February

Introducing share.riseup.net!

We would love for you to check out https://share.riseup.net. You know that thing where you want to share something with your comrades and you send it as an email attachment and then it’s way too big and everyone says, “why did you do that?” Or worse, you send out an email with a giant attachment and it won’t even send, or you receive a giant attachment and it throws you over quota? https://share.riseup.net helps solves those problems. Now you can use share.riseup.net to temporarily share those large files.

https://share.riseup.net is a easy to use client-encrypted “pastebin” and “imagebin”, and it’s hosted by your friendly neighborhood tech collective. When you share a file, it is encrypted before leaving your computer, so we don’t ever have a copy of what you are sharing.

This kind of client-side encryption, where the program comes from the server, is easy to bypass if the provider decides to add a back door. We don’t have a back door, but it is difficult to verify this. In other words, encryption in the browser is useful for the service provider, Riseup in this case, because we are not storing secrets on behalf of users, but it does not guarantee your confidentiality. For real security, you need to use an encryption application that is not web-based.

https://share.riseup.net is still in testing, so please don’t rely on it to store your only copy of an important file. Also your files will not stay forever, we haven’t worked this out exactly, but don’t expect them to be there for more than a week!

Introducing pad.riseup.net!

Collaborative text editors are a kind of magic: I have seen a roomful of people produce perfect meeting notes in real time, with footnotes; I have seen a difficult to write document come together in a matter of minutes; I have seen people on opposite sides of the planet work together as if in the same room.

At Riseup, we use a collaborative text editor for everything. It is how we breathe. If you have not yet tried the magic, check out https://pad.riseup.net. We have been running this service for five years, we just never announced it because it can sometimes be unreliable under heavy traffic.

https://pad.riseup.net is different than most web-based collaborative text editors: connections are only available via HTTPS, we allow access via Tor onion service, we do not log your IP address, and pads are automatically deleted after 30 days of no activity (so be sure to save the document offline once it’s finished!).

Riseup Under Construction

In the past few months we have been busy with some long needed software upgrades. As we’ve upgraded there have been some bugs and at times things broke. Also while we were frantically fixing things, we haven’t had as much time to answer help tickets. Things are getting more stable now, thanks for your patience!