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.
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 |
---|---|---|
2022-02-28 | Bridges |
BridgeDB moves to an rdsys backend.
announcement issue |
2022-02-24 to present | Russia Ukraine |
Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the following days, various social media are partially blocked in Russia. Bridge users increase in Russia; relay and bridge users increase in Ukraine.
Wikipedia Relay users in Russia Bridge users in Russia Relay users in Ukraine Bridge users in Ukraine thread about social media blocks |
2022-02-18 | snowflake |
Outage of the Snowflake bridge.
mailing list post |
2022-02-01 |
Tor 0.3.5 reaches end of life.
mailing list post |
|
2022-01-31 | snowflake |
Switched the snowflake bridge from a load-balanced staging server back to the now load-balanced production server. Debugged connection problems until 2022-01-31 19:52:04.
issue comment comment |
2022-01-28 | snowflake |
Switched the snowflake-server (at the time running on a load-balanced staging server) for a version with CPU profiling.
comment |
2022-01-25 | snowflake |
Switched the snowflake bridge to a temporary load-balanced staging server. Debugged connection problems until 2022-01-25 18:47:00.
issue comment post comment |
2022-01-10 | Kazakhstan obfs4 |
The Tor Project begins to distribute obfs4 bridges that listen on ports that are reachable in Kazakhstan, despite the ongoing Internet shutdown.
forum post |
2022-01-07 | snowflake |
Increased capacity of the mapping to client IP addresses on the snowflake bridge.
issue deployment comment |
2022-01-05 to 2022-01-11 | Kazakhstan |
Country-wide Internet shutdown in Kazakhstan. Was preceded by a shutdown of most mobile networks starting 2022-01-04 14:30. Access was restored for a few hours each day.
Cloudflare blog post RIPE Labs blog post NTC thread BBS thread IODA |
2022-01-04 | Gambia |
Internet outage in Gambia.
blog post |
2021-12-29 | snowflake |
Outage of the snowflake bridge.
comment alert |
2021-12-24 | Russia obfs4 |
Another round of obfs4 enumeration and blocking occurs in Russia.
comment |
2021-12-22 to present | Finland Relays Unknown |
Increase of relay users in Finland.
tor-talk thread possible explanation graph |
2021-12-22 | snowflake |
Rebooted the Snowflake bridge to increase the number of CPUs from 4 to 8.
issue |
2021-12-14 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 11.5a1, with an altered DTLS fingerprint in Snowflake to counteract blocking in Russia.
blog post issue NTC post |
2021-12-13 | Russia |
The fraction of networks in Russia blocking Tor, measured by OONI, increases from about 20% to about 50%.
relay graph |
2021-12-08 | obfs4 |
Release of Tor Browser 11.0.2, containing a new default obfs4 bridge "deusexmachina".
blog post issue |
2021-12-08 | Russia |
The Tor Project web server block is expanded from *.www.torproject.org to *.torproject.org.
record GitLab comment NTC comment zapret-info diff |
2021-12-07 | Russia |
The www.torproject.org web server is added to the registry of blocked domain names in Russia, by IP addresses and by hostname *.www.torproject.org.
record GitLab comment NTC comment zapret-info diff OONI report |
2021-12-01 to 2021-12-13 | Russia meek |
Blocking of the IP address of the meek-azure front domain in certains ISPs in Russia, part of a wider phenomenon of blocking Tor beginning 2021-12-01.
post about start (2021-12-03) post about end (2021-12-13) post about end (2021-12-15) post about end (2021-12-26) |
2021-12-01 to present | Russia |
Blocking of Tor directory authorities, relays, default obfs4 bridges, meek-azure, and Snowflake in some ISPs in Russia. There was a temporary cease of blocking for less than a day starting on 2021-12-08.
