Q: Could my donation information be hacked?
A: We’re always working hard to stay ahead of would-be hackers and protect your privacy.
First, about 20% of our donations still come in the old-fashioned way, by cheque. Those cheques are deposited and destroyed. We do not keep physical copies of your cheques.
The remainder of our donations come in through credit cards. If you submit this physically (as in you write it on a submission form and mail it in or call our office and give your credit card over the phone), those are processed and the physical copies of any papers containing credit card numbers are immediately destroyed. If you make your credit card donation online through our secure donation website, we use a reputable third-party company to process the donation and none of your information is stored on our website. Further, our website only uses secure connections. That means your data is encrypted using the highly secure TLS protocol before it is sent over the internet.
While it's extremely unlikely, but in the event that Taxpayer.com were hacked, the hackers wouldn’t be able to find your donation information because we don’t keep any of it stored on our site. The worst they could do is change our website to tell people we love higher taxes! Other information, such as mailing addresses and donation history, are kept on a database that is completely separate from our website – none of the information automatically transfers from the site to our database. In addition, we don’t use a third-party crowd funding website like GoFundMe, KickStarter or GiveSendGo to raise funds. Hackers are more likely to focus their efforts on these large, popular sites as a source of millions of users’ data.
Q: Would donating crypto currency protect my privacy better?
A: Yes and no. Crypto currency allows for anonymous transactions, however, all of the transactions are tracked and retained on the blockchain. If a donor were to eventually link another purchase using crypto currency with their identity, that could be used to go back and see what other wallets their crypto currency was sent.
The CTF currently does not have a crypto currency donation option, but we are looking into providing that option to give our donors more flexibility in the way they want to donate.
Q: Who do you share my information with?
A: We don’t share your information with the government. Your privacy is a priority for us. And we’re going to keep it that way.
We work with a small number of contractors such as a company that prints and mails The Taxpayer magazine. We also work with mail and phonebank contractors. In every case, only the necessary information is shared, and the contractors are required to abide by the CTF’s Privacy Policy. That Privacy Policy can be read here: https://www.taxpayer.com/privacy-policy/
When we share some of your information with Facebook, it is done so that we can direct our social media content towards you as a CTF donor and present ads to non-CTF donors who have similar interests. Facebook turns the information into random code to compare it to their user data and then deletes the information. More information about Facebook’s security can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/112061095610075?id=2469097953376494
We regularly review the security protocols of our contractors and recently undertook a security audit with our contractors. The information we share with them is limited to direct person-to-person distribution and the information is not stored on any public-facing website that could be a target of a hacker. When the information is no longer needed, it is deleted.
As per our Privacy Policy, we never sell or give your information away.
One more thing: the purpose of a petition is to deliver signatures. For example, if you sign a petition calling on the premier of your province to take action on an issue, we deliver a list of signatures, on paper, to the legislature.
Q: What are you doing to further protect my right to privacy?
A: We have a security committee of staff that regularly meets to review protocols and look for opportunities to strengthen how we store your data.
Moreover, we have taken governments to court to protect your right to hold political views that are your own and private. For example, in Alberta, the Notley government changed the law so that if the CTF wanted to use paid advertisements (say a billboard or radio ad) to advocate for or against a political issue, we would have to register with the government and provide a list of our donors to publish on a government website. As a result, we have not been running ads on provincial issues in Alberta.
The CTF has initiated court challenges to this law with the goal of having it struck down as unconstitutional. We are pleased that the law has been somewhat relaxed by the current government, but there are other governments across the country that have followed the lead of the Notley government in the interim and have made it increasingly difficult for citizens to advocate on issues of importance. We will continue to use legal means to challenge the ability of governments to violate your privacy.
Q: If I donate to the CTF, is there a chance my bank account will get frozen?
The CTF has never had any of its bank accounts frozen and the government has not gone after our donors. The circumstances connected to the Emergencies Act and the government’s move to freeze some bank accounts has absolutely no connection to us or any of our donors.
Further, while it is unfortunate that any bank accounts were frozen in relation to the trucker convoy, the RCMP have maintained that no donors to the movement have had their accounts frozen and no donors to the movement have had their information provided to the banks. The RCMP claim that only organizers of the movement and owners of trucks that refused to move from the illegal blockade had their accounts frozen.
Again, that’s still too many people. And at 200 frozen accounts, that’s more than the number of accounts frozen in the US of suspected terrorists after 9/11. But it’s not widespread. Reports of $50 single-mother donors to the movement early on in the protest having their accounts frozen have yet to be proven correct and, according to the RCMP, are indeed incorrect.
You are at no risk of having your account frozen because you donated to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation or any other registered charity or non-profit in Canada.