Re: [tor-talk] large increase in .onion domains

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 05:45:26AM -0500, Scfith Rise up wrote:
> Here is the exact link: https://metrics.torproject.org/hidserv-dir-onions-seen.html 
> 
> it jumped from 40000 to 60000 in the past day or two. 
> 
> Since the metrics are based on the number of relays acting as hidden
>services with the assumption that at least 1% are reporting in, the
>numbers are correlated directly with the number of relays running as well.

Yep. Also, because each reporting relay adds noise, sometimes, due to
the math involved, more than half of the relays end up inflating their
number, so we end up with a higher number on that graph than is actually
true in reality.

Still, that is a large jump.

Let's wait a few days and see if it settles down.

If it doesn't, I'll guess that it's a real effect. But even then,
we don't know why this (daily!) number is so much larger than the
(total!) number of onion addresses that e.g. Ahmia knows about. Maybe
it's Onionshare users, who generate one onion address per document they
transfer? Maybe it's Ricochet users? Maybe it's measurement error? We need
to see more improvements in the field of privacy-preserving statistics
and measurements before we'll feel comfortable trying to get answers to
this question.

--Roger

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