that direct connections from Egypt are blocked; bridges are required. Maybe be the same as the block beginning 2016-10-25.
OONI report
2016-09-28 meek Rate limit on the meek-amazon bridge returns to 3.0 MB/s, having been set to about 1.0 MB/s for some time, cause uncertain.
2016-09-24 obfs3 Default obfs3 bridge LeifEricson upgrades and begins reporting statistics to the new bridge authority Bifroest. This is the last obfs3 bridge that hadn't upgraded.
2016-09-24 obfs4 Default obfs4 bridge LeifEricson upgrades and begins reporting statistics to the new bridge authority Bifroest. This is the last obfs4 bridge that hadn't upgraded.
2016-09-23 to 2016-11-28 obfs3 Outage of default obfs3 bridges "Unnamed" and "Unnamed" (fingerprint AF9F66B7B04F8FF6F32D455F05135250A16543C9). (Start date not known for sure, though it must have been after 2016-09-23; discussed in non-archived tor-team email.)
2016-09-23 obfs3 Default obfs3 bridges ndnop0 and ndnop2 upgrade and begin reporting statistics to the new bridge authority Bifroest.
post on bridges not reporting statistics
2016-09-23 obfs3 Default obfs3 bridges "Unnamed" and "Unnamed" (fingerprint AF9F66B7B04F8FF6F32D455F05135250A16543C9) upgrade and begin reporting statistics to the new bridge authority Bifroest.
2016-09-23 obfs4 Default obfs3 bridges ndnop3 and ndnop5 upgrade and begin reporting statistics to the new bridge authority Bifroest.
post on bridges not reporting statistics
2016-09-20 meek macOS 10.12 (Sierra) is released, breaking some programs that are built with Go <1.7, including the meek-client that comes with Tor Browser. (See 2016-11-15 unbreaking event.)
ticket
2016-09-07 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "September 6 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 72F8AD2CD7C97D173AD53276366EAD32B13E0A50, geoip6-db-digest B6427DEAD2291FBF8311A2233AF4960BF4009713).
commit
2016-09-04 Iran <OR> Iran intensifies the blocking begun on 2016-08-20, getting most of the remaining direct users. There is interference in the graphs from the bridge authority changeover on 2016-09-02, but because the changeover would not have affected counts of ''direct'' users, it may be a coincidence.
ticket
2016-09-02 Bridges The former bridge authority Tonga shuts down. Bridges that have not updated to tor 0.2.8.7 or 0.2.9.2-alpha (which include all 5 default obfs3 bridges and 3/16 default obfs4 bridges) stop reporting statistics.
shutdown notice blog post loss of reporting bridges
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
2015-12-31 to 2020-06-04 Mexico The Telmex ISP in Mexico blocks seven directory authorities.
mailing list post article

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This material is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-0959138. Any opinions, finding, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. "Tor" and the "Onion Logo" are registered trademarks of The Tor Project, Inc.. Data on this site is freely available under a CC0 no copyright declaration: To the extent possible under law, the Tor Project has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights in the data. Graphs are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.