Visitors to the GiveSendGo website were led to a new domain — GiveSendGone[.]wtf — that displayed a video loop from the animated Disney blockbuster Frozen.
The video’s captions referred to the site and its donors as “grifters and hatriots” who were using the platform to “finance an uprising.”
Mikael Thalen of the Daily Dot was the first to report on the hack.
According to The Verge, approximately 93,000 donors’ names, email addresses, ZIP codes, and countries of origin were stolen to a website named “Distributed Denial of Secrets.”
Over half of contributors are from the United States.
GiveSendGo reported that its website had been hacked and that personal information of donors, the majority of whom were situated in the United States, had been leaked.
Givesendgo/Facebook
GiveSendGo self-identifies as “the world’s largest free Christian crowdfunding website.” It was formed in 2014 as a competitor to GoFundMe, which had just eliminated projects deemed too contentious.
Texas and three other states stated last week that they will investigate GoFundMe after the firm barred users from donating to a $8 million Canadian truckers’ protest.
According to the corporation, it made the decision due to “police reports of violence and other unlawful activities.” It also stated that crowdfunding campaigns that support causes that contain a “occupation” violate its user policy.
GoFundMe stated that it would issue refunds to all donors.
Following GoFundMe’s deactivation, donors gravitated for GiveSendGo, which quickly became the most popular crowdfunding tool for individuals seeking to help Canadian truckers.
The Canadian government declared a state of emergency in an attempt to disperse the protesters, who have blocked roads and hindered commerce between the United States and Canada. Canadian banks have also frozen donor-related accounts.
GiveSendGo issued a statement on Sunday stating that it was “attacked by criminal actors” who were “attempting to remove its users’ capacity to generate funds.”
“There was a broadcast breach that demonstrated one of these actors illegally accessing into GiveSendGo and releasing the identities and emails of Freedom Convoy donors.”
According to the statement, no credit card information was compromised in the incident.
According to GiveSendGo, its IT staff discovered the attack and “shut down the site to avoid further criminal activity.”
“We are engaged in combat,” the site stated. “We did not anticipate it to be simple. This has not made us fearful.”
“Instead, it has demonstrated even more emphatically that we cannot back down.”
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