When I first worked on RESCQU.NET’s resources database as a temporary volunteer, I had no idea what I was in for. 

There we were, in the Lair of Abraxas, for an event to build a database of over 150 LGBTQ+ resources, and I was looking over several weeks worth of work, matching organizations with their contact information.  There was a long way to go, but I approached it as a logic game.

The night was full of tea and friends, and I even got a T-shirt at the end! Weeks of work beforehand started to come to fruition. At the end of the night our leader, Samantha, approached me. She complimented me on my work in the database over the prior few weeks and asked me how I felt about it. 

And then she asked me if I'd like to join the team, curating this database permanently—the rest is history. 

I’m Ricki Palmisano, and this is the resource database. 

A main feature of the database is the ‘vetting’ process. We will call and email each organization to make sure we have the best anonymous contact for closeted and out folks alike. Automation is something we can look forward to, but for now, I’m working out the kinks, and enjoying the one-on-one time I get to have with some of our founding partner organizations.

Beyond the Mirror:

Is an identity counseling service flew through the vetting process and I’m proud to have them on our list! They are useful for folks questioning, still in the closet, or at any point in their journey. They provide services specialized for teens and those with eating disorders. Look up their name or ‘counseling’ on our database to find their anonymous contact or your own local equivalent LGBT+ counseling services.

Take a look at our database to find these resources and more. Type in the organization’s name into the search bar on the upper right-hand corner of the database window.

Now I have a new task in front of me: How do we make this database easy to navigate? 

Together, Samantha and I came up with a solution: a way to tag each organization with searchable keywords that you would use to find that resource. That way people could easily find the resources most useful to them at the time they need it. 

Over time, spearheading the database has become a bit more organized.  I brought a friend of mine with me to volunteer and now I have a partner in crime.  Together our goal is to make the database as full and accessible as possible. 

If you have any questions on how to use the database or have a suggestion of your own, you can email me anonymously at Ricki.Palmisano@rescqu.net! (I’m closet-friendly, too)

Ricki is the Database coordinator for RESCQU.NET. She vets and establishes partnerships with organizations to ensure closet-friendly resources are in the database.

Sorry for the click-bait.  It's not the food kind.  But, this is important so keep reading! 

​You’ve probably heard the term “cookie” thrown around while browsing the Internet. Recently, there’s been a big change to these “cookies.”  And that change is vital to your net-safety. 

When you go to a website, a new European Law called GDPR now requires companies to inform you that it uses these "cookies"to track some of the things you do on their site (and afterward).

So we’re going to briefly discuss in this blog, what a cookie is when they can infringe on your privacy and then we’ll show you how to avoid the dangerous ones.  

​ The term originated as a “computer nerd” expression describing a set of data that is sent from a site’s server to your computer, and that comes back unchanged, called a “magic cookie.”

Technically speaking, the cookies saved to your web browser create a dictionary of all kinds of information related to you; what you’ve browsed and information that helps web pages give you a better experience on their sites. Websites use cookies for all kinds of things, and not all of them are bad.  Indeed marketers use them to make website advertising a kinder place for you.

But, you can think of cookies as a collection of membership cards.

When you navigate to a site, it provides you a cookie that says “I’ve been here and am interested in these things.”  The sites then request them back from your browser to verify who you are, what you’re on the site for and then they custom-tailor their information for you based on the cookies you have.

​For example...
When you log in to your bank’s website, the site will “start a session” for you and that session is tracked with a cookie. This cookie cannot be accessed by other websites, but when you log into your bank again, there's no need to provide a password because the cookie already "verified" you.  This cookie is helpful.

But when you browse a shopping website and click on an item, many shopping websites will track that item in a “recently viewed” area of the shopping site by giving you a cookie that tracks what items you’ve viewed. This one could be used to out you.

After leaving that shopping site, you may also notice that same item shows up in an advertisement on another website because it requested your “Amazon Products” cookie. That’s where things start to feel a little unsettling for most people.

Frankly speaking, No. There's not really an easy way.

But there are two ways if you're willing to do it. (If not, skip to what you can do to prevent cookies).

1. "View Page Info" 
​In Firefox, you can see if a website is using cookies by right-clicking any inactive part of a web page (for example, away from all the links and pictures) and select “View Page Info.” 

This provides a dizzying amount of information. We’ll likely discuss this view in a later 201 blog, but at least some of it will probably make sense to you. 

If you look under the “Security” tab, you’ll find things like the website identity, how many times your browser thinks you’ve visited the site, and whether it uses cookies or not. 

At this point, you can clear the cookies just for the site you’re on if you want. This is a "reasonably" simple way to see if cookies are in use on the site you’re looking at, but it's really not ley-person friendly.

2. The Storage Inspector
You can also see all of the cookies your browser has recorded in Firefox using SHIFT-F9 to bring up the “Storage Inspector.” From there, you’ll see a menu on the left for different ways the site can store information. One of those is “Cookies.” If you expand and highlight the site you’re interested in, the grid will then contain all the cookies that are currently active for the site.

