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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2023-12-21 | Bridges |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0.8. Fixes the problem of pluggable transports not running on Windows 7 and Windows 8, except for Snowflake.
blog post issue merge request |
| 2023-12-19 | Bridges |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0.7. Pluggable transports don't work with Windows 7 and Windows 8.
blog post issue |
| 2023-12-17 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge for test of configuration changes
|
| 2023-12-15 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.8 to 0.4.8.10 on the snowflake-01 bridge. Fixes the bug that made user counts by country more imprecise.
comment graph monthly update |
| 2023-12-15 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.8 to 0.4.8.10 on the snowflake-02 bridge. Fixes the bug that made user counts by country more imprecise.
comment |
| 2023-12-08 |
Release of tor 0.4.8.10. Fixes TROVE-2023-007 affecting exit relays with Conflux. Fixes the bug that caused incorrect counting of pluggable transport users.
announcement |
|
| 2023-11-21 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-02 bridge for a performance enhancement.
comment |
| 2023-11-21 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-01 bridge for a performance enhancement.
comment |
| 2023-11-16 | Relays |
Removal of about 1,000 "ATOR" relays.
blog post blog post graph |
| 2023-11-07 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-02 bridge for a performance enhancement. Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.6 to 0.4.8.8.
comment |
| 2023-10-20 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge for Debian 11.8 upgrade. Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.6 to 0.4.8.7.
comment |
| 2023-10-12 |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0. First stable release with Conflux.
blog post tor-relays post |
|
| 2023-10-05 | snowflake |
Release of Orbot 17.1.0-RC-2-tor.0.4.7.14, again changing the domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
release commit |
| 2023-10-04 | snowflake Unknown |
The snowflake-02 bridge suddenly recovers a large amount of bandwidth, after two weeks of low usage following the domain front change of 2023-09-20.
mailing list post |
| 2023-10-03 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.7.13 to 0.4.8.6 on the snowflake-01 bridge. As with the upgrade on snowflake-02 on 2023-09-24, this causes the reporting of spurious OR protocol users.
comment mailing list post comment monthly update |
| 2023-09-28 | snowflake |
Release of Orbot 17.1.0-RC-1-tor.0.4.7.14, with an alternative domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
release commit |
| 2023-09-26 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 12.5.5, with an alternative domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
blog post merge request |
| 2023-09-24 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.7.13 to 0.4.8.6 on the snowflake-02 bridge. As the result of an apparent bug, the bridge starts reporting a number of OR protocol users about equal to the number of Snowflake users.
mailing list post about upgrade mailing list post about metrics problems core Tor issue metrics issue |
| 2023-09-24 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0a5, with an alternative domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
blog post merge request |
| 2023-09-21 | snowflake Unknown |
The snowflake-01 bridge suddenly recovers a large amount of bandwidth, about 24 hours after the domain front change of 2023-09-20 started to lower the number of users.
mailing list post |
| 2023-09-20 | moat snowflake |
The front domain used by Snowflake, Moat, and Connection Assist starts sometimes resolving to a different CDN, which makes these services stop working for some users. The snowflake-01 bridge drops to about half its normal number of users; the snowflake-02 bridge drops almost to zero. There would later be sudden partial recoveries of usage on snowflake-01 at 2023-09-21 13:10:00 and snowflake-02 at 2023-10-04 11:40:00.
forum post about Snowflake forum post about Moat and Connection Assist |
| 2023-09-19 to 2023-10-31 | Azerbaijan |
Blocking of TikTok in Azerbaijan.
tweet about start tweet about end |
| 2023-09-19 to 2023-09-25 | Azerbaijan |
Blocking of Google Play Store in Azerbaijan.
tweet |
| 2023-09-04 to 2023-09-09 | United States Relays Unknown |
Unexplained spike in relay users from the US.
issue |
| 2023-08-27 to 2023-08-30 | snowflake |
Outage of the snowflake-02 bridge caused by a temporary network disconnection at the network host. Client polls at the broker increase and traffic is diverted to snowflake-01.
mailing list post article status page |
| 2023-08-23 to 2023-12-08 | Bridges |
A bug in tor 0.4.8.4 causes misattribution of about half of pluggable transport users to the plain Tor protocol in bridges that upgrade to this version. The bug is fixed in tor 0.4.8.10.
issue issue merge request |
| 2023-08-23 |
Release of tor 0.4.8.4, with new Conflux and anti-DoS proof-of-work features.
announcement |
|
| 2023-08-08 to present | Jordan |
Blocking of Grindr in Jordan.
