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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
2017-11-01 meek Turned off the old meek-amazon CDN endpoint d2zfqthxsdq309.cloudfront.net.
mailing list post
2017-11-01 Russia Ban on VPNs and anonymizers takes effect in Russia.
news article law
2017-10-30 to 2017-11-06 Zambia <OR> Relays Unknown Short-lived tripling of relay users in Zambia.
graph
2017-10-25 <OR> Relays Release of tor 0.2.5.15, 0.2.8.16, 0.2.9.13, 0.3.0.12, and 0.3.1.8, which add a new directory authority bastet, and change the IP address of the directory authority Longclaw.
blog post Bastet blog post bastet ticket Longclaw ticket
2017-10-18 to 2017-10-24 China 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
wikipedia Psiphon users
2017-10-14 snowflake Activated client IP address statistics on the Snowflake server and standalone proxies.
comment
2017-10-07 to 2017-12-20 Romania <OR> Relays Unknown Surge of relay users in Romania, from 10k to around 90k, which later subsided.
graph metrics-team thread
2017-10-05 China Guo Wengui speaks at the National Press Club, 09:00–11:00 eastern time. Reports of disruption of VPNs, Tor, Psiphon, Lantern, Shadowsocks in China.
article on conference tweet tweet tweet
2017-10-05 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "October 4 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 3A59213E5CFEE380F544B72DC1105366C6BD1CDE, geoip6-db-digest 1B8C975E5C62CF0FB5B4E598AE27B7189952BB09).
commit
2017-10-04 fte Permanent hardware failure of default FTE bridge 128.105.214.161:8080.
comment
2017-10-01 to 2018-03-01 Cameroon Internet shutdown in parts of Cameroon.
article article
2017-09-26 to 2017-10-22 Germany <OR> Relays Unknown Steady increase of relay users in Germany, from 180k to around 500k. It would increase further starting 2017-12-10.
de graph Reddit thread ticket
2017-09-20 Puerto Rico Hurricane Maria hits Puerto Rico.
graph wikipedia
2017-09-15 to 2017-10-12 Outage of the op-hk OnionPerf instance. Reported timeouts on the tor network increased, download speed improved.
mailing list post torperf graph torperf-failures graph op-hk graph
2017-09-15 to 2017-09-16 Bridges The bridge authority was down due to an issue with its offline master key.
graph mailing list post
2017-09-14 to 2017-09-16 Bridges Outage of the bridge authority Bifroest.
2017-09-07 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "September 6 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 0CE9EA8882EDED265451C36B49AE7BBB06A11C16, geoip6-db-digest C4573496EBD1CC335843067107DA49E482568FF6).
commit
2017-09-06 Puerto Rico Hurricane Irma hits Puerto Rico.
graph wikipedia
2017-09-02 to 2017-09-21 obfs4 Unknown About a 35% increase in obfs4 users before returning to normal. Happened in many countries. Other transports do not have it.
graph
2017-09-01 to 2017-09-20 obfs4 A flood of over 4,000 obfs4 bridges nicknamed "Machiavelli".
graph of number of bridges tor-relays post metrics-team thread tweet
2017-08-27 to 2017-08-29 Egypt Turkey <OR> Relays Unknown Short-lived, simultaneous spike in direct users in Egypt and Turkey. Bridge users not affected.
eg graph tr graph
2017-08-23 Korea, Republic of <OR> Relays Unknown Increase of users in South Korea, relay only.
graph
2017-08-15 Hong Kong <OR> Relays Unknown Triple increase in direct Tor users in Hong Kong. Bridge users not affected.
relay graph
2017-08-14 to 2017-08-15 Bridges Outage of the bridge authority Bifroest.
mailing list post mailing list post graph
2017-08-14 ipv6 obfs4 Unknown Jump in IPv6 users of the Lisbeth default obfs4 bridge.
comment
2017-08-10 to 2017-08-11 Outage of the op-hk OnionPerf instance. Reported timeouts on the tor network increased, download speed improved.
torperf graph torperf-failures graph op-hk graph
2017-08-08 snowflake Tor Browser 7.5a4 released, including Snowflake for macOS.
blog post
2017-08-07 to present Congo, The Democratic Republic of the The Democratic Republic of the Congo orders a block of social media services.
article relay graph bridge graph
2017-08-06 to 2017-10-07 Seychelles <OR> Relays Unknown Further increase of relay users in the Seychelles, from 5k to 100k. Stopped at the same time as increases in the Netherlands, Romania, and Lithuania.
relay graph post suggesting link to 2× dirauth bandwidth post about start post about end
2017-08-03 ipv4 ipv6 geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "August 3 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 75AABD32582AC554AF252DDC7BBBABE7C6F28B28, geoip6-db-digest A52EFFEF8CF6F3CAA8EBD34961361544E959FAE1).
commit
2017-08-02 to 2017-10-07 Lithuania <OR> Relays Unknown Increase of relay users in Lithuania, from 2k to 70k. Stopped at the same time as increases in the Netherlands, Romania, and the Seychelles.
relay graph post suggesting link to 2× dirauth bandwidth post about start post about end
2017-07-31 to 2017-10-07 Netherlands <OR> Relays Unknown Increase of relay users in the Netherlands, from 50k to 100k. Stopped at the same time as increases in Romania, Lithuania, and the Seychelles.
relay graph post suggesting link to 2× dirauth bandwidth post about start post about end
2017-07-31 to 2017-10-07 Romania <OR> Relays Unknown Increase of relay users in Romania, from 10k to 40k. Bridge users not affected. Stopped at the same time as increases in the Netherlands, Lithuania, and the Seychelles. Another increase began immediately after.
relay graph post suggesting link to 2× dirauth bandwidth
2017-07-31 to 2017-08-28 Unknown Directory authorities using 2× bandwidth.
mailing list post for start mailing list post for end post suggesting link to nl, ro, lt, sc increases
2017-07-31 to 2017-08-17 Austria <OR> Relays Unknown Fluctuations of relay users in Austria. Bridge users not affected.
relay graph
2017-07-29 to 2017-08-17 meek Outage of meek-amazon bridge, caused by an expired certificate.
Relay Search expired certificate new certificate
2017-07-15 to 2017-07-22 Seychelles <OR> Relays Unknown Increase of relay users in the Seychelles, from 400 to 6000. Bridge users not affected.
relay graph
2017-07-04 to 2017-07-21 obfs4 Outage of default obfs4 bridge frosty.
mailing list post
2017-07-04 to 2017-07-21 obfs4 Outage of default obfs4 bridge dragon.
mailing list post
2017-06-07 to 2017-12-14 Brazil meek Unknown Sustained increase of meek users in Brazil, similar to the one that took place between 2016-07-21 and 2017-03-03.
graph
2017-04-14 to 2017-08-20 <OR> Directory authority maatuska's bwscanner stops operating, leading to a drop in traffic on some relays.
tor-consensus-health post about start tor-consensus-health post about end tor-dev thread analysis
2017-03-01 to 2018-11-12 United Arab Emirates <OR> Relays Unknown Another increase in relay users, slower and more sustained than the previous one.
graph ticket about end
2017-02-09 to 2017-08-01 India obfs3 Unknown Gradual but large increase of obfs3 users in India, followed by slow decay. Relay users and other transports seemingly not affected.
graph
2017-02-06 to 2017-08-01 United Arab Emirates obfs3 Unknown Increase in obfs3 users from the UAE, from 5K to 100K. Other transports not affected.
transport graph UAE bridge graph ticket
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.