[[!meta title="Who are you helping when donating to Tails?"]]
[[!meta date="Thu Dec 24 12:34:56 2014"]]
[[!tag announce]]

Tails is being distributed free of charge because we strongly believe that
[[free software is more secure by design|doc/about/trust#free_software]]. But
also because we think that **nobody should have to pay to be safe while using
computers**. Unfortunately, Tails cannot stay alive without money as developing
Tails and maintaining our infrastructure [[has a cost|doc/about/finances]].

We rely solely on donations from individuals and supporting
organizations to keep Tails updated and getting always better.
**That's why we need your help!**

If you find Tails useful, please consider [[donating
money|donate]] or [[contributing some of your time and
skills|contribute]] to the project.
Donations to Tails are tax-deducible both in the US and in Europe.

In October 2014, Tails was being used by more than 11 500 people
[[daily|support/faq#boot_statistics]]. The profile of Tor and Tails
users is very diverse. This diversity increases the anonymity provided by
those tools for everyone by making it harder to target and to
identify a specific type of user. From the various contacts that we have
with organizations working on the ground, we know that Tails has been
used by:

<a id="journalists"></a>

  - **Journalists wanting to protect themselves or their sources.**

    - [Reporters Without Borders](https://rsf.org/) is an organization that promotes
      and defends freedom of information, freedom of the press, and has
      consultant status at the United Nations. RWB [advertises the use of
      Tails](https://www.wefightcensorship.org/article/tails-amnesic-incognito-live-systemhtml.html)
      for journalists to fight censorship and protect their sources.
      RWB uses Tails in their training sessions world-wide.

    - [According to Laura Poitras, Glen Greenwald, and Barton Gellman](https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/04/help-support-little-known-privacy-tool-has-been-critical-journalists-reporting-nsa),
      Tails has been an essential tool to work on the Snowden documents and
      report on the NSA spying. In a recent [article for The Intercept](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/28/smuggling-snowden-secrets/),
      Micah Lee gives many details on how Tails helped them starting to work together.

    - [Fahad Desmukh](http://desmukh.com/), a freelance journalist based
      in Pakistan who is also working for [Bytes for All](http://content.bytesforall.pk/) always has a Tails USB handy: "I can use it whenever I
      may need to and I especially make sure to keep it with me when
      travelling. Pakistan really isn't the safest place for journalists
      so thanks to the Tails team for an amazing tool."

    - [Jean-Marc Manach](http://jean-marc.manach.net/), a journalist
      based in France and specialized in online privacy said that "war
      reporters have to buy helmets, bullet-proof vests and rent armored
      cars; journalists using the Internet for their investigations are
      much luckier: to be as secured as war reporters, they only have to
      download Tails, burn it on a CD, install it on a SD card, and
      learn the basics of information and communication security, and
      it's free!"

  - **Human-right defenders organizing in repressive contexts.**

    - Tails has been used in combination with [Martus](https://www.martus.org/), an information
      system used to report on human rights abuses, to allow [Tibetan
      communities in exile](http://benetech.org/2014/01/07/a-rat-in-the-registry-the-case-for-martus-on-tails/) to protect themselves from targeted malware attacks.

  - **Democracy defenders facing dictatorships.**

    - The [National Democratic Institute](https://www.ndi.org/), a Washington-based
      democracy support organization that works in more than 70
      countries around the world, has used Tails to [help human rights
      defenders to communicate
      securely](https://www.coe.int/en/web/world-forum-democracy/2013-forum).
      For instance, NDI used Tails to created a [data collection system in Belarus](http://cryptome.org/2014/07/tails-belarus-elections.pdf)
      to help opposition forces to collect, store and manage voter information.

  - **Citizens facing national emergencies.**

    During the last years, we noticed that the use of Tor and Tails
    systematically peaks when countries face national emergencies. Even
    if Tails represents a small amount of the global Tor usage, it is
    advertised by the Tor Project as the safest platform to protect from
    strong adversaries.

    - In [Starting a revolution with
      technology](http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/06/17/mesh.technology.revolution/),
      Slim Amamou, Tunisian blogger and former Secretary of State for Sport
      and Youth, explains that Tor "was vital to get information and share it"
      during the Tunisian revolution of 2011, because social media pages sharing
      information about the protests were "systematically censored so you could
      not access them without censorship circumvention tools".

    - Between January 25, the day the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 began,
      and January 27 2011, the number of [Tor users in
      Egypt](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/recent-events-egypt) was
      multiplied at least by 4. On January 27, the Egyptian goverment
      decided to halt Internet access accross the country.

    - Between March 19 and March 31, the number of [Tor users in
      Turkey](https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-country&start=2014-03-01&end=2014-04-01&country=tr&events=off#userstats-relay-country)
      was multiplied by 3
      as a direct response to the growing Internet censorship in the
      country: on 20 March 2014, access to Twitter was blocked in
      Turkey, and on 27 March 2014 access to YouTube was blocked.

  - **Domestic violence survivors escaping from their abusers.**

    - The Tor Project has been working with organizations fighting
      against domestic violence such as [NNEDV](http://nnedv.org/), [Transition House](http://www.transitionhouse.org/), and
      [Emerge](http://www.emergedv.com/) to help survivors escape digital surveillance from their
      abuser and report on their situation. As [domestic abuse goes
      digital](http://betaboston.com/news/2014/05/07/as-domestic-abuse-goes-digital-shelters-turn-to-counter-surveillance-with-tor/), circumvention tools like Tor and Tails end up as one of
      the only options.

If you know of other great stories of Tails users, please [[share them
with us|mailto:tails@boum.org]]!
