Pretty Good Privacy

Privacy protection

  • Online privacy hardly ever exists anymore. It is a trade-off between your desired internet use (comfort and convenience), your need to maintain your social network, your personal and business interests and for many then your (financial) privacy and security.
  • For most people, the first three arguments weigh so heavily that they accept the serious violation of their privacy. A few tips anyway.
  • Keep in mind if you read this small overview; everything you do to improve your online privacy will not only help protecting you against, hacking, identity theft, fraud and other criminal activities while donating but with anything you do on the internet.
  • If you really seek online privacy find a expert to help you.

No data mining

“What we don’t know, we cannot reveal and what isn’t stored can’t be stolen.”

  • We do not use cookies, web beacons, trackers or unique device ID’s and do not collect information about your browser, location, operating system, email, keystrokes, chats, calls, provider and IP address during or even long after your donation or use any facilities related to Facebook, Google, etc. which is more or less the standard procedure with any tech company, platform, app, service provider and millions of web stores and sites around the world.
  • We do not store any sensitive data resulting from your payment transactions that can reveal your identity or connects you to the beneficiary.
  • The few data we need when you redeem the donation code are encrypted and/ or destroyed after finishing the donation.

Workflow

  • For the necessary data to process the donations we developed a special workflow together with some  special automation and encryption and tokenization of the necessary data to execute your donations.  Together with some private communication software, our donors are save and well protected against nosey and intrusive beneficiaries, fundraisers and other curious parties like hackers. It also disconnects the (online) digital and money trail between donor and recepiant effectively.
  • Though we trust our dear employees, the human factor always remains a liability. That is why we organized our workflow and encrypt the necessary data in a way that does not reveal your identity to  our staff as well.

Anonymous Communications

  • Because we think the most vulnerable parts of donating anonymously besides the workflow and the cash flow is communication, all our customers will have to use ProtonMail during the donation process. For your own safety and the protection of your identity but also to verify your “identity” as the rightful owner of the donation code, if you lose it or it is stolen.
  • We offer this free software so that communication on your side is also secured, before you contact us.  
  • You can use ProtonMail and VPN for a private conversation with us. If you want to chat or call us privately than use Signal Private Messenger.
  • Actually we advice you to use these services always and not only to visit our website or communicate with us, because it is better for your safety and privacy anyway.
  • Do not use our general telephone number and e-mail address to discuss specific sensitive details about your gifts. Though beneficiaries normally cannot tap telephone lines or email traffic, many others can.

Anonymous online

  • In case you follow our advice we recommend to subscript to a professional VPN provider like VPN Nord (dedicates TOR servers for VPN with TOR), Express VPN ( works with TOR as well, no dedicated servers) Cyber Ghost or Proton VPN, because you will have a much faster connection then with the free version of Proton VPN and you can connect all your devises to VPN instead of one.
  • At least keep your software in general and firewall, software against viruses, malware etc. on all your devises up-to-date. Use at least Startpage.com or Duckduckgo.com as a search engine or the TOR browser (see below). Encrypt your private documents on your devise and never open a hyperlink in a email or document without checking the trustworthiness of the sender. Use Dashlane or another password manager for generating secure passphrases and to store them safely. And…. stay away from social media. Your (online) privacy in general is not worth a dime otherwise.
  • If you are serious about your online privacy and therefore your security you could use the TOR browser together with VPN. Even more advanced for those who really want to stay private; use the TAILS operating system. You better buy a new laptop or PC before you start using TAILS.
  • If this is all to technical for you, find an expert to help you, because there is much more possible to secure your online activities than is this small overview.

Store donation codes offline

  • Though we safely store your donation code(s) as long as you have not finished your donation(s) we  strongly recommend to store them safely yourself as well, and not only for your own peace of mind!
  • Though not very likely because we always verify the Proton email address if someone wants to redeem a voucher, it is still possible that a hacker steals them and  pretends to be a beneficiary and your money might be gone. 
  • You can just leave the donation code in the ProtonMail box. If you do so you, make sure that you have stored your username and passphrase safely offline (see below) or encrypted online with a passphrase manager like Dashlane.
  • Certainly for the long run we recommend to store the donation code or ProtonMail username and passphrases offline as well and make several copies. This could be on a (if possible encrypted) USB stick or hard drive with a passphrase that stays offline until you need it and/ or write it down on paper.
  • Don’t print it, printers often store information and can be hacked.
  • If you definitely store it on a devise that is online regularly than you could use free encryption software. Easy to use but only for Windows 10 is Fort. AES Crypt is available for Linux, MAC and  Windows. Veracypt and Cryptermite are alternatives. Encrypto can be used for MAC and Windows.