NTC thread BBS thread issue blog post OONI report |
2021-11-17 to 2022-02-02 | obfs4 |
Run a Tor Bridge campaign, offers rewards for running obfs4 bridges.
blog post about start blog post about end |
2021-11-08 |
Removal of roughly 600 "KAX17" non-exit relays.
mailing list post relay graph article |
|
2021-11-08 | onion |
Release of Tor Browser 11.0. Final deprecation of v2 onion services.
blog post deprecation timeline graph |
2021-10-29 | Turkmenistan Relays Unknown |
Further decrease of relay users in Turkmenistan.
comment discussion |
2021-10-24 | Turkmenistan snowflake Unknown |
Snowflake users in Turkmenistan drop to zero, possibly as a result of blocking of the broker's domain-fronting channel.
issue comment discussion |
2021-10-08 to 2021-11-14 | Netherlands Relays Unknown |
Temporary quintupling of direct users from the Netherlands.
relay graph |
2021-10-03 to present | Egypt Relays Unknown |
Increase of relay users in Egypt.
Twitter thread relay graph |
2021-10-01 to 2021-10-07 | Belarus Relays |
Increase of users in Belarus, relay only. According to OONI data, the Tor Project website was unblocked and Tor direct connections were accessible for a few days and, then, it was blocked again.
graph OONI Tor test |
2021-09-22 to 2021-10-07 |
Experiment to investigate the accuracy of relays' advertised bandwidth.
status.torproject.org mailing list post advertised bandwidth graph |
|
2021-08-31 to 2021-09-12 | Brazil Relays |
Increase of users in Brazil, relay only, due protests.
graph article |
2021-08-27 to 2021-09-08 |
Experiment to investigate the accuracy of relays' advertised bandwidth.
status.torproject.org mailing list post advertised bandwidth graph |
|
2021-08-12 to 2021-08-14 | Zambia |
Block of social media websites and WhatsApp during the national elections. Increase in the number of users.
article ticket OONI report relay graph bridge graph |
2021-08-12 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Thu, 12 Aug 2021 05:51:15 GMT" (geoip-db-digest B3A9770171D3060502B7F13C0618BE109B92DF6C , geoip6-db-digest 410B70763FC675B3622264FAA0FC67B78FDE30C2 ).
commit |
2021-08-08 | Ukraine Relays Unknown |
Large increase of relay users in Ukraine. Bridge users unaffected.
comment anti-censorship team discussion relay graph bridge graph |
2021-07-22 to 2021-07-31 | Turkmenistan Relays Unknown |
Decrease in relay users by 75% in Turkmenistan, following a period of elevated usage that began in early 2021.
ticket anti-censorship team discussion NTC thread |
2021-07-06 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 10.5, first stable release that includes Snowflake.
blog post |
2021-06-20 to 2021-06-24 | Algeria |
Social media blocking during national high school exams.
SMEX |
2021-06-15 | snowflake |
Snowflake bridge down for scheduled upgrade.
comment |
2021-06-12 to 2021-06-13 | snowflake |
Outage of Snowflake bridge.
issue |
2021-06-10 to present |
Experiment to test latencies between relays.
status.torproject.org post announcing start |
|
2021-06-10 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Thu, 10 Jun 2021 05:17:29 GMT" (geoip-db-digest 900E9BD6C8B8679A1539F7F316974E86618038B2 , geoip6-db-digest 456BCA0796A27F8C80674EE89B1323F8310BED39 ).
commit |
2021-06-04 to present | Nigeria |
Block of Twitter in Nigeria. Increase in the number of bridge users.
article relay graph bridge graph |
2021-05-17 to 2021-06-05 |
Experiment to test the accuracy of relays' advertised bandwidth estimation.
status.torproject.org post announcing start post announcing end advertised bandwidth graph relay flags graph |
|
2021-05-14 to 2021-05-18 | meek Unknown |
The number of meek users temporarily drops to < 10.
graph |
2021-05-12 to 2021-06-21 | snowflake |
Error in stats collection at the Snowflake bridge; user count is erroneously zero.
merge request comment on start comment on end user count graph |
2021-05-07 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Fri, 07 May 2021 05:18:14 GMT" (geoip-db-digest AE864EA783E3776E4950859B5B35F412977F876F , geoip6-db-digest 7008D77E958D919E432AAE7F5C2002B14604FFFE ).
commit |
2021-05-05 | Turkmenistan meek Unknown |
Drop in meek users in Turkmenistan, from over 200 to almost zero.
bridge user and transport graph |
2021-05-03 | snowflake |
Outage of snowflake bridge.
comment |
2021-04-13 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Tue, 13 Apr 2021 05:11:07 GMT" (geoip-db-digest D63E30D25E7767178177C53A0248083011B4202A , geoip6-db-digest 891E8F6FBC7973144E335F0D815B5AF6B6DDF74B ).
commit |
2021-04-09 | Turkmenistan obfs4 |
Turkmenistan blocks the default obfs4 bridge hopperlab, the last remaining obfs4 bridge at the time.
comment |
2021-04-01 to present | Myanmar |
Shutdowns of wireless broadband in Myanmar.
