2016 Event Notes

1/1/2016 10th Anniversary Potluck

• Potluck dinner to celebrate 10th anniversary of founding of the pirate party
• about 12 attending

8/27/2016 Boston Public Library Crytoparty

Ben, Nitesh and Jamie taught.

Due to the festival going on next door, the turn out was low, but the participants were great older women of color who had wonderful suggestions and great insights. The library is interested in having us back in the Fall and will suggest that other libraries hold cryptoparties.

Our participants found out about it via a local senior newsletter which is probably the first time that happened in MA and shows we need to reach out more broadly.

We started off with a general overview of computer security, http vs https, maintaining wifi privacy with VPNs and protecting yourself from phishing attempts. Introduced various on-line resources from eff and fsf. Also introduced Signal and showed how it works.

Ben gave a really good talk on selecting passwords and using Password managers.

Nitesh gave a good talk on using Tor. On participant has tried Tor on the iPad but found it had lots of ads. Ben pointed her to the Onion Browser which is not free, but is ad free.

Suggestions for future topics included:

• the state of surveillance
• phishing and other attempts to steal from seniors
• teen computer security