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Cyber-attackers are bombing crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo and threatening to reveal donors’ identities to trucker protesters in Canada, spreading fears of retaliation against donors and scaring others into contributing to the anti-Mandate cause.
The platform’s website was inaccessible on Monday with a message saying it was “under maintenance” and will be back soon. Jacob Wells, co-founder of GiveSendGo, said the cyberbullying started shortly after fundraisers for Canada’s “Liberty Convoy 2022” surged earlier this month and attracted millions of dollars in donations to protests against the COVID-19 guidelines.
Mr. Wells told the Washington Times that people initially tried to flood the company’s servers with traffic and make fundraising events inaccessible. Despite GiveSendGo employees having trouble accessing their website, fundraisers continued to raise millions of dollars, and as of Friday, the “Freedom Convoy 2022” campaign had raised more than $8.8 million.
“It was a miracle because we don’t know how it happened when we couldn’t even get over it on our own,” Mr. Wells said in an interview Friday.
But the attacks didn’t stop, and people using #GiveSendGone on social media this weekend posted messages saying hackers were leaking donors’ data, including those who wanted to remain anonymous. Twitter users posted links to spreadsheet documents and map images that purport to show donors’ identities and locations.
Some social media posts have tried to alert employers to donations from their employees. Twitter user @rammyramramram posted the names of alleged donors, who are professors at schools like Pennsylvania State University and the University of Calgary, and said teachers are funding “illegal activity” and “lawful action” by giving money through GiveSendGo.
Twitter user @le_marc31 sent a public message to NASA questioning why employees to the space agency were using “work emails” when donating to protesters.
Distributed Denial of Secrets, an activist-minded hacking group, has leaked data from GiveSendGo, according to tech publication Daily Dot.
Mr. Wells said his team was investigating what the hackers might have done and brought in RightForge, an internet infrastructure company, to help.
Some claims about data from GiveSendGo are being disputed by the crowdfunding platform. The threat of exposing donors can be designed to intimidate people who want to donate to protesters.
According to GiveSendGo, allegations that hackers collected information from donors, including passports and driver’s licenses, are false. Mr. Wells said his team did not collect such IDs from donors.
Massachusetts-based GiveSendGo is also under pressure from the Canadian government. Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford said on Friday that he had declared a state of emergency and the government had begun chasing money that funded the “illegal occupation”, including filing a lawsuit to accept a request to freeze GiveSendGo funds.
Mr. Wells said his team had spoken to lawyers to determine how to prevent Canada from stopping its contributions from meeting its goals.
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