Users

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

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
2018-11-11	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "November 6 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest 603BE8A0CA1B7164D76DBC75A280C9CA0A556F65`, `geoip6-db-digest 1CEF662539C0D91EC07A7C5C13134E3317B451E4`). commit
2018-10-25 to 2018-10-28	Relays	Gap in observed number of relay users, caused by the estimated fraction of reporting relays exceeding 100%. metrics-team post ticket graph archived graph
2018-10-10	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "October 9 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest 76907A8345DA84CC724CDD573B6E08F6A089FEEB`, `geoip6-db-digest 5852AB4D3A96D7526DD47D5573CB4FA32BE4ECEB`). commit
2018-09-26 to present	fte	Outage of default FTE bridge 128.105.214.162:8080. comment
2018-09-26 to present	fte	Outage of default FTE bridge 128.105.214.163:8080. comment
2018-09-18	Bridges	Release of tor 0.3.5.1-alpha, containing a bug that makes idle bridges unuseful.
2018-09-15 to 2018-09-16	United Arab Emirates obfs4	Reported blocking of obfs4 in the UAE. ticket comment
2018-09-11	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "September 6 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest C9118A0D763E069B890674A4D5000A3DB846746B`, `geoip6-db-digest 8A46B41B2AE16F3705C67DEECD20EAA50B043A51`). commit
2018-09-10	Bridges	Release of tor 0.3.4.8, 0.2.9.17, 0.3.2.12, and 0.3.3.10. 0.3.4.8, containing a bug that makes idle bridges unuseful, becomes the stable release. blog post
2018-08-09	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "August 7 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest 4C2E4FF8220FFFB4989564728701016DF705BCBF`, `geoip6-db-digest F3F5C576BF3E8D5FD9F6F33603D7BFD64DEAA8B5`). commit
2018-08-04 to 2018-08-05		Collector was missing consensuses. They were recovered via recent relay consensus diffs. metrics-team thread tor-relays thread
2018-07-29 to 2018-08-08	Bangladesh	Protests over road safety in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Reports of mobile network throttling and blocking of Facebook. New York Times article Daily Star article on throttling NetBlocks report
2018-07-28 to present	Turkey Relays Unknown	Another jump of relay users in Turkey, from 5k to about 30k. relay graph bridge graph
2018-07-21	Bridges	The estimated number of bridge users becomes available again, following the introduction of the new bridge authority Serge on 2018-07-13. The stats took about a week to reappear because of the discontinuity in bridge reporting affecting the estimated fraction of reporting bridges. mailing list post graph
2018-07-20 to 2019-05-02	onion Unknown	The number of v2 onion services increases from 70k to 100k. comment
2018-07-15	snowflake	Made the Snowflake bridge report to the new Serge bridge authority. comment
2018-07-14	Bridges	Release of Tor 0.2.9.16, 0.3.2.11, 0.3.3.9, and 0.3.4.5-rc. Switches bridge authority from Bifroest to Serge. The number of bridges begins counting up from zero as bridges are upgraded. The estimated number of bridge users remained unavailable until 2018-07-21 because of the discontinuity. announcement ticket blog post number of bridges graph
2018-07-14 to 2018-07-25	Iraq	Protests, Internet shutdowns, and social media blocks in Iraq. relay graph NetBlocks post NRT article about end Psiphon users
2018-07-13	Bridges	The replacement bridge authority Serge begins publishing bridge descriptors. ticket ticket number of bridges graph
2018-07-06	Bridges	The bridge authority Bifroest stops publishing bridge descriptors. Bridge stats are unavailable until 2018-07-13 and the introduction of a new bridge authority. ticket ticket mailing list post number of bridges graph
2018-07-06	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "July 3 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest CFFD7B0544879150A31F966E83DBB7DDDFA16F49`, `geoip6-db-digest B25710F60CB23F0C76F58AFB0A26A26ACB701BB2`). commit
2018-07-04 to 2018-07-06	snowflake	Outage of the Snowflake bridge, caused by a full disk. ticket
2018-07-01 to present	Uganda	A social media tax takes effect in Uganda. The government pressures ISPs to block VPNs. relay graph bridge graph BBC article AllAfrica article OONI report
2018-06-27	meek	Release of Tor Browser 8.0a9 with non-working meek. blog post ticket
