#SpreadLoveNotCorona: Portuguese launch “wave” of digital solidarity to help WHO

At a time when the US Government has decided to suspend funding from the World Health Organization, COVID-19SolidarityResponseFundassume an even greater importance. Anyone, company or organization can help the WHO pandemic response fund that is plaguing the world, but a group of Portuguese decided to do the work and give an additional boost.

Taking the motto of digital solidarity, a team of Portuguese engineers from fintech IntellectEU decided to launch the #SpreadLoveNotCorona project to raise public awareness of WHO's needs in the face of the pandemic and involve as many people as possible around the cause. To understand the "mechanics" of a project with such great ambitions, SAPO TEK spoke with Joo Gaspar, Software Engineer at IntellectEU.

Joo Gaspar said that the idea behind #SpreadLoveNotCorona was born out of an informal discussion at a remote meeting. The pandemic was one of the frequent topics of conversation, as were the company's social concerns. Thus, based on their technical knowledge, the team of engineers decided to do the work and, in just one week, create a project with a social impact that currently has more than 500 participants.

The simple process: through the platform, users can share the wave of solidarity on a social network or digital platform of choice, and can optionally make a donation to the WHO fund. The #SpreadLoveNotCorona also allows the user to understand its impact on the system and to check how many people it has managed to involve and how many donations have been made from its sharing.

IntellectEU's Software Engineer explained that the platform's donation system is secured through a widget from the Pledgeling Foundation, an American company that specializes in creating fundraising platforms for social causes.

If the user chooses to make a donation, he can make it through credit card or single MBNET, Apple Pay or Google Pay. Once done, a confirmation email is sent with a receipt that can be used for IRS purposes. The donation process ends with a notification from our system that registers it on the Blockchain (R3 Corda) immutably and safely, functioning as proof of successful donation, explained Joo Gaspar.

The Software Engineer also explained that the Pledgeling Foundation is obliged, as soon as possible, to send the funds, withdrawing the processing cost, to the WHO COVID-19SolidarityResponseFund. Donations received by the foundation are processed administratively and combined in a single monthly batch, processed in the first 15 days of the month, to the fund. To date, #SpreadLoveNotCorona has managed to raise more than 2,000 euros and the prospect that the wave of digital solidarity will continue.

Security and privacy are priorities

As the COVID-19 pandemic intensifies, the number of cyber attacks worldwide increases. For the #SpreadLoveNotCorona project, the safety of users is of great importance.

To SAPO TEK, Joo Gaspar clarified that the platform implements several online security methods, among them, the use of the HTTPS communication protocol, to guarantee a secure and encrypted communication, and services such as Amazon Web Services, considered by the industry to be reliable. . In addition, measures were taken to prevent Cross-Origin requests, as well as Clickjacking. The practice allows cybercriminals to deceive users by causing them to click on addresses that do not exist on the platform, in order to extort information such as bank card data.