DeflectOver the past years, we have helped millions of people access Deflect protected websites. Some of them have responded with a personal testimony, collected below.
A year ago, we met with DDoS issues and started to search for a solution. Soon after, we met the guys from eQualitie, and now Dovod.online is protected by Deflect. Thank you for helping to defend freedom of speech online!
Ilya Kosygin, Editor-in-chief
Deflect’s service has proven itself to be reliable, stable, and easy to manage. The support team is attentive and always ready to solve any problem. Any socially responsible business should know that by choosing Deflect, it is supporting dozens of non-profit, charitable, volunteer, and human rights organizations.
Roman Zholud, Chief of the Information Services Department at Mass Media Defence Centre
The Deflect team has been protecting Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa since 2013, when our website was subjected to repeated DDoS attacks, and hackers asked for the removal of “inconvenient” articles, threatening to completely obscure our service to our readers. Back then, the Deflect team promptly reacted to the threat, offering us their support, and ever since it has protected our site completely free of charge, in what we believe is an exemplary case of what “global social responsibility” can be. Thanks to their protection, during these last years we have been able to keep working without suffering new attacks. Deflect’s contribution to OBCT’s work may be invisible to our public, but is nonetheless fundamental: that’s why we want to publicly say thanks to the Deflect team for its daily commitment to defending the right to free expression online.
Roberto Antoniazzi, OpenWeb
On behalf of Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso (OBC), the Italian nonprofit media organization I direct, I would like to express our gratitude and appreciation for the cyber-protection services you are currently offering us. During the past few months, OBC has been the target of persistent and intense DDoS attacks, most likely launched from abroad and aimed at intimidating us. Needless to say, these attacks provoked a great deal of preoccupation and endangered the work we have been carrying out for more than 13 years, but we could not compromise the quality and reliability of the news we publish and tried our best to protect ourselves. As a short-term emergency measure, we turned to a premium mitigation system that in no way could be economically sustainable in the medium and long-run for a small organization like ours. Very soon after, we were surprised to receive your offer and precious solidarity that has allowed us to start again focusing on our mission, that is to say the production of news, research, and training, and the dissemination of activities on the democratization processes of South-east Europe and the Caucasus. Your help made us feel less vulnerable and also part of a wider spectrum of CSO’s committed to protecting rights, justice, and peace worldwide. Thank you once more for your solidarity and friendship, and, of course, for the protection you guarantee.
Luisa Chiodi, Director at Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso
We came to know Deflect in June of 2012, when violence broke out in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, Burma. Our website, the first Rohingya News Agency, had been continuously attacked and went down. The Deflect team brought it back on-line and are still protecting it today.
Ronnie, Director at Arakan Rohingya National Organisation
eQualitie really saved the day for us when our website was being attacked by the far-right, which caused us to lose our hosting. You all stepped in, offered to host the site (and refused our offer to pay!), and protected us from future attacks with Deflect. We are a grassroots, volunteer-run anarchist community space funded by individual donations, and eQualitie’s support was crucial for us in having the resiliency to get through those times. It allowed us to keep our main website online, but also our library catalogue (largest free library of political books in Hamilton) and our fundraising platform (used pretty heavily for regional anti-repression work).
Cedar, The Tower Collective member
We basically liked everything, particularly the principles with regards to respect for privacy and data ownership– we’re assured that Deflect won’t sell our data. It also has better integration of the Let’s encrypt SSL certificate. We don’t have to worry about renewing it every 3 months because Deflect has it included in its workflow/process. The support is responsive and helpful!
Sarah Tomas Systems Admin, VERA Files
Thank you so much for your support in getting it back up and running and also for Deflect’s general support of nonprofits. It’s vital that our Ugandan team can communicate their work to their own networks, and we’re very grateful to have found a way to make that possible.
Esther Smitheram, Communications Manager, Children on the Edge