Activists with websites have to be aware of how vulnerable they are to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, the preferred form of sabotage used by right-wing and other anti-progressive forces.

For less than $100 a day, a hacker can hire a “hit squad” (usually from Europe) to conduct a DDoS attack on any site. This floods a site with requests from multiple locations for hours and hours, overwhelming the server that hosts it.

In order to protect its servers, commercial web hosting providers (such as Dreamhost) will quickly take your site offline during a DDoS attack, which stops your work. To protect against this kind of attack, use Deflect, a free security service that uses its network as a buffer, protecting your site from unwanted and malicious traffic.