Users
We estimate the number of users by analyzing the requests induced by clients to relays and bridges.
This graph shows the estimated number of directly-connecting clients; that is, it excludes clients connecting via bridges. These estimates are derived from the number of directory requests counted on directory authorities and mirrors. Relays resolve client IP addresses to country codes, so that graphs are available for most countries. Furthermore, it is possible to display indications of censorship events as obtained from an anomaly-based censorship-detection system (for more details, see this technical report). For further details check the documentation on Reproducible Metrics.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 2013-12-04 | flashproxy obfs2 obfs3 |
Release of the pluggable transports browser bundle 2.4.18-rc-1-pt1 and 2.4.18-rc-2-pt1.
blog post |
| 2013-11-11 | flashproxy obfs2 obfs3 |
Release of the pluggable transports browser bundle 2.4.17-rc-1-pt2.
blog post |
| 2013-11-04 | flashproxy obfs2 obfs3 |
Release of the pluggable transports browser bundle 2.4.17-rc-1-pt1.
blog post |
| 2013-11-03 | <OR> Relays |
Microsoft adds the Mevade/Sefnit botnet signature to their Malicious Software Removal Tool.
blog post |
| 2013-10-27 | <OR> Relays |
Microsoft adds the Mevade/Sefnit botnet signature to various security scanners.
blog post |
| 2013-10-11 | ipv4 |
geoip database updated to "October 2 2013 Maxmind GeoLite Country" (geoip-db-digest A28267CED18A1D80B4298796E9FE42EC755420C0).
commit |
| 2013-09-23 | flashproxy obfs2 obfs3 |
Release of the pluggable transports browser bundle 2.4.17-beta-2-pt3.
blog post |
| 2013-09-10 | ipv4 |
geoip database updated to "September 4 2013 Maxmind GeoLite Country" (geoip-db-digest CB632F60547F141E06FB0705D1F171047165722E).
commit |
| 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 |
| 2013-08-12 | ipv4 |
geoip database updated to "August 7 2013 Maxmind GeoLite Country" (geoip-db-digest 83CCB5AF823A5CCF3C86C3CA33AF801D4E8996EC).
commit |
| 2013-08-10 | flashproxy obfs2 obfs3 |
Release of the pluggable transports browser bundle 2.4.15-beta-2-pt1.
blog post |
| 2013-07-08 | ipv4 |
geoip database updated to "July 3 2013 Maxmind GeoLite Country" (geoip-db-digest 4D558EA73DD91A0361DE3FA3E83171DCD38D1A2D).
commit |
| 2013-06-05 | ipv4 |
geoip database updated to "June 5 2013 Maxmind GeoLite Country" (geoip-db-digest 5E570BB92DBEE1D517E35DAA4A52F58FDA6BB44E).
commit |
| 2013-06-02 | flashproxy obfs2 obfs3 |
Release of the pluggable transports browser bundle 2.4.12-alpha-2-pt1.
blog post |
| 2013-05-13 | ipv4 |
geoip database updated to "May 9 2013 Maxmind GeoLite Country" (geoip-db-digest 2ADCA1913666A685B141C03E7B2F50B3DB84FDC9).
commit |
| 2013-04-08 | ipv4 |
geoip database updated to "April 3 2013 Maxmind GeoLite Country" (geoip-db-digest 7DDD315EBCDC2A8BCA47A8B5153EB697947AC851).
commit |
| 2013-03-19 | flashproxy obfs2 obfs3 |
Release of the pluggable transports browser bundle 0.2.4.11-alpha-2.
blog post |
| 2013-03-07 | ipv4 |
geoip database updated to "March 6 2013 Maxmind GeoLite Country" (geoip-db-digest CB30D739CF972BEE0EF0635838A2AD76E2171004).
commit |
| 2013-02-08 | ipv4 |
geoip database updated (geoip-db-digest 29DF86915FF87E2FBE12F3514776B7292B556CCD).
commit |
| 2013-01-13 | flashproxy obfs2 obfs3 |
Release of the pluggable transports browser bundle 2.4.7-alpha-1, containing flash proxy, obfs2, and obfs3 built in and enabled by default.
blog post ticket |
| 2013-01-05 | ipv4 |
geoip database updated to "January 2 2013 Maxmind GeoLite Country" (geoip-db-digest DBBBA6D1F6CD90E860DDD42C90A21CF8A1B8395F).
commit |
| 2012-03-01 to 2013-08-19 | Kazakhstan <OR> |
Kazakhstan blocks Tor TLS by ClientHello and ServerHello fingerprints.
ticket tor patches |