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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2023-01-12 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Thu, 12 Jan 2023 05:25:41 GMT" (geoip-db-digest D48EC82E3F03A0C929B6D85FBA12D538524AC9B1, geoip6-db-digest BB4E522D86A3C1FB6E820A69F4AA16DAC953B05B).
commit |
| 2023-01-12 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-server on the snowflake-01 bridge with num-turbotunnel=4.
issue |
| 2023-01-05 | China obfs4 Unknown |
Sudden drop in access to bridges from the "email" pool from China.
comment bridge graph |
| 2022-12-21 | webtunnel |
Release of Tor Browser 12.5a1, first release with WebTunnel for desktop.
blog post merge request |
| 2022-12-20 | snowflake |
Increased firewall connection tracking limits on the snowflake-02 bridge.
issue |
| 2022-12-15 | Russia obfs4 snowflake |
Made obfs4 preferred over Snowflake in Connection Assist for Russia.
merge request |
| 2022-12-13 | snowflake |
Increased firewall connection tracking limits on the snowflake-01 bridge.
comment |
| 2022-12-07 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 12.0, the first stable release to contain both the snowflake-01 and snowflake-02 bridges.
issue blog post BBS comment NTC comment |
| 2022-12-06 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Thu, 10 Nov 2022 06:23:12 GMT" (geoip-db-digest A5C34FC3C709B524ADE33779FFD75C64D1F5003D, geoip6-db-digest 10AAC07E3C77361DF777A0DC1EA956997CB8D439).
commit |
| 2022-12-06 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Sun, 04 Dec 2022 05:55:29 GMT" (geoip-db-digest 7F3C80C728C56ABA89C3E56279BECFD39314DD97, geoip6-db-digest FD15242DA08323FC66363B431359313374633FDC).
commit |
| 2022-12-01 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 12.0a5, the first release to contain both the snowflake-01 and snowflake-02 bridges.
issue announcement BBS comment |
| 2022-11-18 | Russia meek |
Reported blocking of the meek-azure front domain in Russia.
NTC post |
| 2022-11-15 | United Arab Emirates obfs4 snowflake |
Added obfs4 and Snowflake settings to Connection Assist for the United Arab Emirates.
merge request |
| 2022-11-10 |
Release of tor 0.4.7.11, with mitigations against network denial of service.
announcement |
|
| 2022-11-01 | Iran snowflake |
Orbot begins a gradual release rollout of version 16.6.3-RC-1-tor.0.4.7.10, which has TLS fingerprint changes to make Snowflake work in Iran again.
release |
| 2022-10-27 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 11.5.6. Fixes the problem that prevented Snowflake from working in 11.5.5, and enables uTLS TLS camouflage support by default for Snowflake.
blog post issue |
| 2022-10-26 | snowflake |
Distributed snowflake-01 outgoing traffic over five IP addresses, in an attempt to mitigate anti-DDoS false detections by other relays.
comment |
| 2022-10-26 | snowflake |
Reboot of the snowflake-01 bridge for software updates.
|
| 2022-10-25 | meek snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 11.5.5. Adds a new working default meek bridge. Intended to enable uTLS TLS camouflage support by default for Snowflake, but had a bug that prevented Snowflake from working.
blog post issue |
| 2022-10-20 | snowflake |
Release of Orbot for Android 16.6.3-BETA-2-tor.0.4.7.10. Adds uTLS TLS camouflage support for Snowflake, making it possible to circumvent recent TLS blocking in Iran.
release announcement |
| 2022-10-19 | snowflake |
Reboot of the snowflake-01 bridge for software updates.
|
| 2022-10-17 | Iran snowflake |
Changed the uTLS fingerprint from hellochrome_auto to hellorandomizedalpn for Snowflake in Iran in Connection Assist, and reverted an inadvertent broker domain front change.
