Over 100 Delta residents have donated more than $14,000 to the convoy protests and illegal blockades through the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo, an analysis of hacked data from the website reveals.
Earlier this week, crowdfunding website GiveSendGo was hacked after it gained widespread use in collecting funds for truckers blocking downtown Ottawa and Canada/U.S. borders across the country, including Pacific Highway border crossing in South Surrey.
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The person or persons who illegally hacked the website posted data showing people that donated to the trucker convoy cause, including email addresses, names, postal codes, IP addresses, personalized messages to the truckers and amounts donated.
No credit card information was leaked and no money was stolen, GiveSendGo confirmed. After the hack, GiveSendGo said its security team immediately shut down the website to prevent further damage.
Truckers and their supporters turned to GiveSendGo after GoFundMe announced it would not forward money raised through its website to the truckers because the protests violated its rules on violence and harassment. More than 120,000 donors contributed about $10 million before the GoFundMe page was shut down and donors were reimbursed.
Before GiveSendGo’s website was hacked, more than 36,000 people who donated, or 36 per cent, were from Canada, while 56 per cent came from the U.S. Two per cent came from the United Kingdom and the remaining three per cent came from more than 100 other countries.
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The more than 92,000 donations listed were made between Feb. 1-10 and are worth more than C$10.7 million at the current exchange rate. (Donations to the site are made in US dollars.) As of Tuesday afternoon (Feb. 15), the GiveSendGo campaign had raised over $11.9 million of its $20-million (US$16-million) goal.
The hacked data shows that Canadians had donated the largest amount of money at $5.4 million, while residents in the U.S. donated $4.5 million.
An analysis of the postal codes attached to individual donations by the North Delta Reporter found that 119 Delta and Tsawwassen First Nation residents donated at least $14,740 to the cause. That figure represents only those who gave postal codes beginning with V4C, V4E, V4G, V4K, V4L and V4M.
Forty-five of those 119 donations, totaling $4,984, are associated with North Delta area codes (V4C and V4E).
People who made a donation were not obligated to provide their real name, email address or postal code. Some of the information could be fake or submitted under an alias.
The median donation from a Delta postal code was US$75 (about C$95), with 51 donations of US$100 or more.
The largest donation, which was made on Feb. 9 using a V4E postal code (that prefix denotes North Delta south of 72nd Avenue), was US$617 (about C$786). The donor, who NDR has chosen not to name, left the following message when they made their donation:
“This is over 777 dollars CAD. Over a week and a half of my earnings. If this can’t be used for supplies, please use this for the coming legal battles the truckers and supporters will have to fight. I wish I could be there. I hope this keeps you there. Stay strong truckers. Stay peaceful, and please report, and kick out anyone flying or hate symbols among you, as I know that’s not it’s about.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday invoked the national Emergencies Act to bring to an end the anti-government blockades he describes as illegal and not about peaceful protest.
The government will use the act to force towing companies to remove big rigs and other vehicles that are blocking highways and other critical infrastructure, establish zones where public assembly is not allowed, and require banks to suspend or freeze accounts suspected of supporting the blockades, including those belonging to companies whose trucks are part of the convoy.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government is “serving notice” to trucking companies with vehicles involved in any of the blockades that they will have their corporate accounts frozen and lose their insurance.
– With files from The Canadian Press
editor@northdeltareporter.com
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