What you're probably going to be most interested in are the “Name” and “Value” fields.

Clicking on a cookie record will bring up the details, but to get a good look at a cookie, you have to expand the “Data” window on the right side of the SHIFT-F9 window.

For Example:  Using the Wikipedia Cookie Page
Just to give you a little taste of what you might find, I tried the Wikipedia cookie page. And, guess what? 

It saved the location I’m browsing the page from in a cookie called “GeoIP.”

Why does Wikipedia need to know where I am to provide the information I requested??? 

See how this works? Imagine if you’ve been doing personal research at the library, and you log in to a site you’re using. That site may put your location data in a cookie. Some cookies stick around – so later another website you visit can capture that cookie. So, now, two websites can figure out that you’ve visited this other site from the library.

1 - Clear Your Cookies!
Make it a regular practice to clear your cookies before you move onto or away from sites you don’t want people to know you’re on. 

This does delete helpful cookies like session logins but we feel it’s worth the inconvenience.

2 - Use Private Browsing Modes
Another approach is to use the incognito mode available in most browsers when doing personal research on LGBTQ+ related things.  Be sure to start a new incognito session every time you want to go to a new page (easier said than done). 

To do this, you can copy the link you want to go to next by right-clicking on the link and selecting something like “Copy Link Address.” After you’ve copied the link, you can close your incognito session and start a new one.  Then copy that link in the new incognito session. 

This prevents the sites from talking to each other through your browser.

Here’s more information on how to view and delete cookies on the top used browsers:

1. How do I see and control cookies in my web browser?
2. More on the Firefox Storage Inspector.
3. Get to know how different cookies work using this awesome Infographic!

The “View Page Info” feature in Firefox is relatively unique to that browser and can really help you just get to know some of the basic things that are going on when you browse websites – knowledge is power :)

Hi, there!

I'm Erin, the Weekly Digest - and if you choose to volunteer - Volunteer Coordinator here at RESCQU.NET!

In lieu of a regular blog post this week, I feel like it’s important we discuss something that is happening at the beginning of next month: voting.

These days, everyone is talking about voting as "why you should vote." The language of “motivation” going around seems to assume that people don’t vote because they're lazy or they don’t care.

What about those of us who find voting extremely difficult for other reasons?

I have anxiety. Really bad anxiety. Especially in highly charged crowds.

So, the polls seem VERY scary to me.

It’s so much more than just getting off of the couch and waiting in line to me. The idea alone nauseates me and makes my muscles twitch.

There are millions of other reasons one may not be willing or able to vote from anxiety to active voter suppression.  If you’re closeted or have any reason whatsoever that you are afraid or hesitant to vote, we want you to know that that feeling is valid, but workarounds have to be found.

​But I am lucky enough to live in a state that allows me to mail in my ballot every year. Not everyone has that resource, and if they do, they're often not aware it exists.  

This blog provides you the resources needed to work around your hurdles & cast that vote!

This below state voting database includes 3 pieces of information for each state: 

1. The link to the state's voting page to receive information for and register to vote! 
2. Can you vote by mail? 
3. Can you vote online?

Though I'd mentioned anxiety as a hurdle of mine, it's certainly not the only or most prominent hurdle.

​Many people work on election day and cannot take time off due to financial restraints.

​​If this applies to you, you can visit Vote411.org and enter your address to see if your employer is legally required to give you paid time off to vote on election day. Every area varies a little in their terms, so make sure that you're looking at the correct precinct that you’ll be voting in!

Last, and the certainly scariest of the hurdles, is the blatant voter suppression tactics that are running amok all over the country.

I'm not going to expand on all of them, simply because it is a hot topic right now and there are a lot of people who are saying it better than I can right now.  For more information head over to this New York Times article that discusses themost recent tactics in the "age of Trump".  

Knowing about these tactics is vital to getting your vote cast, but if you find yourself oppressed, you find people telling you your vote doesn't matter, or you are physically barred from voting,  here's the number 1 thing you can get that will fight this: 

Every state is required to inform the federal government how they plan to educate their citizens on the issues most prominently displayed during the voting process. 

Some of them are easy, like Colorado which provides a "bluebook" or voter information ballot mailed to every home and provided online.

Other states put it in harder to reach spots, but they can ALL be found on the federal registry.  

1. Go to to this link at the state legislator's site.
2. Scroll down to your state and check the section it's in.
3. and it tells you where the state must have the information.
4. then search google for "[state] [voter information source]"
5. and it will be within the first 5 links! 

We're also going to leave one last tool for your toolbox to make sure you can get around any hurdle you have to voting.  The internet.  

More spectifically, the internet has deemed your vote important, so they've created a wikipedia specifically for your local, state, and federal elections over at Ballotpedia.org.  

This site has literally everything you need ot know about the candidates, policies and more.  all you have to do is navigate to the local page you're interested in, hit search, and read! 

