Social Protection
What follows is a minimum set of actions you should take to protect yourself in social situations.
- Before you make a submission, do not share your intentions with anyone.
- Try to be certain that there are no surveillance systems or observers in the place where you acquire and submit information.
- Try to be certain that the information you submit does not identify you if someone other than intended recipient gains access to it.
- After you make a submission, do not share your actions with anyone.
- After the news about the submission gets to the public, be careful about expressing your opinion about the news with anyone.
Technical Protection
Due to the technical complexity of modern computing and network systems, understanding how to protect yourself can be difficult. It is possible to do, but it can be complicated. You should also understand that nobody understands every detail of computer and network systems, including the authors of this document.
However, if you strictly follow the guidelines below, you should be safe enough.
- While acquiring the information to submit, be sure that there are no traces left on the IT systems leading back to your identity (eg: collect files with a USB stick. When you have completed the submission destroy and dispose of the USB stick)
- Realize that “deleting a file” on almost all computers does not remove traces of the files presence from that computer.
- Be aware that “meta data information” (location, author, date, etc.) may be present in some of the data you are submitting.
- Consider cleaning up the Metadata by using tools such as MAT bundled with the TAILS linux live CD (or with a Tails USB stick).
- Consider converting all the data that you send us into a standard format like PDF.
- Submit information using Anonymous Web Browsing software Tor Browser Bundle
- Do not keep any copies of the information you submitted.
- Do not submit information from the computer provided to you by your employer (Use a spare one)
- Keep the Submission’s receipt you receive secret and destroy it once you no longer need it.
- Do not look around on search engines or news media website for the information you submitted.