Access Now post |
2021-03-16 | ipv4 ipv6 |
Release of tor 0.3.5.14, 0.4.4.8, and 0.4.5.7. Changes the source of geolocation databases from Maxmind to IPFire.
blog post announcement ticket commit |
2021-03-14 | Turkmenistan obfs4 |
Turkmenistan blocks the default obfs4 bridges PraxedisGuerrero and smallerRichard.
comment |
2021-03-12 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Fri, 12 Mar 2021 05:05:24 GMT" (geoip-db-digest 7EFC262380D93924340A0000DF78EC4DD3BFC0E5 , geoip6-db-digest B53EF6F829B6A1B1DD242835B6A23580178FBE13 ).
commit |
2021-03-11 | Belarus Relays Unknown |
Drop of relay users in Belarus. Bridge users are not affected.
relay graph bridge graph |
2021-03-10 |
Fire in the OVHcloud data centers located in Strasbourg takes about 48 relays offline in AS16276.
OVHcloud advisory Twitter thread |
|
2021-03-09 | flashproxy |
Decommissioned flash proxy badge server, flashproxy.bamsoftware.com.
|
2021-03-08 | flashproxy |
Decommissioned flash proxy facilitator: server, flashproxy-reg-email poller, and flashproxy-reg-appspot app.
|
2021-03-08 | snowflake |
Outage of the Snowflake bridge.
ticket |
2021-02-15 to 2021-04-27 | Myanmar |
Nightly shutdowns of fixed-line Internet in Myanmar.
relay graph bridge graph OONI report IODA for start IODA for end Access Now post censorship-analysis issue |
2021-02-13 | Belarus Bridges meek obfs4 |
Blocking of default obfs4 bridges and email-distributed bridges in Belarus. Relay users are not affected.
ticket BBS thread NTC thread relay graph bridge graph |
2021-02-06 to 2021-02-07 | Myanmar |
Internet shutdown in Myanmar.
relay graph bridge graph OONI report IODA |
2021-01-31 to 2021-02-01 | Myanmar |
Partial Internet shutdown after coup in Myanmar.
relay graph bridge graph article IODA OONI report |
2021-01-27 | snowflake |
Deployed version 0.5.3 of the Snowflake WebExtension, with improvements to NAT handling.
archive ticket comment |
2021-01-26 | Bridges |
Release of Tor Browser 10.5a8, which fixes the bug preventing the use of default bridges.
blog post issue |
2021-01-20 | Bridges |
Release of Tor Browser 10.5a7, which has a bug preventing the use of default bridges.
blog post issue issue |
2021-01-17 to 2021-01-21 | snowflake Unknown |
Decrease in measured Snowflake users. May have been caused by a drop of NAT-unrestricted proxies.
mailing list thread comment |
2021-01-13 to 2021-01-17 | Uganda |
Internet shutdown in Uganda during general election.
OONI report |
2021-01-10 to 2021-02-03 | onion |
Large amounts of traffic at directory authorities disrupts consensus, which causes v3 onion services to stop working because of a bug. Tor 0.3.5.13, 0.4.3.8, and 0.4.4.7 have a fix for the bug.
ticket blog post onion service traffic graph Tor blog post Tor Browser blog post status.torproject.org |
2021-01-07 | snowflake |
Changed the DNS records for snowflake.freehaven.net and snowflake-broker.bamsoftware.com to be CNAME records for the corresponding torproject.net domains, rather than bamsoftware.com, in order to avoid malware warnings.
ticket |
2021-01-01 to present | China snowflake Unknown |
Increased failure to bootstrap using Snowflake from China.
comment |
2020-12-17 to 2020-12-20 | snowflake |
DDoS attack on Greenhost, where the Snowflake broker and bridge and onionperf instances are hosted.
