Hi browser devs,

On account of being a Tor user, I have been banned from and unable to connect to OFTC since Tuesday. Hence, I'm sharing my help desk experiences asynchronously this week.

A common request we see on the help desk is from users asking why they can't connect to some hidden service site. The reason is almost always that the site is down. However the message users see is

Unable to connect

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at abcdefgh23456789.onion.

This adds to the confusion users feel, as many don't understand why they see the word "Firefox" instead of "Tor Browser".

In fact, any time during the user experience when users see the word "Firefox", genuine confusion seems to arise. A source of this confusion, I think, is that users thought they were using Tor Browser, not Firefox, and they begin to wonder if their current problem is somehow related to Mozilla Firefox, which may or may not also be installed on their computer.

Actually I have seen users get quite angry from the confusion they feel at the general branding fail (not always from the "server might be down message" but from other Firefox references, for example, as seen in start up error messages).

------------- Matt Pagan matt@pagan.io