[guardian-dev] Number of CN Orbot users?

[lists at rickv.com]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 01:44:23PM -0700, David Fifield wrote:
>Someone told me that the Play Store provides user counts, but maybe you
>don't look at those, and maybe they aren't meaningful anyway (I don't
>know if the Play Store is blocked in China).

Hello from Shanghai. The Play Store is indeed blocked in China.

>I'm asking because according to our measurements
>(https://www.bamsoftware.com/proxy-probe/), Orbot's default obfs4
>bridges do not get blocked, even as Tor Browser's do. (I just checked
>and the Orbot-only obfs4 bridges are unblocked even now.) I wonder why
>this might be the case. It might be that whoever set up their blocking
>procedures doesn't know about Orbot, or it might be that there are too
>few Orbot users to bother with.

I haven't tried to use Tor/Orbot much in China, after initial fails. I
just reinstalled Orbot from the F-Droid GP repo, and had no luck
connecting; this is on a Nexus 5x, not rooted. FWIW, it does work after
first connecting to a VPN. 

Best regards,
Rick

-- 
Rick Valenzuela
Videojournalist
Shanghai, China