2020-12-17 status 2020-12-20 status anti-censorship-team thread |
2020-12-05 to 2020-12-09 | meek moat |
An update to an Azure CDN edge server TLS certificate causes an outage of meek and Moat. It is fixed by the release of Tor Browser 10.0.6, which updates the built-in public key pinning of obfs4proxy.
ticket blog post meek graph BridgeDB graph certificate transparency |
2020-11-08 to 2020-11-09 | snowflake |
Outage of the snowflake bridge
ticket |
2020-10-27 to present | Tanzania, United Republic of <OR> obfs4 |
Blocking of Tor and default obfs4 bridges during elections in Tanzania.
OONI report |
2020-10-13 | Belarus Unknown |
Sudden decrease of relay users in Belarus, from 4000 to 1000, with simultaneous increase of bridge users.
BBS thread NTC thread relay graph bridge graph |
2020-10-05 | snowflake |
Deployed version 0.4.2 of the Snowflake WebExtension, with better counting of clients.
archive comment |
2020-09-27 to 2020-11-10 | Azerbaijan |
Blocking of social media and instant messaging in Azerbaijan during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war
OONI/AIW report IPHR/AIW report relay graph bridge graph |
2020-08-31 | obfs4 |
Shutdown of default obfs4 bridge frosty.
ticket |
2020-08-13 | snowflake |
Deployed version 0.4.1 of the Snowflake WebExtension, with NAT type detection in the browser.
archive comment |
2020-08-09 to 2020-08-12 | Belarus |
Internet shutdowns in Belarus, during protests following a presidential election.
report thread |
2020-07-06 | snowflake |
Deployed NAT-aware matching at the Snowflake broker.
comment |
2020-06-30 to 2020-07-23 | Ethiopia |
Internet shutdown in Ethiopia. Restrictions were partially lifted 2020-07-15.
article article IODA relay users graph |
2020-06-02 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 10.0a1, the first release with Snowflake for Android.
blog post ticket |
2020-05-22 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 9.5a13, the first release with Turbo Tunnel session persistence features for Snowflake.
blog post ticket |
2020-04-23 | snowflake |
Redeployed the Snowflake bridge with support for non–Turbo Tunnel clients and KCP–Turbo Tunnel clients, removing support for QUIC–Turbo Tunnel clients.
comment |
2020-02-22 | snowflake |
Made the Snowflake bridge stop reporting client IP addresses of 0.0.0.0. This also affects log messages that report how many client connections had an attached IP address.
comment |
2020-02-19 | snowflake |
Deployed a Turbo Tunnel–capable Snowflake bridge.
comment |
2020-02-18 | snowflake |
Outage of the Snowflake bridge caused by memory exhaustion.
ticket |
2019-12-06 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "December 3 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 4974C4F1F6842975999D0774F2636F383312EA2D , geoip6-db-digest 2046D67D7BBE67AFF12E1CEDD9F9083AB5E3DFAC ).
commit |
2019-11-16 to 2019-11-23 | Iran |
Internet blackout in Iran.
report NTC thread |
2019-11-14 | ipv6 snowflake |
Changed DNS to point to the IPv6-enabled Snowflake broker.
comment |
2019-11-14 | snowflake |
Deployed webext-0.1.0 of the Snowflake proxy (which uses a new proxy–broker protocol) to snowflake.torproject.org.
comment |
2019-11-13 | snowflake |
Released version 0.1.0 of the Snowflake extension for Firefox and Chrome, using a new proxy–broker protocol.
comment |
2019-11-13 | snowflake |
Restarted the broker with a new proxy–broker protocol.
comment |
2019-11-09 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "November 6 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 967E4D14ADF0C9439C31FB7B666537A0551C1E6A , geoip6-db-digest BD6E89A28801FA447693EDEC6D47ECCA03B8CD20 ).
commit |
2019-10-28 | snowflake |
Version 0.0.13 of the Snowflake extension is released, decreasing the poll frequency to once every 300 s. The standalone proxy-go instances still poll once every 5 s.
comment |
2019-10-17 | snowflake |
Pointed snowflake-broker.torproject.net (one of three domain names for the Snowflake broker) to a new broker instance set up with IPv6. Metrics unintentionally start being collected from the new instance, instead of the old instance that was still in use.
