Snowflake bridge metrics 2023 year in review
forum.torproject.org
This is a summary of usage of the Snowflake pluggable transport in 2023. For the previous year’s summary, see the Snowflake 2022 year in review. The primary Snowflake bridge, called snowflake-01, is supported by donations. In 2023, the Snowflake Daily Operations team paid about €4,820 in hosting expenses to keep the bridge running—with most of that going for bandwidth. In 2024, in addition to paying for bandwidth, we would like to buy new hardware for the bridge, which will enable it to support...

We can also break down users by country. The largest contingent of Snowflake users are in Iran, which has been the case since the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022 1. The graph shows also a large number of users apparently from the United States, but we believe that may be partly the result of geolocation errors, and many of them are actually from Iran. After Iran, the countries with the most Snowflake users are Russia and China.

    • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
      2·
      11 months ago

      Any way to make it work on Android firefox? I have an old android lying around would be nice to make it useful to people in need.

      EDIT:

      Never mind, installed orbot :)

        • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
          1·
          11 months ago

          Didn’t dived to much into Tor, what’s the big difference between a real relay node and a snowflake? If you don’t mind to briefly explain it !

          Haha, yeah I’m aware of exit nodes…

          • Gooey0210@sh.itjust.works
            5·
            11 months ago

            Haha, yeah I’m aware of exit nodes…

            Dude, don’t even ask, we are people, and we were born to talk and explain, and be curious!

            Snowflake is a bridge, it helps people bypass restrictions applied by their governments/networks

            Relay is a tor node/hop, this is what makes tor possible, be one of the nodes people’s traffic goes through (without allowing them to access the normal internet) Doing this helps decentralization of the tor, and prevents big organizations from pinpointing users

          • supervent@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            3·
            11 months ago

            Snowflake/bridge is used when you do not want the authorities/ISP know, you are using tor or because it might be blocked (like on contries with censorship). When you are running snowflake/bridge you are helping these users. For the contrary, if you use a normal tor relay, they(ISP, authorities, who ever is watching your connection) know, but they do not know what you are doing.

            • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
              1·
              11 months ago

              A proxy is normally only shown if you cannot connect to their entry servers regularly. More apps have this, Signal / Molly, Telegram, …

              So nobody uses a proxy if they dont need to, normally

      • Karna@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        If installing extension is not an option for you -

        • You can open https://snowflake.torproject.org/ (or https://relay.love/) on a tab,
        • scroll down to ‘Leave this browser tab open or embed a web badge on your website’ section
        • toggle ‘Enabled’ button
        • and leave the browser running.
        • Note: Browser needs to have WebRTC enabled to make it work.

        I’m personally running Snowflake container on docker on my little Raspberry pi 24/7. And, yes, in 2023 most of the connection to my bridge was from Iran.

        • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
          2·
          11 months ago

          Thanks for the tip :) I disable WebRTC by default on my browsers. The Android Orbot app seems to do the trick ! Already helped out 4 people.

  • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
    2·
    11 months ago

    Can someone help me understand how this might be a better idea than using an SSL-VPN such as OpenVPN/SoftEther and connecting to TOR from the VPN endpoint instead of using Snowflake?

    I’d like to use my own infrastructure and am also looking for comparisons/security analysis of Snowflake

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
      1·
      11 months ago

      The Proxy is for people that can not access the Tor network.

      For your own comfort/anonymity using a VPN is the better option.

      • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
        1·
        11 months ago

        If they could run their own SSL-VPNs and then access TOR through them, like I described, would there be a point in Snowflake?

        • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
          1·
          11 months ago

          Snowflake works for people that may not be able to get crypto or anonymous cash per letter. How would they pay the VPN?

          • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
            1·
            11 months ago

            Ah, I forgot that Monero in exchange for cash might not be an option here. Apologies, you’re right. With that, I’d also like a comparison of security between these two approaches

            • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
              1·
              11 months ago

              Snowflake is encrypted but I dont know with what protocol. TLS at least so at least as secure as the regular internet including all banking sites.

              Yeah, Snowflake being tied to this one use case also prevents abuse. Imagine having “free VPN ran on my Computer for the Iranians”, that would be abused like hell.