It's been a while since I relayed phone support experiences. Six months ago we listed our phone number on the 'contact us' page. See the experiences of the first month or so at 'talking to users', https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2011-July/020838.html
There have been a few tweaks and changes to the live/phone support. It is still free, but it is clear there is a demand for paid support and consulting. The notable changes are adding jitsi for supporting otr and zrtp-encrypted voip and video chats. Jitsi also works for anything xmpp-based, such as google chat and voice. Also, publishing 'office hours' for the world concentrates the calls to predictable hours. We also setup a ticketing system to track email support requests. tl;dr, users call, have questions, some calls are short, some calls are long. maybe we should offer a paid support option. First, the phone support FAQ list: 1. What is Aurora? 2. Why is Tor slower than x (vpn, proxy, native internet, psiphon, etc)? 3. Why is running a bridge/relay so complex? I want to help people, not get a degree in computer science. 4. I want watch videos on the internet, how do I do this? 4a. Ok, not in tbb. How do I configure safari/chrome/ie/opera to use tor so I can watch videos on the internet? 4b. why is this self-configuration so complex? 5. My anti-virus/anti-malware/spyware-detector tells me tor.exe and vidalia.exe are unknown and unsafe. what do I do? 6. Can you explain to me online privacy and anonymity and how tor helps make these happen? Second, there are three calls that stand out over the past six months. The first is actually not a single call, but a series of them. 'I'm an (animal rights or religious rights) supporter going to a repressive Asian country to spread my message and take some actions. Can you help me be anonymous online while traveling?' There are apparently some organized groups going somewhere in Asia to do something. They eventually find Tor through search engines and their fellow members and want to learn more. These calls are generally 30-50 minutes long and generally wind up talking about how the Internet works more than tor itself. There have been eight of these calls so far. The second was a series of calls from one woman. She called out of desperation. She figured tor is 'technical and computery' and may be able to help, since the local computer stores and police dept were useless. She said her computer would randomly do things she didn't tell it to do, like move the cursor, turn the webcam light on, and one of her coworkers in another country seemed to know far more about her than she remembers telling him over the years. The local computer stores ran anti-virus/anti-malware and found nothing. One suggested she see a doctor for dementia (she's older). The local police told her to take classes to learn how to use her computer and even if her coworker was stalking her, he's in a different country and therefore out of their jurisdiction. I was the first to tell her she's not crazy and yes, infected computers can do exactly what she's experiencing. After about 5 calls over two weeks, I eventually handed her off to a local domestic violence organization who can also help with internet stalking. It's surprisingly hard to find an anti-abuse org that also knows how to handle the Internet. Comically, the first two orgs I called pointed me at NNEDV.org, who then point people at Tor for help with privacy online. And the final call was my first video support chat. This person is an adult video performer, and as she put it, 'there are fans, super fans, creepy fans, and stalkers. I love the first three types of fans.' The local police detective basically told her that because of what she does for a living, there is nothing they can do about her stalker and that she brought this on herself. She found tor through internet searches. She talked to other companies who just wanted to sell her software, but not actually answer her questions. She had a lot of questions. We covered online privacy, how the internet works, how to un-infect her work computer, and how to keep her personal computer safer than the work computer. Generally helped her setup tails on a usb drive, tbb, and what happens when you login to google, twitter, and facebook over tor (who does that provide privacy from, what does it protect, etc). She wanted to know how to keep, in her words, 'the public me separate from the private me' on the Internet and from her non-stalker fans. In the end, she said the internet was far more complex than she thought, and wishes she could just buy something that 'just worked' without her thinking about it. She realized it's unlikely that will ever happen. In summary, there are the usual 5-10 minute calls/chats about technical operations of tor, and then the far longer 'explain to me online privacy and anonymity' calls. And yes, there are still the random crazy people that call and insist they are being stalked by the Illuminati, The Greys, and other intergalactic networks asking if tor can provide planetary anonymity or anonymity on space networks. Thankfully, these are few and far between. -- Andrew http://tpo.is/contact pgp 0x74ED336B _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list [email protected] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