ticket ticket |
2019-10-03 | China obfs4 |
The new default bridge 193.11.166.194 is already blocked by the GFW – two days after the Tor Browser alpha release that shipped with it. The block may have happened sooner, though. We only tested the bridge just now.
ticket |
2019-10-02 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "October 1 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 34ABC09019FAB09BA3083B3663EC0B807FC16151 , geoip6-db-digest F4D3BEC6294DF7FAEAEE5966CC6706CF91CE9BC4 ).
commit |
2019-10-01 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 9.0a7, the first release that has Snowflake for Windows.
blog post ticket |
2019-08-06 to 2019-08-09 |
Experiment to test the accuracy of relays' advertised bandwidth estimation.
description of experiment post announcing start post announcing end advertised bandwidth graph relay flags graph |
|
2019-07-27 | snowflake |
The Snowflake proxy hosted at snowflake.torproject.org is updated, changing domains from bamsoftware.com to freehaven.net in order to work around the Google Safe Browsing block.
comment |
2019-07-27 | snowflake |
Version 0.0.7 of the Snowflake extension for Chrome is released, changing domains from bamsoftware.com to freehaven.net in order to work around the Google Safe Browsing block.
comment |
2019-07-26 | flashproxy snowflake |
Cupcake 2.0 is released, now working with Snowflake rather than flash proxy.
Chrome Web Store page |
2019-07-26 | snowflake |
Version 0.0.8 of the Snowflake extension for Firefox is released, changing domains from bamsoftware.com to freehaven.net in order to work around the Google Safe Browsing block.
comment |
2019-07-23 | snowflake |
The broker domain name snowflake-broker.bamsoftware.com is blocked by Google Safe Browsing, preventing the Snowflake web browser extension from working.
ticket comment noting decrease in proxies |
2019-07-18 to 2019-08-07 | Kazakhstan |
The Kazakh ISP KazTelecom does man-in-the-middle of TLS connections.
Censored Planet report post about end |
2019-07-03 | snowflake |
The Snowflake web browser extension for Chrome is published.
comment |
2019-07-02 to 2019-08-26 | Iran <OR> Bridges Relays |
Relays in Iran are reported to be unblocked once again, and user numbers recover to about 25% of the maximum they had reached during the previous period of unblocking. They then drop precipitously, and ticket comment comment |
2019-06-26 | snowflake |
The Snowflake web browser extension for Firefox is published.
comment |
2019-06-21 to present | Myanmar |
Internet shutdown in parts of Myanmar.
report 2020 report |
2019-06-20 | obfs4 |
A call to set up new obfs4 bridges is posted to the tor-relays mailing list.
mailing list thread thread continues |
2019-06-11 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "June 10 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest A131E1F283F4AD307248B03A70B0413E81ADF2A4 , geoip6-db-digest 0EFF3EE1E22927EC9A77BFFAFD703F3A5B32FA79 ).
commit |
2019-05-28 |
Failure of network equipment at site of op-ab OnionPerf instance (equipment now replaced)
onionperf timeouts graph |
|
2019-05-22 | fte |
Release of Tor Browser 9.0a1, removes support for FTE.
blog post ticket |
2019-05-17 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "May 13 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 35DFDA2D06D2A0467EF37D60A67B438B11952B74 , geoip6-db-digest C0193A1D086819353FABBF70AADB15866B7B2525 ).
commit |
2019-05-16 to 2019-06-23 | Iran Relays |
Tor becomes directly accessible in Iran, leading to an explosion in relay users up to about 1.5 million, before being blocked again.
ticket comment about end tor-talk thread Reddit thread comment Reddit thread |
2019-05-01 | China snowflake |
China blocks the default Snowflake proxies.
ticket |
2019-04-29 |
Network equipment failure at site of op-ab OnionPerf instance
performance graph |
|
2019-04-28 to 2019-04-29 | Benin |
Social media blocking and Internet blackout during parliamentary elections in Benin.