OONI report |
| 2023-08-05 to present | Iraq |
Blocking of Telegram in Iraq.
Kentik report |
| 2023-08-03 | Turkmenistan meek snowflake |
Make meek the first choice in Connection Assist for Turkmenistan, and changed the meek front domain.
merge request |
| 2023-07-18 | Turkmenistan OR |
Blocking of the default Tor client TLS fingerprint in the AGTS ISP in Turkmenistan.
comment relay users graph |
| 2023-07-18 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-server on the snowflake-02 bridge with num-turbotunnel=8.
comment |
| 2023-07-18 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-server on the snowflake-01 bridge with num-turbotunnel=8.
comment |
| 2023-07-18 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-server on the snowflake-01 bridge with num-turbotunnel=1.
comment |
| 2023-07-01 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge after testing performance optimizations.
comment |
| 2023-06-30 |
The number of allowed relays per IP address (AuthDirMaxServersPerAddr) is increased from 2 to 8.
announcement issue |
|
| 2023-06-29 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge to test an optimization.
comment |
| 2023-06-29 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge to test an optimization.
comment |
| 2023-06-29 | webtunnel |
Announcement of WebTunnel availability.
announcement |
| 2023-06-29 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge to test an optimization.
comment |
| 2023-06-28 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge for a profiling change.
comment |
| 2023-06-12 to 2024-05-06 | Germany Relays Unknown |
Increase in relay users from Germany.
issue graph forum thread |
| 2023-06-05 to 2023-06-07 | Senegal |
Blocking of mobile Internet in Senegal.
article |
| 2023-06-01 | conjure |
Announcement of Conjure availability.
announcement BBS thread |
| 2023-06-01 to present | Senegal |
Blocking of social media in Senegal.
article OONI report |
| 2023-05-31 | snowflake |
Release of Orbot 17.1.0-BETA-2-tor.0.4.7.11.
release |
| 2023-05-22 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-01 bridge for an upgrade.
comment |
| 2023-05-21 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-02 bridge for an upgrade.
comment |
| 2023-05-12 to 2023-05-14 | China snowflake |
Block of Snowflake default front domain in China.
issue BBS thread forum thread |
| 2023-04-26 to present | Brazil |
Block of Telegram in Brazil.
OONI report |
| 2023-04-23 to 2023-04-25 | Sudan |
Internet outage in Sudan.
liveblog Wikipedia |
| 2023-04-19 | China obfs4 snowflake |
Changed the recommended transport in Connection Assist in China from obfs4 to snowflake.
comment commit |
| 2023-04-12 | snowflake |
Orbot begins a release rollout of version 17.0.0-RC-1-tor.0.4.7.11. First release of Orbot to include the snowflake-02 bridge along with the existing snowflake-01. Has a change to the Snowflake DTLS fingerprint (removes Hello Verify Request) to mitigate reported blocking in Russia.
release Orbot commit adding snowflake-02 IPtProxy commit upgrading Snowflake |
| 2023-04-11 | snowflake |
Release of Snowflake WebExtension 0.7.2, with a fix for missing client country information that had been introduced in 0.6.0 on 2022-06-27. The result is better country-level attribution of Snowflake users: most who had been being assigned to ?? are now assigned to their proper geolocated country.
archive comment |
| 2023-04-11 | China obfs4 Unknown |
Sudden drop in access to bridges from the "settings" and "moat" pools from China.
comment bridge graph |
| 2023-04-08 | snowflake |
Deployed a performance optimization on the snowflake-01 bridge.
comment |
| 2023-04-07 | snowflake |
Deployed a performance optimization on the snowflake-02 bridge.
comment |
| 2023-03-31 to 2023-04-18 | webstats Unknown |
Tor Browser update pings temporarily drop further.
graph issue |
| 2023-03-22 | snowflake |
Rebooted the snowflake-02 bridge to make nf_conntrack changes persistent.
