[Tails-ux] Cybelle's report: July spreadsheet: users queries…

Delete this message

Reply to this message
Autore: sajolida
Data:  
To: cy63113, Tails user experience & user interface design
Oggetto: [Tails-ux] Cybelle's report: July spreadsheet: users queries, demands, and issues
cy63113:
> Hi everybody,
>
> As many of you know, I've been gathering, for the last for 3 months,
> issues, comments, demands, and suggestions from different sources like
> IRC channels, blog comments, Stack Exchange, Tor and Tails
> Reddit, RT, Facebook, and  Twitter.
>
> [...]
>
> You can check the July spreadsheet here:
> https://ethercalc.org/fk4bgj7ntrbj 


Thanks for the report Cybelle, I go through the issues reported for Tails.

Cybelle: I only have one question for you in #12 and you can skip the
rest :)

1.
I set up an SSH tunnel on Tails but when I try to reach it with tor
browser by changing the socks5 proxy port, I only get "unable to connect".

Probably someone trying to access either a website blocking Tor.
I personally do that sometimes but you need to go through Firefox (and
not Tor Browser) but then you loose the additional protections from Tor
Browser. I don't think it's something we should document.

It's a real problem but the proper answer for that would be
Tails → Tor → VPN. See https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/vpn_support/.

2.
When using Tails, I've noticed that the traffic suddenly jumps to over
1TB when establishing a connection to the Tor network after booting.
What's weird is that it doesn't show up in Total Received and also, for
some reason, tends to freeze the KiB Mem and KiB Swap counters on an
instance of top that I'm running.
(https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/17517/sudden-spike-in-received-traffic-when-connecting-to-the-tor-network)

This person is referring to the network monitor of GNOME who's sometimes
buggy and reports traffic that's no real. I don't think it's something
we can solve in Tails. I've seen similar report on the GNOME Bugzilla.

3.
How bridges work in Tails?

If the question is about how to use bridges in Tails, we already have
some doc for that:

https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/startup_options/bridge_mode/

And it seems well reference by search engines:

https://duckduckgo.com/?kad=en_US&q=tails+bridges&ia=web

4.
As we know there are some sites, for example TPB(although thats only
while you're on the site), that use your pc to mine cryptocurrency. So
if tails basically secures the rest of your computer from viruses, how
would crypto mining work in Tails?

I'll ignore this one :)

5.
How important is it to clone from Tails onto a 2nd USB?

I bet that this person is referring to the installation process from
Windows which requires going through an intermediary Tails.

We're explaining this in the first note on the installation page:

https://tails.boum.org/install/win/usb/

And in the overview before starting the install (Why 2?):

https://tails.boum.org/install/win/usb-overview/

So I'm not sure it's worth improving this.

Luckily, we should get rid of this extra step by distributing USB image
at the end of 2018:

https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/usb_install_and_upgrade/usb_bootable_disk_image/

6.
If I use Tails in a computer with virus, what can happen?

Good one! We have an FAQ for that:

https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/

But we can probably simplify the phrasing and use "virus" in the title.

I'm creating #15782 for that.

7.
We have an FAQ for that:

https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/#vpn

But indeed, it's not as straight to the point as it could be.
I'm creating #15783 to improve that.

In 3.9 (September 4) we'll also publish more doc about installing
additional software.

8.
Can the ISP provider know that we are running tails?

Interestingly, searching for "Tails ISP" points me to our doc on that:

https://tails.boum.org/doc/about/fingerprint/

But not searching for "Can the ISP provider know that we are running
tails?".

But as of now I don't think it's worth optimizing for that.

9.
I've been using tails for a while but now I can’t find persistent folder
(https://www.reddit.com/r/tails/comments/91iv7q/cant_find_persistent_folder/
)

We wrote a known issues about this a few days ago:

https://tails.boum.org/support/known_issues/#persistence-disappears

And are investigating the root cause and possible solutions:

https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/10976

10.
Tail was booting fine on my old laptop (both Windows 10), but I've
recently upgraded and now after I log in to Tails I get a black screen.

Oops... Could be a graphics card issue. Hard to investigate without
contacting this person directly.

11.
Everytime I try to sideload tails, I get past the first screen, past the
screen with the three little dots and then get stuck in the busybox
shell. Says "Unable to find a medium containing a live file system".
Have tried using different usb drives, turning off safeboot, and
redownloaded the official iso of tails from the website.
(https://www.reddit.com/r/tails/comments/91fbry/tails_wont_boot_fully/ )

Maybe someone who does weird stuff to install...

12.
Can't connect to Tor

In future reports, could you give me the list of links to such reports?

I'd be interested in doing some stats on the symptoms and possible
causes (as they can be many).

13.
I had no problem booting tails on my first usb stick. However when I
clone the second and try to boot from that, I stucked at the automatic
boot screen, it counts down from 4 and loops over and over. Tried to
disable fast boot, secure boot. Tried 4 times with different usb sticks.

Oops... Probably some issue with their bootloader :(

Not much we can analyze further from the distance.

--
sajolida