​https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page

​Erin is the volunteer with the largest tenure here at RESCQU.NET because it allows her to keep connected with the LGBT+ community.  As a bi woman who is soon to be getting married to her future husband she feels deeply for the community and wants to keep that connection.  So she works to train our volunteers, welcome our new community members, and keep the wheels turning.

At RESCQU.NET we service people who could be cut off from their family, hurt, kicked out, ridiculed, or worse, if it's discovered that they're accessing LGBT+ resources.

We often have to help people who, as a result of these situations, must be so far under the radar that no 5-step Infographic to internet safety will cut it (you should still start here though).  

So to help those of you in this tough spot, we have a living blog post, How to Keep your LGBTQ+ Identity Hidden Online. that we constantly update once per month so you can learn more about keeping yourself safe.

We've added a summary of this post to it, but here, we're talking about Net Safety Class 201:
ToR browser and erasing your "net presence". 

Before we can talk about ToR Though, we need to talk about your "IP address" or how the internet knows what computer you are accessing it from.

So, if you use the Tor Browser, it’s easy.  If you want to use other network services (say Skype), there's a learning curve.  Aaand you've got some work to do.
​

Jerri joined RESCQU.NET to assist in attaining secure and safe technological systems.  Jerry did their masters in computer technology on computer languages and enforcing SSL documentation.  They now help us with the closet-friendly partner organization program, and inform you of the dangers of searching the internet unprotected.

Jeff is an avid user of Tor Browser and a "hacker in training".  He specializes in finding weak points in internet security for sites, databases, servers, and devices so software engineers can plug them.  He contributed a good deal to this article and hopes for LGBTQ+ safety to become a bigger issue in the Net Neutrality and Security debate.

In the past month we've discussed the internet's pension,
​both technologically, and culturally, to out you.   

But the internet's not doing this because it's bad.  It's because all the people who architect the websites and social channels you frequent think they're being helpful.  If they learn everything about you before you talk to them, they can better serve your needs.

But we know here at RESCQU NET, that your number one priority as a questioning, closeted, stealth, or under-resourced LGBT+ person is to be safe, secure, anonymous and in control while searching the internet for LGBT+ resources that are vital to you.  

So today we've whipped up a handy Infographic that turns our current blog, How to keep your LGBTQ+ identity hidden online, into 5 steps. 

Quick Note Though: be sure to check in on the blog because we continually add to it and put a few more tricks up your sleeve (lookin' at you, teens). 

With all of the personal information the internet can view, the safest place for a closeted individual is in their private email inbox, but even that's worrisome.  

Create a seperate, secure, non-gmail related email to collect resources.

​The second you leave your inbox, visit a website, or fill out a form, the internet uses data-tracking systems to record your presence. 

To prevent this, find and use your browser's private or "incognito" mode. 

Even in private mode, people can peak at your computer's search history if they gain access to it.  Remember to always log out, clear files you've downloaded...

...and delete your search history with a program like CCleaner. 

The old adage, "hide a tree in a forest", applies here.  If your spaces are not safe, consider using library computers, cafe Wi-Fi, or public resources, to access ours.

Interact with us when you feel safest, and know you're ready.

Learn more about the community and safely acquire information, support, &  LGBTQ+ resources on the living, blog post below; How to keep your LGBTQ+ identity hidden online.

Hackers serve a lot of different roles on the web.  Their intent is defined by the "hat" they are wearing when they work.  There are white hats, grey hats, and black hats (and yes, you can think of them like Jedi, Grey Jedi, and Sith Lords).  Marketing is the same. ​

The idea is:

1. They will first get your attention,
2. Then offer a way to stay in contact in exchange for an email or subscription.
3. They’ll provide a low-ball offer to get you on board and excited,
4. And hen they’ll provide some information on what they sell.
   
5. If you want it, you’ll buy it.  And then, hopefully, you'll talk about it.
   
   

Each step of the way you provide just a little more data and they'e getting consent to have your data every step of the way.  ​

If we are to ensure your safety 

we need to be a website that helps you remove your presence from the internet,
by reducing your reliance on the internet.  

We will help you move your interactions with LGBT+ resources away from websites, marketing funnels, and emails, and toward unrecorded private channels.

Our online support groups allow you to attain resources in an unrecorded environment.  We just started our bisexual/pansexual group, bittersweet, availble September 18th, and it's working well.

We are also committing to changing the way people collect your data by working with our partner organizations to make them more closet-friendly and amenable to anonimity on our resources page.

If you feel lost, need a little extra help, or someone to talk to, consider joining one of our support groups at support.rescqu.net!  

​Our facilitator Lane created Bitter / Sweet because she was tired of Bi-erasure throwing her into the closet constantly, and she wants to support you too.
​

Samantha is the Executive Director of RESCQU.NET, an online Community Manager, and full-stack marketer.  She launched Trans* Youth Channel in 2013 to record her transition and help other transgender people online transition safely.  She saw a need to protect people who weren't out yet, and transitioned the organization to make the site you see today.