Account security and important notes

[mark]

Over the past few days, Dreamwidth has come under attack by a group of trolls with ties to several hate speech organizations. These people are attempting to disrupt our business through a number of methods unless we acquiesce to their demands. Unfortunately they are threatening and harassing not only us, but many of our volunteers and contributors as well.

The chief methods being used at the moment are false accusations to our merchant processor and our upstream provider that we host child pornography. We do not. Our Terms of Service prohibits all illegal material, and any reports of such material can be made to our Terms of Service team. They've also threatened to highlight legally protected speech in an attempt to stir up a moral panic against our business. We are working with our upstream providers to make sure they're aware of these allegations as well.

As part of this organized campaign of harassment, there have been instances reported to us of phishing attempts: setting up sites that look like Dreamwidth in order to obtain users' passwords. To protect yourselves, please make absolutely certain that you are only logging in at https://www.dreamwidth.org by typing the address into your browser's bar directly. Do not log in via any link sent to you in email, no matter how much it looks like it might come from Dreamwidth.

We have been, and will continue to, do everything we can to ensure steady and uninterrupted service throughout the current situation, but please bear with us if we experience any rocky periods. If anything happens, we will update our @dreamwidth Twitter account with status information as soon as possible.

We want you guys to know that we're incredibly thankful for our community, contributors, and everyone who takes the time to create with us. We'll be doing everything we can to make sure you guys can keep building the kind of community that makes all of this worth it.

Comments

[denise]

Thanks -- we're on it, and I think the best thing to do right now would be to make a donation to an organization like Doctors Without Borders or some other group that's working to provide earthquake relief in Haiti, in order to increase the positive karma in the world.

[ordinarygirl]

Positive Karma is always good. You guys keep doing what you're doing, 'cause you're doing it AWESOMELY.

[jjhunter]

Thank you for keeping all this in perspective, and reminding us to do the same. Partners in Health would be my strong recommendation as the most effective organization to which to donate--they've been building medical infrastructure in Haiti for years upon years, and have the local contacts and resources to take action immediately.

From their update page:

"We have already begun to implement a two-part strategy to address the immediate need for emergency medical care in Port-au-Prince. First, we are organizing the logistics to get the medical staff and supplies needed for setting up field hospital sites in Port-au-Prince where we can triage patients, provide emergency care, and send those who need surgery or more complex treatment to our functioning hospitals and surgical facilities. To do this, we are creating a supply chain through the Dominican Republic. Second, we are ensuring that our facilities in the Central Plateau are ready to serve the flow of patients from Port-au-Prince. Operating and procedure rooms are staffed, supplied, and equipped for surgeries and we have converted a church in Cange into a large triage area. Already our sites in Cange and Hinche are reporting a steady flow of people coming with medical needs from the capital city. In the days that come we will need to make sure our pharmacies and supplies stay stocked and our staff continue to be able to respond."

They're draining every spare dollar they have, calling in every favor, doing whatever they have to in order to get as many surgeons, ER doctors and nurses, full surgical teams, etc. and medical supplies on the ground now. For all of you reading through these comments, keep in mind that every bit of financial assistance goes a long way- $5, $10, $50, $100--whatever you can afford.