Designers and developers need to learn about how people use their tools in order to make them more useful and easier to use.

Usually, software companies rely on invasive data collection techniques that don't respect their users.

At Tor, we are transparent about what data we collect from the people participating in our user research. We manipulate this data with maximum care to respect their privacy and not put them at risk.

Surveys

If you are answering one of our surveys on https://survey.torproject.org/, here is how your data is processed and stored.

Full survey responses

  • Surveys are powered by LimeSurvey, a Free Software tool that is self-hosted by the Tor Project.

    All responses are stored exclusively on servers managed by the Tor Project. Only Tor Project employees, authorized contractors, and core contributors are able to view your responses.

  • Surveys are also available on an onion service, providing a greater level of security and privacy.

    To visit the onion version of a survey, open the survey in Tor Browser and click the .onion available button on the right of the address bar.

  • Surveys are configured to record:

    • The time and date your response was started.

    • The time and date your response was submitted.

    Surveys are not configured to record your IP address.

  • Survey responses are wiped from LimeSurvey no later than 180 days after data is collected.

Still, we recommend high-risk individuals do not share any personally identifiable information. That's why we always make optional as many questions as possible, especially the questions about your background.

Aggregated survey reports

We might share public reports from surveys, but only with aggregated or anonymize data:

  • We might report aggregated statistics, for example, how frequently people say they use Tor Browser.

  • We might include quotes or fragments of individual responses after redacting them and removing any personal information. We will only include your individual responses if you give us your consent to share anonymized information publicly.

  • We never publish any personal information, like names of individuals or organizations.

As an example, see the report about our survey of Tor Browser users from March 2021.