2018-06-24 to 2018-07-06	snowflake	Metrics for Snowflake are missing, for unknown reasons. The gap is nearly contemporaneous with the gap the measurements for all transports/bridges caused by Bifroest–Serge bridge authority switchover, but starts about 2 weeks earlier in Snowflake's case. ticket
2018-06-20 to present	Venezuela	Venezuela's largest ISP, CANTV, blocks direct access to Tor and the IP addresses of default bridges. meek and non-default bridges are reported to work. ticket mailing list post Access Now report
2018-06-11	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "June 7 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest 93112125248AD2C11A2531B934FD4AC03999738D`, `geoip6-db-digest BFD2B453F2D9DC875B7B0C464A185E6C3202534F`). commit
2018-06-10 to 2018-07-11	Turkey Relays Unknown	Jump of relay users in Turkey, from 5k to about 30k. The timing of the beginning corresponds to the release of Tor Browser 7.5.5 and 8.0a8. relay graph bridge graph comment
2018-06-10	meek	Release of Tor Browser 8.0a8, removes meek-amazon option. blog post
2018-06-09	meek	Release of Tor Browser 7.5.5, removes meek-amazon option. blog post
2018-05-23 to 2018-07-01	Bridges Unknown	Sharp increase in bridge users in many unrelated countries, affecting even the global aggregate. Relay users unaffected. The graphs reach a peak around 2018-06-07 and then begin falling again. An incomplete sampling of affected countries: Bangladesh Chile Indonesia Morocco Venezuela. relay graph bridge graph
2018-05-22 to 2018-06-08	Iraq obfs4 Unknown	Increase in obfs4 users in Iraq, followed by a slow decrease. No matching change in relay users or other transports. bridge graph
2018-05-17	Bridges	Release of tor 0.3.4.1-alpha. Has a bug that makes idle bridges unuseful. ticket ticket
2018-05-15	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "May 1 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest 765D2F123DDA7DAEA9C9263975E2B4BAFBD2B908`, `geoip6-db-digest 2AA568CC898BF9924FBACEA26946AA7ED10E7D87`). commit
2018-05-14	meek	Disabled the d2cly7j4zqgua7.cloudfront.net CDN endpoint for meek-amazon. Tor Browser ticket Orbot ticket
2018-05-09	snowflake	Release of Tor Browser 8.0a7, which changes the default Snowflake rendezvous to use an Azure domain front, instead of the Google one that had been non-functional since 2018-04-13. blog post ticket
2018-05-08	meek	The meek-amazon bridge imposes a rate limit of 1 MB/s.
2018-05-08	Russia	Russia unblocks about 3.7 million IP addresses belonging to Google and Digital Ocean. Roskomnadzor press release monitoring page
2018-04-30 to present	Iran	Iranian ISPs block Telegram. ticket article relay graph bridge graph Psiphon users
2018-04-28	Russia	Russia unblocks about 3 million IP addresses belonging to Amazon and OVH. Roskomnadzor press release monitoring page
2018-04-25 to 2018-07-02	onion Unknown	The number of v2 onion services increases from 70k to 120k. ticket
2018-04-16 to 2018-05-08	Russia	Russia tries to block Telegram; blocks about 18 million IP addresses including some belonging to Amazon and Google cloud services. article relay graph bridge graph
2018-04-16	snowflake	Moved the Snowflake broker from App Engine to a standalone server. comment
2018-04-13	snowflake	Snowflake client registrations (based on domain fronting) stop working, because of a Google infrastructure change that stops domain fronting from working. The time of the change is between 2018-04-13 14:00:00 and 2018-04-13 18:00:00, based on when the bandwidth graph of the Snowflake bridge 5481936581E23D2D178105D44DB6915AB06BFB7F went to zero. ticket
2018-04-05	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "April 3 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest 8A53650327E8D30E971DC90F564BA9BD1A513F19`, `geoip6-db-digest 698852511F6BC27DFFC115805044C71FDCCF70AF`). commit
2018-04-02 to 2018-04-18	snowflake	Accidentally misconfigured the 3 proxy-go instances that were meant to point to the new standalone broker so that they pointed to the old App Engine broker. start end
2018-04-02	snowflake	Reinstated periodic restarts of the fallback snowflake proxies. comment
2018-03-28 to present	Chad	Chad blocks social messaging apps. article graph
2018-03-27	snowflake	Restarted the fallback snowflake proxies with no limit on memory. comment
2018-03-26	snowflake	Release of Tor Browser 8.0a5. Improves snowflake client performance. blog post ticket
2018-03-23	snowflake	Restarted the fallback snowflake proxies with a limit on resident memory (`ulimit -m`) rather than virtual memory (`ulimit -v`). comment comment
