Split Between Privacytools Io And Privacyguides Org Off Topic

Leo Migdal

-Nov 18, 2025, 9:48 AM

split between privacytools io and privacyguides org off topic

The real story behind the team transition from privacytools.io to privacyguides.org In September 2021, every active contributor unanimously agreed to move from PrivacyTools to work on this site: Privacy Guides. This decision was made because PrivacyTools’ founder and controller of the domain name had disappeared for an extended period of time and could not be contacted. Having built a reputable site and set of services on PrivacyTools.io, this caused grave concerns for the future of PrivacyTools, as any future disruption could wipe out the entire organization with no recovery method. This transition was communicated to the PrivacyTools community many months in advance via a variety of channels including its blog, Twitter, Reddit, and Mastodon to ensure the entire process went as smoothly as possible. We did this to ensure nobody was kept in the dark, which has been our modus operandi since our team was created, and to make sure Privacy Guides was recognized as the same reliable...

After the organizational move was completed, the founder of PrivacyTools returned and began to spread misinformation about the Privacy Guides project. They continue to spread misinformation in addition to operating a paid link farm on the PrivacyTools domain. We are creating this page to clear up any misconceptions. PrivacyTools was created in 2015 by "BurungHantu," who wanted to make a privacy information resource - helpful tools following the Snowden revelations. The site grew into a flourishing open-source project with many contributors, some eventually given various organizational responsibilities, such as operating online services like Matrix and Mastodon, managing and reviewing changes to the site on... Beginning in 2019, BurungHantu grew more and more distant from the active development of the website and communities, and began delaying payments he was responsible for related to the servers we operated.

To avoid having our system administrator pay server costs out of their own pocket, we changed the donation methods listed on the site from BurungHantu's personal PayPal and crypto accounts to a new OpenCollective... This had the added benefits of making our finances completely transparent, a value we strongly believe in, and tax-deductible in the United States, because they were being held by the Open Collective Foundation 501(c)3. This change was unanimously agreed upon by the team and went uncontested. Received a reply from Mailbox.org Thank you very much for your message. We had already blocked the two protocols for transport encryption, but in practice we had to realize that this is unfortunately not yet practical, because we also want to... Continuing the discussion from Remove Skiff: I think clearly there is some need to define a criteria to weed out technically proficient products that secretly aren’t in it for the long-term.

There are of course many examples of this: Skiff,... PrivacyTools.io is a fairly popular website recommending software and providers for the privacy communities. However, the website lacks any sort of quality control, recommending many products without technical merits or with severe vulnerabilities,... In the past it Lukol served Google Ads: https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/issues/1557#... Can we make a list of such projects? They don't need to be digital, just any project that is not well known and could use publicity

Privacy Guides is a socially motivated website that provides information for protecting your data security and privacy. We are a non-profit project with a mission to inform the public about the value of digital privacy, and about global government initiatives which aim to monitor your online activity. Our website is free of advertisements and not affiliated with any of the listed providers. We have a small, remote team of privacy researchers and advocates working to further our mission of protecting free expression and promoting privacy-respecting technology. As a non-profit, we are expanding very slowly to ensure the project is sustainable in the long term. Interested in making people more private online?

Have a look at our open roles: Due to automated network abuse, a JavaScript challenge is being used to secure this service. Javascript must be enabled to proceed. Sorry. There is an automated challenge on this page, but an error has prevented scripts from loading. Ensure you are not blocking scripts from loading.

If you are not, please notify us of this error. This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please allow up to a minute, depending on your device. This long overdue blog post covers the failed takeover attempt of this website, cryptocurrency donations theft, a successful smear campaign, corruption and censorship. All initiated, fabricated by Jonah Aragon, the project lead of PrivacyGuides.org and Aragon Ventures LLC.

Aug, 2022: Don't Trust Techlore. Here's Why YouTuber Tom Spark made a video about the events: Exposing PrivacyGuides.org's Toxicity and Hateful Comments An attorney reached out on Twitter already to help to recover these funds by representing me in the US via Power of Attorney. If Jonah Aragon saves us the legal work and make things right by paying back in a timely manner, then I will donate the recovered funds to any privacy organization the community chooses to. We will do a poll on r/privacytoolsIO to make this happen.

You can quote me on this anytime. Update July 11, 2022: Last message from Jonah Aragon "Would you be willing to settle for 0.09 BTC? This is all that I have, you can try suing me with your US lawyer if you want, but I quite literally don't have anything else to give you.". Sadly, he never followed up with a settlement and blocked me on Twitter instead. There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

I realized only today that that the old privacytools.io website has been replaced by Privacy Guides I have quite a few questions, and have decided to create just 1 discussion for all those as there would otherwise be a lot of discussions Please let me know if I am supposed... In the old website, the description on Brave states that it is "not a popular choice within the privacy community". Is this claim still valid? What are the reasons for removing the following recommendations? a) LessPass password manager b) The "Privacy and Security Tools for Windows 10 and 11" section c) The "Android Keyboard Alternatives That Respect Your Privacy" section d) The "Open Source Torrent Clients without Ads...

Split Between Privacytools Io And Privacyguides Org Off Topic

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