How to Tip WIRED Anonymously

WIRED protects the confidentiality of its sources. But in some cases, you might want to tell us about a story or give us information without revealing your identity. We have a couple of ways for you to do that.

SecureDrop

SecureDrop is an encrypted method of communication that allows users to send information without identifying themselves digitally. Is it 100% secure? No digital system is. But it’s the state-of-the-science best method to send information via the internet without leaving fingerprints.

What you send comes to a server that's separated from the rest of WIRED's network, secure, and visually monitored. Messages sent to SecureDrop are encrypted. We check messages there regularly, and only a limited number of Wired staffers have access to the digital keys. Only one specially designated and air-gapped computer can read the messages.

You can access WIRED's SecureDrop instance at http://k5ri3fdr232d36nb.onion. You should only visit this URL using Tor.

How to Use SecureDrop

1. Install the Tor (https://www.torproject.org/) browser on your computer. It's a modified version of the Firefox web browser designed to work with Tor's anonymous and secure network.
2. In Tor, go to http://k5ri3fdr232d36nb.onion, the address for WIRED's SecureDrop instance.
3. If you have Javascript enabled, the site will prompt you to turn it off.
4. Click the "Submit Documents" button.
5. You'll get a string of random-seeming words. That's your codename. You need it to come back to SecureDrop to see if we've responded. You have to keep this secret, so either memorize it or put it somewhere very, very safe.
6. Click "Continue" to submit documents
7. Because you can only submit one document at a time, you might want to combine multiple documents into a .zip archive. The size limit is 500mb, and all the security on the system makes it run quite slowly, so if you have more than that, reach out to us via SecureDrop and we can assist you in sending us the docs.
8. Use the file uploader to upload a document. Click "Submit" to complete the upload.
9. That's it! When you're done, logout and restart the browser or turn off your computer.
10. If you want to check for a response, follow the same instructions from the top but click "Check for a Response" instead of "Submit Documents." You'll be prompted to log in with the codename from the earlier step.

For more detail on the process and the technology, you can read about SecureDrop here: (https://docs.securedrop.org/en/latest/source.html).

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