Sooo i see this ESA site does not have valid SSL certificates. Look at the adress bar, what you should see is a icon of a lock and https://, which illustrates a secure link between you and the site. This is the most rudimentary cyber security measure one would expect of a site of this nature.Open Facebook, you will see it there...

Such a vulnerability leaves the site and those who frequent it open to a very rudimentary 'man in the middle' cyber attack. This poses an obvious risk to the integrity of all information flowing between the users and the site...esp your credit card information. @ESA please remediate, it is really a cheap and quick problem to resolve...we dont want another Ashley Madison type breach.

I use an anonomous e-mail adress to subscribe here but if you leak my ctedit card details i am @#$% busted...the card i can always block etc but if it goes into a searchable online data base, the kind of whick emerged after the AM breach i will be confronted with some very tough conversations ;-) peace out

Luckily ESA doesn't process credit card information. The transaction is done on a separate secured site so that's where your cc info goes to. ESA, on instruction from that site, then knows whether to grant a particular user Gold membership.

If you're using an isolated email address then good on you but if you link it to any other of your personal addresses or devices then it's all for nothing.

I would also recommend not sharing any uniquely personal information on the site. I try hard to ensure that my ESA profile cannot be linked back to me.

The bigger issue, in my mind, are the social links created whenever you call WGs on your phone. An isolated call is fine but a higher than average number of links made to known WG numbers will raise suspicion to anyone who may be secretly investigating you or the WG/s.