The best privacy-protective internet browser available for most people is running low on bridge server. The decline in server affects the browser's ability to combat censorship and provide a gateway to the open internet in places where governments and other entities tightly control access to information.
The nonprofit organization that maintains and develops the Tor software said in a post this week that it has approximately 1,200 bridge server, of which 900 support the obfs4 obfuscation protocol. The private server that provides access to users living in places where the network is blocked is called a bridge. In some cases, users can be anonymous by using the service, which relays connections to a server multiple times.
It should be noted that people who can't access the internet in their country are not the only ones who use it. It is also used by people who want to hide their internet address or who don't want their browsing activities tracked.
The number of bridges run by volunteers has been decreasing since the beginning of the year.
It is not enough to have many bridges, all of them could end up in block lists, according to the nonprofit. We need a constant trickle of new bridges.
Russia has the highest average of daily users of any country, followed by the U.S., with an average of 10,726 daily users.
To address the decline in bridge server, the Tor Project is launching a campaign to bring 200 obfs4 bridges online by the end of the year. The reward kits consist of hoodies, T-shirts, and stickers for volunteers that run bridge server for at least a year. This is a nonprofit. The campaign will end on January 7, 2022.
