GiveSendGone: Christian crowdfunding platform used by Alaskans — offline
Christian fundraising platform GiveSendGo, which until yesterday was processing millions of dollars in donations for the Canadian Freedom Convoy, is offline, the result of what appears to be a hack that exposed donor information.
Late last evening, visitors to the GiveSendGo website were redirected to the website GiveSendGone.WTF featured a video from the Disney movie Frozen, including a text overlay that accused those who donated to the convoy of funding the January 6 and Ottawa insurrection.
"GiveSendGo itself is frozen," ended the message.
Later, the website featured a page stating: "Application is under maintenance we will be back very soon." As of this morning, the website is still down, with a message saying the crowdfunding site was offline for maintenance and server upgrades.
As of February 13, a statement on the website Distributed Denial of Secrets, known for hosting sets of leaked data involving far-right groups, stated that Freedom Convoy donor information, including self-reported names, addresses, and email addresses from the GiveSendGo platform, would be made available only to journalists and academics. News outlets have reported zip codes were also included in the alleged leak.
A comma-separated value file, believed to contain the hacked data of those who donated to the campaign, was available on the website for a short time before the hosting provider could lock the GiveSendGo website down.
GiveSendGo became the primary donation service for the "Freedom Convoy" last month after GoFundMe suspended the original crowdsourcing campaign and froze millions of dollars in donations, citing police reports of violence across Ottawa. Over the weekend, a Canadian court issued an order halting access to the funds collected by GiveSendGo.
An analysis of the leaked data conducted by extremism researcher Amarnath Amarasingam shows that 56% of donations to the Canadian convoy came from the U.S.
In recent years, GiveSendGo has become a go-to fundraising tool for extremists of all sorts, organizing fundraisers for groups like the Proud Boys, QAnon influencers, anti-vaxxers, and the families of those arrested for their alleged involvement in the January 6 Capitol Hill attempted insurrection.
A Telegram-based group for the Alaska Freedom Convoy event, previously organized by Jamie Allard, showed a shared post made by one of the group's administrators that included a video of the Canadian convoy captioned with the words: "Truly beautiful to witness We the People rise up against the elite and their tyranny. WWG1WGA."
Eagle River Assemblyperson Jamie Allard and Alaska Representative David Eastman have encouraged Alaskans to donate to the Canadian convoy. Private citizens, including individuals associated with the Save Anchorage Facebook group, are believed to have donated through GiveSendGo and may have had their data hacked. Posts containing direct links to the GiveSendGo Canadian Freedom Convoy fundraiser have also been shared with the group.
The GiveSendGo website remains offline as of this writing.
