Free2Z is at very early stages and we're whipping out experimental new features with an all-volunteer team and 0 employees. Arguably we are overly ambitious, but I digress.
Four days ago we released a new feature for 2Zs, "DONATE ANON."
This was released along with the new Events Feed and accounting improvements to let you know where your 2Zs are coming from and where they are going.
Before these additions, our system simply incremented or decremented 2Z balances without any specific record. Now, when 2Zs are donated, we create a record so that people can know when they sent and received 2Zs. The donor can choose not to be revealed to the donee using "DONATE ANON."
Today, we discovered a bug which revealed the profiles of the anonymous donors to the ones they donated to. It's fixed now, but we think it's a good time to discuss privacy.
Private like Twitter DM versus Private like Zcash
This update serves as a opportunity to clarify the concept of "privacy" within our system. To put it simply, "DONATE ANON" is private in the sense of a Twitter DM, NOT like a shielded Zcash transaction.
We want to emphasize that this isn't equivalent to absolute privacy. The events are recorded for accounting purposes, meaning that database administrators and government entities with appropriate legal authorization can still access these records. Similar to how your "private" messages can be read on platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Mastodon, Twitter, and Discord.
True Privacy™, where only you hold the keys to your data through strong encryption, isn't what "DONATE ANON" offers. For users who require such level of privacy, we recommend using shielded Zcash.
In essence, consider "DONATE ANON" as a fun feature rather than a fail-safe privacy mechanism. It's a way to make your Free2Z experience more engaging and enjoyable. For strong privacy, use Zcash.