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 |
---|---|---|
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 |
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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