GiveSendGo Comes Back Online After Hackers Stole Donor Info

Crowdfunding service GiveSendGo came back online Tuesday after a Sunday hack forced the site to temporarily shut down.

“Sunday evening, February 13th, GiveSendGo was attacked by malicious actors attempting to eliminate the ability of its users to raise funds,” the company said in a statement posted to Twitter, acknowledging the hack publicly for the first time and announcing that the site was back online.

The personal information of donors to Canada’s Freedom Convoy, a group of truckers and individuals protesting Canada’s vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions, was stolen from GiveSendGo and leaked to the site of nonprofit group Distributed Denial of Secrets late Sunday. The leaked data included names, IP addresses, email addresses and zip codes, and GiveSendGo was temporarily offline following the hack.

GiveSendGo said it voluntary shut down to address security issues following the hack and “prevent further illegal actions.” The company said no credit card information was leaked and no money was stolen during the attack.

“We have also performed many security audits to ensure the security of the site before bringing the site back online,” the company said.

Following the hack, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced late Monday that he was invoking the “Emergencies Act” to grant the Canadian government additional powers to suppress the Freedom Convoy protests. Under the Act, crowdfunding platforms like GiveSendGo are to be subject to “terrorist financing” laws allowing the government greater latitude to monitor and intervene in financial transactions occurring on the platform.

“We are in a battle. We didn’t expect it to be easy. This has not caused us to be afraid,” the company said. “Instead, it’s made it even more evident that we can not back down.