February

Whose email? Your email! Whose data? Your data! Whose streets? Our streets!

Riseup started offering email service over twenty years ago, after some of the Riseup birds noticed that our activist friends and allies were using corporate email while organizing against globalization and the WTO. We were one of a handful of tech-savy activist collectives that decided to fight the monopolies that corporations were developing with relatively new digital communication technologies. Up until that time, phone taps and intercepting snail mail were two of the main ways that government and corporations used to violate your privacy as they tried to strengthen the bonds of oppression. Email was a new arena, one in which corporations have exploited “free” services to profit off the communications and personal information they gather about us, in ways that have never been possible before.

As time passed, the truly free email services have dwindled. Email providers now frequently require users to provide your real identity to participate in digital communication. Services that were freely accessible when the new era of the digital age began are now restricted unless you submit to their surveillance and tracking of your life. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult to communicate privately online.

Riseup is one of the few providers that actively work to promote its users' privacy and security, while being free. We can only do this through donations made by you. We don’t mine your email in order to profit by selling your personal, private data to advertisers, corporations, the military, the cops or anyone else. We are in this together with you - we’ve got your back, so long as you’ve got ours. If you can help us, please do - we are doing our best to help you. If you can’t, we understand and still will do everything we can to help you.

Can you warm our hearts and steady our resolve by making a donation to help us continue to provide movement infrastructure? https://riseup.net/donate

We want to you to protect yourself from snooping

Did you know that your internet service provider is most likely mining your data, so they can sell information about your online behavior for profit? Using the RiseupVPN, or a similar service, will keep your connection encrypted and restore the privacy companies try to take from you.

The RiseupVPN was built with LEAP (https://leap.se) to be free, open source, and super easy to use. Even better, it’s available on most common devices! If you aren’t already, consider giving it a try - you will increase your personal privacy and security, and strengthen it for others.

To run a VPN service costs money and because we do not ask you to create an account, or charge you money, we need you to contribute to keep it going. Contributions to Riseup Networks go to support the bandwidth, hardware and labor that is required to keep this service active and online. If you can contribute to the VPN service, please visit https://riseup.net/vpn/donate.

Want to make a tax-deductible donation? If you make it to Riseup Labs (instead of Riseup Networks) then your support will also contribute to the research and development required to continue improving and maintaining the VPN client. https://riseuplabs.org/donate