comment |
| 2023-03-22 | webtunnel |
Release of Tor Browser 12.5a4, first release with WebTunnel for mobile.
blog post issue |
| 2023-03-22 | snowflake |
Rebooted the snowflake-01 bridge to make nf_conntrack changes persistent.
comment |
| 2023-03-19 | Iran moat snowflake |
The domain name cdn.sstatic.net, which is used by Snowflake and Moat, is again blocked in some ISPs in Iran.
comment OONI chart |
| 2023-03-15 | snowflake |
Release of Orbot for Android v17 BETA 2. First release of Orbot to include the snowflake-02 bridge along with the existing snowflake-01. Has a change to the Snowflake DTLS fingerprint (removes Hello Verify Request) to mitigate reported blocking in Russia.
release Orbot commit adding snowflake-02 IPtProxy commit upgrading Snowflake |
| 2023-03-13 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge for a bugfix.
comment issue |
| 2023-03-13 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-02 bridge for a bugfix.
comment issue |
| 2023-03-13 | Iran moat snowflake |
The domain name cdn.sstatic.net, which is used by Snowflake and Moat, is again blocked in some ISPs in Iran.
comment OONI chart |
| 2023-03-10 to 2023-03-13 | snowflake |
Temporarily restarted snowflake-server on the snowflake-02 bridge to activate the Go race detector.
comment |
| 2023-03-10 | United Arab Emirates obfs4 snowflake |
Removed Connection Assist settings for the United Arab Emirates.
merge request |
| 2023-03-08 | Iran moat snowflake |
The domain name cdn.sstatic.net, which is used by Snowflake and Moat, is again blocked in some ISPs in Iran.
comment OONI chart |
| 2023-03-06 | snowflake |
Re-increased firewall connection tracking limits on the snowflake-01 and snowflake-02 bridges, which had been unintentionally reduced to the defaults since 2023-02-16.
comment |
| 2023-03-03 | Iran moat snowflake |
The domain name cdn.sstatic.net, which is used by Snowflake and Moat, is again blocked in some ISPs in Iran.
comment OONI chart |
| 2023-02-22 | Iran moat snowflake |
The domain name cdn.sstatic.net, which is used by Snowflake and Moat, is again blocked in some ISPs in Iran.
comment OONI chart |
| 2023-02-20 | conjure |
Release of Tor Browser 12.5a3, first release with Conjure.
blog post issue |
| 2023-02-19 | Iran moat snowflake |
The domain name cdn.sstatic.net, which is used by Snowflake and Moat, is again blocked in some ISPs in Iran.
comment OONI chart |
| 2023-02-17 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge for HAProxy security update.
comment |
| 2023-02-16 | snowflake |
Increased the number of tor instances on the snowflake-02 bridge from 4 to 12.
issue |
| 2023-02-16 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-02 bridge for HAProxy security update.
comment |
| 2023-02-15 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 12.0.3. Has a change to the Snowflake DTLS fingerprint (removes Hello Verify Request) to mitigate reported blocking in Russia.
blog post comment about Hello Verify Request Snowflake merge request Tor Browser merge request |
| 2023-02-10 to 2023-02-13 | Iran moat snowflake |
The domain name cdn.sstatic.net, which is used by Snowflake and Moat, is again blocked in some ISPs in Iran.
comment OONI chart |
| 2023-02-09 to present | Ethiopia |
Social media blocking in Ethiopia.
relay graph bridge graph BBS thread |
| 2023-02-01 to present | Senegal |
Blocking of TikTok in Senegal.
tweet |
| 2023-01-31 to 2023-02-01 | Iran moat snowflake |
The domain name cdn.sstatic.net, which is used by Snowflake and Moat, is again blocked in some ISPs in Iran.
comment |
| 2023-01-20 to present | webstats Unknown |
Tor Browser update pings drop temporarily. A similar effect is present in other years.
graph issue |
| 2023-01-19 | Iran |
Shutdown in some ISPs in Iran during student exams.
Cloudflare Radar |
| 2023-01-16 to 2023-01-24 | Iran moat snowflake |
The domain name cdn.sstatic.net, which is used by Snowflake and Moat, is blocked in some ISPs in Iran.
comment |
| 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 |
| 2022-09-21 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 |
| 2021-10-03 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 |