OONI report |
2019-04-27 to present | Russia Relays Unknown |
Relay users increase by about 100K, in an apparent weekly cycle. Bridge users are not similarly affected.
relay graph bridge graph tor-talk thread Reddit thread |
2019-04-23 to present | Sri Lanka |
Sri Lanka blocks Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube after bombings.
relay graph bridge graph article |
2019-04-17 | Unknown |
Tor browser update pings roughly double.
graph metrics-team thread |
2019-04-16 | snowflake |
Outage of Snowflake fallback proxy-go instances, caused by a failure to restart after segregating old logs.
ticket |
2019-04-03 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "April 2 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 62A97D4DEBF76A5CE5C232B95BBF05B191EB8AAA , geoip6-db-digest 66620E57A8427C53D6084B3229807DC320CDC3D0 ).
commit |
2019-03-22 | snowflake |
Outage of the Snowflake broker, caused by a full disk.
ticket |
2019-03-07 to 2019-03-30 | Venezuela |
Power outages in Venezuela.
Wikipedia relay users graph IODA |
2019-03-06 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "March 4 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 5B90C2F06292D8237A5C77E27ED4ABABF4AE0684 , geoip6-db-digest E971FCA4A89F6C685928FF9371D1BF7A2484F4CA ).
commit |
2019-02-16 to present | Belarus Relays Unknown |
Increase of relay users in Belarus.
graph mailing list post |
2019-02-12 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "February 5 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest DDAA25B4425EAA45EE8E92A6531CD3246C8E989A , geoip6-db-digest 0368FA722D90026E60BD60A26F615791A7A53D21 ).
commit |
2019-02-07 | snowflake |
Disabled the 3 proxy-go instances that were pointing at the former broker hosted on App Engine.
comment |
2019-01-14 to 2019-01-21 | Zimbabwe |
Internet shutdown and blocking of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter in Zimbabwe.
article OONI report |
2019-01-07 | Bridges |
Release of tor 0.3.5.7, 0.3.4.10, and 0.3.3.11. Fixes the bug, present since 0.3.5.1-alpha/0.3.4.1-alpha, of idle bridges being unuseful.
comment ticket blog post ticket |
2019-01-07 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "January 3 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 2B8A70B399CF8B471289A4DB52947DE965D8DE5F , geoip6-db-digest FEA33E6F398DF67252F41DDD3D010E69B33D544E ).
commit |
2019-01-07 to 2019-01-08 | Gabon |
Internet shutdown in Gabon following a coup attempt.
OONI report NetBlocks report |
2018-12-20 to present | Sudan |
Protests and social media blocks in Sudan.
relay graph Access Now post Psiphon users |
2018-12-18 to 2018-12-21 | United Arab Emirates <OR> |
Reported blocking of vanilla Tor in the UAE.
comment |
2018-12-05 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "December 5 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 0684E08BDC01ABB41A717E9C55BDEB21531CFAC8 , geoip6-db-digest AFFAD1475879D57B1C1EA119141EFA0E57547290 ).
commit |
2018-11-26 to 2018-11-28 |
Outage of the onionperf-us instance, caused by a Greenhost east coast VPS migration.
mailing list post |
|
2018-11-26 to 2018-11-28 | flashproxy |
Outage of the flash proxy badge hosting server, flashproxy.bamsoftware.com, caused by a Greenhost east coast VPS migration.
|
2018-11-19 to 2018-11-27 |
Slow-running processes on the metrics host cause an observed drop in the overall relay bandwidth graph.
mailing list thread |
|
2018-11-16 to 2018-11-22 | snowflake |
A full disk stops the Snowflake bridge and fallback proxies from working.
ticket |
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 |
2017-12-21 |
Release of tor 0.3.2.8-rc, intended to fix the KIST bug that enabled a DoS on relays by running them out of memory.
announcement ticket |
|
2017-12-20 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "December 6 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 1D486694A710145631B295CC39ECC5682F75858C , geoip6-db-digest F33231CAC761A71F7C19273DB1E11CEE01E2D982 ).
commit |
2017-12-16 to 2017-12-17 | Bridges Unknown |
Drop in the number of measured bridges.
graph mailing list post |
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 |
2017-12-08 to 2017-12-11 | Bridges |
The bridge authority was down for unknown reasons.
graph mailing list post |
2017-12-05 to 2017-12-15 | Zimbabwe |
Internet outage in Zimbabwe.
article |
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 |
2017-10-01 to 2018-03-01 | Cameroon |
Internet shutdown in parts of Cameroon.
article article |
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 |
2017-03-01 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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