ProtonMail

  • ProtonMail is founded and based in Switzerland and all servers are located in Switzerland. This means that all user data are protected by strict Swiss privacy legislation.
  • No personal information is required to create your secure e-mail account. Nothing needs to be installed. By default, ProtonMail does not store metadata such as IP logs that can be linked to your anonymous e-mail account. Your privacy comes first. There are apps for every operating system and but we advice the webmail version. You can start here.
  • All e-mails are automatically protected with end-to-end encryption. This means that even ProtonMail itself can not decrypt and read your e-mails. As a result, your encrypted emails can not be shared with third parties.
  • It becomes even more secure if you enable Address Verification with Trusted Keys. Using trusted keys, a user can enforce that specific keys be used to encrypt for each contact without allowing the server to change them. Trusted keys are also known as pinned keys.
  • When you trust keys, the keys are also used for digital signature verification to verify the sender’s identity when receiving communications from them.
  • Your pinned keys are protected by a digital signature, which allows our clients to detect illegal modifications to your trusted keys. This signature is verified using your private keys. A consequence of this is that your contact signatures will fail to verify if you reset your password. 
  • You can even send encrypted communication to non-ProtonMail users via symmetric coding. It receives a link that loads the encrypted message into its browser, which is decrypted when opened.
  • This is possible because they use open PGP. The advantage is that your email can be read and is protected regardless of the email provider or online email account like Gmail or Outlook the recipient uses.
  • The downsides; It does not work the other way around and the subject line or header is not encrypted!
  • Nevertheless, a alternative just as safe is not available.
  • ProtonMail can be used with TOR as well. They even have a special TOR website: https://protonmail.com / tor
  • Recommended!

(Proton) VPN

  • Normally the use of a public network like the internet is strongly advised against if your safety and privacy are dear to you, but with VPN you are well protected against uninvited nosey third parties and much more difficult to identify and track.
  • With Proton VPN you protect your IP address, you can surf anonymously on the internet and securely use a public network. Especially if you also use a search engine like Startpage.com.
  • The free version of ProtonVPN is already extremely safe but quite slow, but the paid version offers a higher speed, support and is suitable for five devices instead of one.
  • Nevertheless there are more affordable and even faster alternatives like Nord VPN, Express VPN and Cyber Ghost also situated in a safe jurisdiction like Proton. This is important if you want to make sure that the NSA or other government authorities elsewhere have no backdoor entrances to these services.
  • The VPN services mentioned here all offer the possibility of using it together with TOR. Even better is using TOR yourself together with VPN, but that is more complicated.
  • Especially Nord VPN is interesting because they have dedicated servers for using TOR together with VPN. Though Express VPN offers this combination with a higher protection level as well but they don’t offer dedicated servers.
  • There are many more, but keep this jurisdiction is mind whatever your choice, because otherwise backdoors might be build into the software.
  • The free version of Proton VPN is useable for a donation, but not for daily use of the internet; it is  slow and supports only one devise.

Signal Private Messenger

  • Though Whatsapp uses nowadays a very high quality encryption like Signal Privat Messenger does, the source code is not publics and they collect metadata about who is talking to who. Because we are not the only ones who dont trust Facebook, the owner of Whatsapp, we offer Signal Private Messenger as a alternative as well.
  • Signal is a very secure messaging, texting and telephone service. It is available for iOS, Android, Windows and MAC. Important if you want maximum privacy, but also for the safe sending of documents, personal details, a bank account number or wallet address etc.
  • By default Signal can be set as SMS or MMS service, insecure messages or telephone calls are visible and private calling and chatting are possible. You can also call encrypted VOIP via a laptop in combination with Signal on your telephone.
  • Increasing the security settings in Signal is possible with a screen lock, incognito keyboard and messages disappearing after a certain period to be set.
  • One point of attention is that your phone number as a user ID is visible to connect.
  • Making your mobile telephone number known can lead to abuse and hacking and will largely undo the desired privacy, even though nobody can listen to your messages and phone calls. That can all be solved:
  • Provided activated via a second (prepaid) phone number, highly recommended! You can read how to do this here.

TOR Browser

  • Tor has become the world’s strongest tool for privacy and freedom online. 
  • With Tor Browser having made Tor more accessible to everyday internet users and activists, Tor became important. It not only protected people’s identity online but also allowed them to access critical resources, social media, and websites which were blocked.
  • “The need for tools safeguarding against mass surveillance became a mainstream concern thanks to the Snowden revelations in 2013.
  • People’s awareness of tracking, surveillance, and censorship may have increased, but so has the prevalence of these hindrances to internet freedom. Today, the network has thousands of relays run by volunteers and millions of users worldwide. And it is this diversity that keeps Tor users safe”.
  • The staff of the Tor Project still fight every day for everyone to have private access to an uncensored internet.