July

Ticket Jubilee!

Every once in a while we say enough is enough and clear out all the old help tickets that have been malingering in our ticket system for a long time. By “a long time” we mean, more than a couple of months with no responses from either us or you. So, if you filed a help ticket request a while ago and haven’t heard back, you can respond to the most recent email from helptickets@riseup.net to say “hey! this is still an issue for me!” or, if you don’t have the email saved, you can always create a new ticket.

The Lowdown on Forwarding Mail

As explained at https://help.riseup.net/mail/faq/receiving-mail/#how_can_i_forward_my_riseup_email_to_another_account, you can forward your mail from a riseup email account to another email account. What this means is that when people send email to your riseup account, it doesn’t actually go to your riseup inbox, but is instead sent to wherever you have your mail forwarded. While we do offer this service, we wanted to explain to folks that doing so loses any security advantages from using riseup mail. If you have your email forwarded to a surveillance-funded corporate email provider, then this is no different than this email going to a corporate provider. People emailing you may think they are emailing a riseup account, and might make assumptions about the email being more secure.

There are some good reasons to forward mail, and we don’t plan to discontinue this service, but be aware of it’s downsides. Almost all corporate email providers passively gather as much data and information as possible on all users, in case they may want to use it in the future, and they also make maps of our networks and social relationships. Ugh.

Tech tip: Amnesia

Some of you, probably not most, are people and organizations who should be practicing a higher level of security culture. If so, are you using shared public computers at a library, at internet cafes, or a shared computer at your house? How do you know if that computer is safe for your personal, private information? If others are using your computer, you do not have the confidence to know these things, and should consider taking steps to ensure your privacy. Our suggestion is to carry a USB stick, or CD with you that has the Amnesic Incognito Live system: https://amnesia.boum.org on it. This system is designed to preserve your privacy, and leave no trace behind. Use the Internet securely, and anonymously from anywhere. To use it, you simply insert the CD or USB that you have installed Incognito on in a computer and restart it.

Thanks!

A huge thanks to you and you and you who have given us money lately. We dearly need it, and dearly appreciate it. There are a million and one headaches with running the services that we do, and it can wear us down and make us wonder why are we doing this, anyway? But knowing that we matter enough to you for you to support us warms our hearts. https://help.riseup.net/about-us/donate