comment |
| 2022-10-17 | Iran snowflake |
Enabled uTLS for Snowflake in Iran in Connection Assist, using the hellochrome_auto fingerprint.
comment merge request |
| 2022-10-17 to 2022-10-25 | snowflake |
Temporary experiment with reverting the 2022-10-03 Snowflake broker change to require multi-bridge support in proxies.
comment for beginning comment for end meeting notes meeting log |
| 2022-10-17 | China Hong Kong obfs4 snowflake |
Changed the recommended transport in Connection Assist to obfs4 in China (was snowflake) and Hong Kong (was unspecified).
issue merge request meeting notes |
| 2022-10-12 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 11.5.4. Adds uTLS TLS camouflage support for Snowflake, making a manual configuration possible to circumvent recent TLS blocking in Iran.
blog post BBS comment |
| 2022-10-05 to 2022-12-05 | meek |
The default meek-azure bridge meek has a configuration issue and the metrics website cannot process statistics.
issue |
| 2022-09-29 to 2022-10-31 |
When Tor Metrics introduced a new method of counting clients (to work with multi-instance relays like the Snowflake bridge), it required reprocessing stats in the overlapping months.
issue |
|
| 2022-09-21 to present | Iran |
Protests and daily Internet shutdowns in Iran.
OONI report BBS thread |
| 2022-06-06 to 2023-04-05 |
Network-wide DDoS attack.
status.torproject.org issue forum thread graph onion v3 traffic |
|
| 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 OONI article |
| 2021-12-22 to present | Finland Relays Unknown |
Increase of relay users in Finland.
tor-talk thread possible explanation graph |
| 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 |
| 2021-11-22 to 2022-11-28 | Burkina Faso |
Shutdown of mobile Internet in Burkina Faso.
article relay users graph tweet |
| 2021-10-03 to present | Egypt Relays Unknown |
Increase of relay users in Egypt.
Twitter thread relay graph |
| 2021-06-10 to present |
Experiment to test latencies between relays.
status.torproject.org post announcing start |
|
| 2021-06-04 to present | Nigeria |
Block of Twitter in Nigeria. Increase in the number of bridge users.
article relay graph bridge graph |
| 2021-04-01 to present | Myanmar |
Shutdowns of wireless broadband in Myanmar.
Access Now post |
| 2021-01-01 to present | China snowflake Unknown |
Increased failure to bootstrap using Snowflake from China.
comment |
| 2020-10-27 to present | Tanzania, United Republic of OR obfs4 |
Blocking of Tor and default obfs4 bridges during elections in Tanzania.
OONI report |
| 2019-06-21 to present | Myanmar |
Internet shutdown in parts of Myanmar.
report 2020 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 |
| 2019-02-16 to present | Belarus Relays Unknown |
Increase of relay users in Belarus.
graph mailing list post |
| 2018-12-20 to present | Sudan |
Protests and social media blocks in Sudan.
relay graph Access Now post Psiphon users |
| 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 |
| 2018-07-28 to present | Turkey Relays Unknown |
Another jump of relay users in Turkey, from 5k to about 30k.
relay graph bridge graph |
| 2018-07-01 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 |
| 2018-06-20 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 |
| 2018-04-30 to present | Iran |
Iranian ISPs block Telegram.
ticket article relay graph bridge graph Psiphon users |
| 2018-01-05 to present |
Outage of the op-hk OnionPerf instance.
op-hk graph |
|
| 2017-12-04 to present |
DDoS attack creates load on the network.
tor-relays thread relay graph summary post ticket |
|
| 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 |
| 2017-02-10 to present | OR exit |
Measurement error from bandwidth authority causes decrease in measured bandwidth in Europe.
mailing list post |
| 2016-12-15 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 |
| 2016-11-03 to present | Turkey |
Turkey blocks Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp.
article |
| 2016-10-25 to present | Egypt OR Relays |
Egypt blocks Tor directory authorities and public relays by TCP RST. Bridges work.
OONI report |