June & July

News from the Collective

Some collective members are outside of Barcelona at a postcapitalist, ecoindustrial colony meeting with radical geeks from across the globe. Hello, Catalunya! Some collective members are in Seattle, where it has been unseasonably sunny. Hello, global warming! And yet another collective member is finishing up her dissertation in Portland. Hello, graduate school hell!

In perhaps more relevant news, we have deployed the new lists.riseup.net server from an undisclosed location and it is super fast. Mail delays should be almost non-existent now, though we hope by typing that we are not cursing ourselves somehow.

Also, we are hard at work on shoring up our systems and working toward migrating to a much shinier and more secure platform to support you all. More news on that when we have it!

Riseup versus the British intelligence agency GCHQ

On July 2, Riseup joined six other online service providers in a lawsuit against the British intelligence agency GCHQ. The lawsuit was filed by Privacy International and seeks an order finding that the surveillance is unlawful. While lawsuits may not seem very exciting, they are! This is the first time that internet and communication providers have taken collective action against GCHQ’s targeting, attacking and exploitation of networks maintaining communications infrastructure. We hope that the lawsuit will raise awareness around the world about the issue of state surveillance of private communications.

Get Down with OpenPGP

One way that you can secure your communications is to use OpenPGP to encrypt your email. We recently overhauled our help pages on the best practices for using OpenPGP. If you haven’t ever used OpenPGP before, you can take a look at the guide and get started. If you are already an OpenPGP user, you can follow the guide to see how to improve your use of this important tool.

So head on over and take a look at help.riseup.net/security/message-security/openpgp/best-practices

Spam dragging you down?

Spam, viruses, and phishing attacks, are overwhelming us all, make it stop!

Did you know that if you login to https://user.riseup.net, and click on the Email tab you can adjust your Spam threshold? You can reduce the score down a little bit and get some relief. Don’t lower the score too much at once, do a little bit and then pay attention to your Spam folder for a week to see if any legitimate mail gets caught by your more strict settings. If any legitimate mail gets put in your Spam folder, drag it over to your INBOX so our system can learn from its mistakes!

We are also working hard at what we can behind the curtain to slow these frustrating things down.

Money

Did you know that Riseup accepts bitcoins? And micropayments? And Paypal donations? And that you can set it up to give us a little bit each month? Do you know that Riseup has been supported by thousands of users giving a little bit here and there, now and then, over the last fourteen years. If you can, we’d love the support. https://help.riseup.net/donate