Re: [tor-bugs] #22399 [Applications/Tor Launcher]: Tor launcher third-party censorship circumvention tools support

["Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki" <blackhole@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

#22399: Tor launcher third-party censorship circumvention tools support
---------------------------------------+-----------------------
 Reporter:  iry                        |          Owner:  brade
     Type:  project                    |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium                     |      Milestone:
Component:  Applications/Tor Launcher  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                     |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  ux-team                    |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:  #21951                     |         Points:
 Reviewer:                             |        Sponsor:
---------------------------------------+-----------------------

Comment (by iry):

 Replying to [comment:5 mcs]:
 > Because I have not heard much discussion of use of 3rd party tools, this
 statement surprises me: "third-party censorship circumvention tools are
 actually widely used in heavily censored area where Tor bridges and
 pluggable-transports are not effective."

 Thank you for bringing this point up, mcs!

 Unfortunately, there is not much research or even discussion of how many
 users are using 3rd party tools to connect to Tor network. However, here
 is an indirect statistical evidence I found:
 the Bridge users by transport in the past one year from China:
 https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-
 combined.html?start=2016-05-25&end=2017-05-25&country=cn

 The diagram shows that there are only around 500 meek connections and only
 around 250 obfs4 connections per day from China on average. Considering
 the direct connection to the Tor network has been blocked for yeas in
 China, the sum of the two numbers should be seen as the total number of
 Tor users in China, which is approximately 750. Comparing with the number
 of Tor users in other countries, the user number is very likely
 underestimated. One possible explanation is that Tor is not popular in
 China at all. Another explanation is that many Tor users in China connect
 to the Tor network with the help of 3rd party censorship circumvention
 tools, whose connection will be recorded as countries other than China in
 Tor metric.

 Additionally, what the diagram does not show is the connection quality
 when meek or obfs4 is used. We may ask questions like how stable the
 connections are? how much bandwidth a Tor user will get when using meek?
 If the stability or bandwidth are unbearable for users, it is possible for
 them to choose some 3rd party tools instead.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22399#comment:8>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online
_______________________________________________
tor-bugs mailing list
tor-bugs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-bugs