Regarding statistics options

Hi there,

Just a quick question regarding the CellStatistics, ConnDirectionStatistics and EntryStatistics options, as they are disabled by default. It is my understanding that all of the xxxxStatistics options get published in the relay’s extra-info, and so my question is if enabling these options is harmful in any way (privacy?) or does it purely provide extra metrics for the network to be better understood (metrics.torproject.org, etc.)?

Thanks.

Hello Quick answer to quick question :wink:
Have you seen on this side it can answer your questions
I may also be wrong

Good day to you

Yes, I have read the man page. That is where my query comes from; it’s unclear whether or not these options are detrimental to the privacy of clients and other relays as they are by default set to 0.

set by default 0… Has two senses. It also means no alternative or lack of information. which is the case… When in doubt I would avoid this type of mofication or test on a virtualized machine outside your personal IPs sorry I can’t help you more :pensive:

These statistics are disabled by default because we need a better privacy-preserving way to aggregate it. Check out this discussion: [metrics-team] Should we disable the collection of some stats published in extra-infos? (2016)

And PrivCount project: GitHub - privcount/privcount: Privacy-preserving Tor statistics aggregation tool that implements the secret-sharing variant of the PrivEx algorithm.

If you enable for your relay, the stats will be published as part of the relay’s extra-info document:
https://metrics.torproject.org/collector/recent/relay-descriptors/extra-infos/

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Thank you!

Thank you @gus