
Ask HN: How do you donate online anonymously? - hiaux0
Is it as simple as creating an &quot;anonymous&quot; paypal account?<p>------<p>I just made an online donation via my personal paypal and made sure to not check<p>&quot;Send address to recipient&quot;<p>but later in the confirmation mail from paypal, the receipt listed<p>&quot;Donation to ... &lt;organization&gt;&quot;<p>&quot;Sent by ... &lt;my-email-adress-here&gt;&quot;.<p>Now, I am confused, wether the donation was actually anonymous.
======
Rjevski
How anonymous do you want to be? Are you trying to hide from the recipient
only, or also from their payment processors, or the government?

Each of these requirements has different solutions.

~~~
e12e
Do note that another term for absolute anonymous donations is "funding
terrorism". So good luck hiding your donations _entirely_.

I suspect a sibling comment is correct - buy a visa/etc giftcard (perhaps with
cash) and use that to donate online if the recipient accepts online payments -
or send the card details via email, or the card via snail mail?

~~~
dorianm
Or more commonly "money laundering"

------
JackC
it's not for everyone, but we use a Donor Advised Fund for anonymous giving:

[https://www.schwabcharitable.org/public/charitable/home](https://www.schwabcharitable.org/public/charitable/home)

You donate the money to a nonprofit run by Schwab, and then later you can tell
them to donate it to any tax-deductible nonprofit, one time or on a schedule,
and to either include your name with the gift or not.

We like it for (a) commitment (it's easier to set a goal to give X% of your
income if you can just fire off one check every month) (b) simpler taxes (c)
anonymity (d) fun (it feels fancy, I guess).

Fees and convenience are both kind of a wash -- it's cheaper than credit card
fees, and it's nice having one place to manage donations, but the interface is
pretty clunky.

Downsides are the high (for us) initial buyin, hassle of initial paperwork,
and being limited to tax-deductible recipients. I definitely think someone
could build a better interface around the idea of online banking for
donations.

~~~
hiaux0
Thanks for laying out the pros and cons for you. On their landing page, it
seemed like they only support "their" charities?

They run an extensive donation service, but looks a bit too extensive for me.

Thank you nonetheless!

------
cyphar
I think, long term, the best solution is something like GNU Taler[1] which is
anonymous (for consumers) e-Cash system. It doesn't require cryptocurrencies
or anything, it can work with VISA or PayPal just as easily.

And it's auditable, so that governments can still tax businesses (which avoids
the fear that governments have around large-scale, automated and fully-
anonymous payments).

[1]: [https://taler.net/en/index.html](https://taler.net/en/index.html)

~~~
O1111OOO
> [https://taler.net/en/index.html](https://taler.net/en/index.html)

Firefox reports today (11nov18, 10:55am, PST):

> taler.net uses an invalid security certificate.

> The certificate expired on November 11, 2018, 2:13:27 PM GMT. The current
> time is November 11, 2018, 6:55 PM.

> This site uses HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to specify that Firefox
> may only connect to it securely.

~~~
cyphar
It works for me, seems like they fixed it. They use LetsEncrypt so must've
messed up the auto-updating of the certificate. In my defence, I've done this
before as well.

------
lexicality
Paypal will always send your full name and email address to the recipient.
Your donation wasn't anonymous.

------
mclemme
Use a cryptocurrency that has default private transactions, Monero comes to
mind: [https://getmonero.org/](https://getmonero.org/)

Alternatively you could donate "offline" and just send them an envelope with a
note and some cash in it.

~~~
hiaux0
Ty! Monero was mentioned twice here.

------
baccredited
Set up a Donor-advised fund with Vanguard or Fidelity, etc.

[https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/](https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/)

You can just check a box to make any donation anonymously.

------
CalRobert
So far as I'm aware, the person behind
[https://pineapplefund.org/](https://pineapplefund.org/) is still unknown.
Perhaps that's a good place to start.

If you're using fiat (USD, EUR, RMB, etc.) I would assume the only anonymous
method is cash, or an instrument purchased with cash (money order, prepaid
gift card, etc), mailed from a public mailbox with no return address, but of
course that raises its own problems of ensuring delivery.

For fiat, I doubt any electronic method offers any real protection against
subpoena, etc.

~~~
hiaux0
Thank you for mentioning this website, I will def. have a look later.

------
ashwinr14
No, use crypto->fiat or vice versa.

------
ydnaclementine
You can give it to me and I promise not to tell anyone

I absolutely swear I'll use it for a good cause (aka student loans)

------
nitrohorse
You could create a Privacy.com masked debit card with a fake name and billing
address.

~~~
hiaux0
Interesting concept, unfortunately they only operate in the US.

------
xwvvvvwx
cryptocurrencies

~~~
bradleyjg
Every transaction is recorded forever. What's anonymous about that?

~~~
ttsda
Anonymity is about names, not about records.

~~~
bradleyjg
You've just shifted the problem to "how to I buy bitcoin anonymously" because
all the easy and obvious ways involve disclosing your name.

------
kim0
Use #Monero

