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OpenCyph

What could your tip line expose about a source?

Answer fifteen questions about how your organisation receives confidential submissions: the channel, talking to sources, what can be verified and how submissions are handled. See the gaps to close first. Runs in your browser. No account, no card, no call.

Your tip line today

Answer for the channel sources use now, even if it is an email address. Nothing is sent.

The channel

Are submissions encrypted end to end, so whoever runs the server cannot read them?

Does the channel avoid keeping IP addresses and other metadata about sources?

Can a source submit without an email address, phone number or account in their name?

Can sources send large files through the same channel?

Talking to sources

Can you reply to a source without learning who they are?

Can a source come back later and continue the same conversation?

Do you tell sources plainly what the system keeps and does not keep?

What can be verified

Is the software's code public, so anyone can check what it does?

Is the software's cryptographic design published?

Do you run the server yourself, or tell sources plainly who does?

Handling submissions

Is a retention policy written down and applied to submissions?

Is access to submissions limited to named people?

Do you know what you hold about sources that could be demanded under legal compulsion?

Are the people who read submissions trained in handling them?

Has someone outside the team that runs it reviewed the setup?

Answer the questions to see your score. It updates as you go.

Method: yes scores a question in full, partly scores half and no scores nothing. Each is weighted from one to three by how directly a no could expose a source, and the score is the weighted share out of a hundred. Unanswered questions are left out.

What could your tip line expose about a source?

Answer fifteen questions about how your organisation receives confidential submissions: the channel, talking to sources, what can be verified and how submissions are handled. See the gaps to close first. Runs in your browser. No account, no card, no call.

Open the free tool

It runs in your browser. OpenCyph never sees your inputs.