Clipperz Password Manager

This post is just to say thanks for the heartwarming response to Clipperz first fundraising campaign. We also have some good news for Clipperz open source projects. During the last 3 months Clipperz received 5,200 USD from one-time donations. Even ... [More] better, the cumulated recurring donations reached a new peak at 354 USD/month. I know these are small numbers and definitely not enough to allow Giulio and me to resume full time development and make a living out of Clipperz, but we are small-town guys from Italy and we get excited quite easily! :-) Looking at data extracted from our Paypal account is fascinating: in its lifetime Clipperz received monetary support from 984 wonderful donors from 48 countries! And, again, I can’t thank you enough! Good news for Clipperz open source projects As you probably know, Clipperz is the sponsor of the following open source projects: Javascript Crypto Library, a Javascript collection of fast, cross-browser cryptographic algorithms Clipperz Community Edition, for those who wants to host their own instance of the Clipperz password manager We are delighted to have gathered around these projects a small but spirited group of developers that are eagerly waiting to see their contributions pushed into the main trunk. We have good news for them: Clipperz open source projects are leaving the obnoxious Sourceforge and are now hosted on GitHub. The move will bring a more pleasant and effective ecosystem for playing, reviewing and improving the Clipperz code. And, of course, both projects retain the same AGPL v3 license. The repository of the Community Edition will also include the new “gamma” version, not to mention multiple backends: PHP/MySQL, Python/AppEngine, … So, go and fork Clipperz on GitHub! Or start a new host-proof web app leveraging Clipperz crypto foundations. One more thing: if Clipperz is helping you to keep your passwords and your sensitive data to yourself, please consider making a donations today. [Less]

Clipperz announces it’s first fundraising campaign to support the development of its free, multilingual, open source online password manager. We are sending out emails to the thousands of users that made contact with us during the last 5 years (see ... [More] below). It’s actually a major new start for the project. If successful, Giulio and I could eventually devote more time and energy to Clipperz. The first target is to complete the hosted “gamma” version and port it to the downloadable Community Edition. And, if we raise enough money, we could add sharing and tagging, move forward the “workgroup edition”, design a robust mobile version, improve the website and our communication plan. We would also love to set up tools and provide tutoring for the small community of developers that gathered around the idea of a web application that knows nothing about its users and their data. Thanks in advance for your generous support! Marco Barulli and Giulio Cesare Solaroli` Dear Clipperz user, there’s nothing more satisfying than creating something that people care about and use. I know this because, along with Giulio Cesare Solaroli, I’m the co-founder of Clipperz, the online password manager that knows nothing about you! We got a lot of funny looks 5 years ago when we started talking to people about Clipperz. Let’s just say some people were skeptical of the notion of storing passwords and other sensitive information on the web. But we kept evangelizing the benefits of browser cryptography and the more general paradigm of zero-knowledge web apps, i.e. fully functional web apps that have no access to users’ data. Five years later, nearly 50 thousand people created an account on Clipperz and about 5 thousand use it every single day! I thank every one of you who donated to keep Clipperz alive and well since 2006. It was a tremendous help, and extremely generous, and I can’t thank you enough. However, the current flow of donations makes it difficult for us to further invest resources in the development of new features. Clipperz needs your help! In the past we’ve relied entirely on the in-app donation reminder. Today we’re trying something new: we’re turning to those who have already donated or have made contact with us (directly or through to the Clipperz forum). For the first time ever, I’m writing to ask if you can help get our efforts off to a strong start. Can you make a donation of $50 or more to fund the work of Giulio and myself? Or a monthly recurring donation of 5$ or more? Together, we can keep Clipperz free of charge for everyone. And together we can also keep it open. As someone who’s using Clipperz, you know that the source code of Clipperz has been made available since its first day and you can even run a private instance of Clipperz on your own server by downloading our Community Edition. We adopted AGPL as our preferred open source license because we firmly believe that the world needs more “zero-knowledge web apps”. If you value Clipperz as a useful and convenient tool to enhance your security, I hope you’ll choose to act right now. Make your donation today! Sincerely, Marco Barulli Clipperz co-founder PS If you are in contact with other Clipperz users, please spread the word and forward this message to them, thanks! In keeping with the open spirit of Clipperz, we’re publishing a summary of all donations received. [Less]

I’ve played a little with Google’s new ngram app that, by searching all the digitized books, allows you trace the usage of a word over time. And of course I’ve tested it with “passwords” getting a quite interesting result.

Bruce Schneier says that privacy is controlling your data. How true. I would just add that control is not enough, I want exclusive control and ownership of my data. And if you are using Clipperz password manager it’s probably because you share a ... [More] similar vision … To the older generation, privacy is about secrecy. And, as the Supreme Court said, once something is no longer secret, it’s no longer private. But that’s not how privacy works, and it’s not how the younger generation thinks about it. Privacy is about control. When your health records are sold to a pharmaceutical company without your permission; when a social-networking site changes your privacy settings to make what used to be visible only to your friends visible to everyone; when the NSA eavesdrops on everyone’s e-mail conversations — your loss of control over that information is the issue. We may not mind sharing our personal lives and thoughts, but we want to control how, where and with whom. A privacy failure is a control failure. Companies are in the midst of a privacy frenzy. They keep changing their terms to reflect social and cultural changes, at least this is what they say. So are Google and Facebook just evil? Not at all, they are just working to “maximize their profits, which has the side effect of killing privacy”. And we should not be fooled by their public declarations in defense of privacy. The very companies whose CEOs eulogize privacy make their money by controlling vast amounts of their users’ information. Whether through targeted advertising, cross-selling or simply convincing their users to spend more time on their site and sign up their friends, more information shared in more ways, more publicly means more profits. This means these companies are motivated to continually ratchet down the privacy of their services, while at the same time pronouncing privacy erosions as inevitable and giving users the illusion of control. Schneier asks for a stronger privacy legislation and he’s probably right. As a commenter wrote: “the idea that the market will sort things like this out is laughable. Consumer protection laws are needed precisely because the market fails at this sort of thing.” However, the EU has a remarkable privacy legislation, but I can’t say that, as a citizen, I feel more protected. While government and companies find their ways out of the privacy maze, smart users could use zero-knowledge web applications like Clipperz! toothpastefordinner.com [Less]