2018-03-22	snowflake	Provisionally increased memory limits of the fallback snowflake proxies to 400 MB, 800 MB, or unlimited. comment
2018-03-22	snowflake	Increased memory limit of the fallback snowflake proxies from 200 MB to 400 MB. comment comment
2018-03-22	snowflake	Disabled periodic restarts of the fallback snowflake proxies; gave them a memory limit of 200 MB. comment
2018-03-16	snowflake	Deployed another attempt to fix frequent crashes of the fallback snowflake proxies. comment
2018-03-14	snowflake	Deployed an attempt to fix frequent crashes of the fallback snowflake proxies. comment commit
2018-03-12	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "March 8 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest 0FD75C42A32E82100361BD367CB13862806E6A13`, `geoip6-db-digest 5AFA101C4A6AD4289CEE4575943D6BA851606245`). commit
2018-03-07 to 2018-03-15	Sri Lanka	Sri Lanka blocks Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Viber. relay graph bridge graph article
2018-03-05 to 2018-03-08	Germany <OR> Relays Unknown	Steady drop in the number of relay users in Germany, from 1.5M to 650k. (Drop coincides with the release of tor 0.3.2.10, 0.3.1.10, and 0.2.9.15, which offer better resistance against DoS attacks; as well as improvements in speed for downloads from onions graph; see this graph as well. More datapoints: DDoS of the network happened around the time that saw an increase in the number of relay users in Germany, see entry above or graph) graph ticket
2018-03-03		Release of tor 0.3.2.10, 0.3.1.10, and 0.2.9.15, which offer better resistance against DoS attacks. blog post ticket
2018-02-27 to 2018-03-02		Less than 3 bandwidth authorities are available. tor-relays
2018-02-24	China	Blocking in China intensifies following the announcement of proposed changes to remove presidential term limits. article
2018-02-12	Relays	Tor 0.3.3.2-alpha reaches deb.torproject.org repositories
2018-02-11	Relays	Tor 0.3.3.2-alpha reaches FreeBSD repositories
2018-02-10	Relays	Tor 0.3.3.2-alpha is released (containing important denial-of-service migitations for relays) blog
2018-02-08	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "February 7 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest FF83AD73DE7672C77EDF8888F4B241642C7C90F7`, `geoip6-db-digest B1CDBFEB7C88F82EF3B5289CAFEED1321FA4693F`). commit
2018-02-01 to 2018-02-05	Iran meek Unknown	Drop of meek users in Iran; other transports not affected. graph
2018-01-24 to present	webstats	Tor Browser update pings roughly halve, again. The beginning corresponds with the release of Tor Browser 7.5; however unlike with Tor Browser 6.5.2, there was no change to `app.update.url` this time. ticket thread
2018-01-23	obfs4	Tor Browser 7.5 is released. It adds the default obfs4 bridge noisetor01:46089. blog post
2018-01-20	Relays	Some more directory authorities upgrade to 0.3.2.9 which enforces new requirements for the exit flag. ~50 relays lose the exit flag tor-relays post
2018-01-18 to 2018-02-24	snowflake	Outage of Snowflake broker caused by the disabling of the Let's Encrypt TLS-SNI-01 challenge. ticket graph
2018-01-16		Tor 0.3.2.9 reaches deb.torproject.org. relay versions graph
2018-01-08	ipv4 ipv6	geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "January 5 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (`geoip-db-digest ACE2AF82816B9D3F58FC9C79A41B4506D6DAD713`, `geoip6-db-digest 387B3F555F1E054F0F9971C726F49848C5B5CF8B`). commit
2018-01-05 to present		Outage of the op-hk OnionPerf instance. op-hk graph
2018-01-01	United Arab Emirates Relays	User report that the UAE blocked Tor, bridges work. comment
2017-12-28 to 2018-01-13	Iran	Protests in Iran, blocking of various services including Tor. Instagram was unblocked 2018-01-06. Telegram was unblocked 2018-01-13. Wikipedia OONI report relay graph bridge graph tweet Psiphon users
2017-12-12 to 2018-01-18	meek	Outage of the meek.bamsoftware.com (unthrottled for public use), meek.bamsoftware.com:7443 (former meek-azure, now unused), and gaeuploader.meek.bamsoftware.com (used by GAEuploader) bridges.
2017-12-12 to 2018-01-10	France <OR> Relays Unknown	Temporary tripling of relay users in France. Bridges not affected. graph
2017-12-10 to 2018-02-01	Germany <OR> Relays Unknown	Further, slow increase of relay users in Germany, from 500k to over 1.5M. graph Reddit thread ticket
2017-10-01 to 2018-03-01	Cameroon	Internet shutdown in parts of Cameroon. article article
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
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.