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HACKTIVIST GROUP Anonymous, which has been responsible for cyber-attacks on the Pentagon, News Corp, and others, has vowed to destroy Facebook on 5 November (which might ring a bell).
Citing privacy concerns and the difficulty involved in deleting a Facebook account, Anonymous hopes to “kill Facebook,” the “medium of communication [we] all so dearly adore.”
This isn’t the first time Anonymous has spoken out against social networks.
After Google removed Anonymous’ Gmail and Google+ accounts, Anonymous pledged to create its own social network, called AnonPlus.
See below for the full text of the announcement, made on YouTube and reported by Village Voice:
Operation FacebookDATE: November 5, 2011.
TARGET: https://facebook.comPress:
Twitter : https://twitter.com/OP_Facebook
http://piratepad.net/YCPcpwrl09
Irc.Anonops.Li #OpFaceBook
Attention citizens of the world,We wish to get your attention, hoping you heed the warnings as follows:
Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed. If you are a willing hacktivist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill facebook for the sake of your own privacy.
Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world. Some of these so-called whitehat infosec firms are working for authoritarian governments, such as those of Egypt and Syria.
Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your “privacy” settings, and deleting your account is impossible, even if you “delete” your account, all your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time. Changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more “private” is also a delusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family.
You cannot hide from the reality in which you, the people of the internet, live in. Facebook is the opposite of the Antisec cause. You are not safe from them nor from any government. One day you will look back on this and realise what we have done here is right, you will thank the rulers of the internet, we are not harming you but saving you.
The riots are underway. It is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It is a battle for choice and informed consent. It’s unfolding because people are being raped, tickled, molested, and confused into doing things where they don’t understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely false. It gives users the illusion of and hides the details away from them “for their own good” while they then make millions off of you. When a service is “free,” it really means they’re making money off of you and your information.
Think for a while and prepare for a day that will go down in history. November 5 2011, #opfacebook . Engaged.
This is our world now. We exist without nationality, without religious bias. We have the right to not be surveilled [sic], not be stalked, and not be used for profit. We have the right to not live as slaves.
We are anonymous
We are legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Expect us
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Honestly, doubt they will, but I’d be interested in seeing how they’d achieve Facebook’s destruction. Don’t use it myself although I did in the past. A waste of time and energy IMO.
I think that the information people give out to the world without really knowing about it is scary. You should know, as someone from Clonsilla, with an engineering background that when you got your new iPhone 2 years ago it is easy to let the world and advertisers/governments know that you are going for a few drinks.
someone from Clonsilla? so?
Oh shit! This is terrible, people are going to have to communicate through means such as face to face conversations, telephone chats etc.
Damn you Anonymous! Damn your black hearts!!!!
I doubt somehow that people would be able to communicate face to face anthony.That’s SO 2008.
“The riots are underway” They sure are and they are not about privacy or some form of protecting, the riots are acts of mob violence and thuggery.
“This is our world now. We exist without nationality, without religious bias. We have the right to not be surveilled [sic], not be stalked, and not be used for profit. We have the right to not live as slaves.” Does anyone else want to point out that all of us own this world and have the right not to be threatened?
Why don’t they threaten actual despots/dictatorships and their propaganda machines in North Korea,China, Bruma and a good chunk of Africa (to name but a few) or expose human rights abuses etc??! Sure many people do not understand how much information they are giving away but they have a choice while there are millions who have no choices about anything or much at all!!
They do threaten governments. All the time. But why do the “despots” mentioned have to be so far off – Africa, China, etc? Why can’t we look closer to home – Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Netanyahu even Bertie. We are not so great ourselves, we have a lot to answer for!
They might take it down for a few hours with a denial of service attack. Its hard to see how they could permanently destroy facebook assuming facebook has backups and is built on robust platform.
Could this Anonymous start off
Destroying Fianna Fáil first
Then go on & have a go at What’s it’s Face !
Not to even to mention the violations of privacy but also the ill effects of any social networking on one’s sense of self, sense of others. Lulling some into a false sense of social status with people, who were they to meet in real life would not interact in any way that resembles their online ‘socialising’. I am sure many may not agree with me, but personally i hope Anonymous pull through with this. The sooner we live in a world where we wont see people ‘socialising’ with inanimate objects while seated amongst REAL people, where people wont be absorbed in their ‘social life’ on the bus, train, street, at home, in others homes, pratically anywhere 24/7, the better we will be. Socialising of such magnitude was never meant to be possible, it infects the minds of those who abuse it, making social status their life priority, which in my eyes is no far cry from insanity.
So why are you still on facebook?
You were actually making a decent point until I saw that you were on FB with no less than 360 friends. But surely these are only your closest friends that you know "for real", right? :-)
Im not going to deny the hypocrisy within what i said but I will say that had to sign in to post anything on this.
Like these guys don’t sit in a room all day in front of their pcs "socialising".
Why waste their supposed talents on attacking a social site that people join by choice!! Why not start ‘attacking’ the many porn sites that exploit innocent children!!!!
Do these guys work for google plus? Conveniently wipe out one social network forum. Oh look here’s a new one ready to take over.
Could they cut the dramatics and just release the name of the security firm working in egypt that was sold the information instead of Facebook being down for 2 hours on the 7 th. Why only attack Facebook cause hate to tell them but most commercial sites operate in the same way selling user data and targeted advertising. Most activity on Internet is on commercial sites because of marketing budget needed to promote sites, technical people needed to keep site running ect. So what will they replace this with? Their version of facebook if popular would very quickly need specialist staff to run, volunteers would need money once workload is too much, then They will advertise and heh presto another facebook. If they where less ambiguous and just target unethical use of user information I would support them, but what do they want ! people to pay membership for advertisement free facebook?
Can someone give these guys a dictionary with the words ‘Arrogance’, ‘Hypocrisy’, ‘Condescending’ and ‘Irony’ ‘Patronising’ and ‘Interfering’ highlighted please?
Anonymous know of two basic ways to cause disruption to any internet based service which means that a Distributed Denial of Service attack is probably the way they intend on “destroying” Facebook.Anonymous tried to use a DDoS attack on Amazon before last year and failed. Why? Because they have massive server banks all over the world and enough bandwidth to handle the heaviest of traffic when required. Facebook works on a similar, but not as large infrastructure as Amazon and i sincerely doubt any large scale disruption will be caused to Facebook on the day.
Consider also the fact that they have a lot of advance warning, they can even bulk up their defences and pre-empt any attack and this makes any possibility of a disruption even more unlikely. I’m sure in this long gap however that Anonymus will start hijacking PC’s all over the world to bulk up the attack but i can’t even see that making much of a difference. The fact is, Anonymous haven’t the skill or knowledge to pull off the destruction of a massive online service such as Facebook. They are idiot children who try to enable acts of vandalism by associating it with a noble cause. They are not hackers, they’re pests and considering their ethos, they never will be hackers either.
You make it sound like some cyber version of Lord of the Rings. Haha
Don’t think its very fair just to dismiss them as “pests” , because they seem to be very smart “pests” to me , considering the amount of stuff they have done to date! When that guy Topiary was arrested in Uk , the police seized pc ‘s etc , it seems that the amount of equipment he had was pretty miniscule, so if he and others can crash sites etc with such little equipment, what does that say about the security offered my resource laden corporations!
I think it’s perfectly fair Gerard.You don’t need a lot of equipment to do what they’ve done, in fact, in some of their attacks all you’d need is a smart phone and an internet connection. They have searched for and exposed basic vulnerabilities on high value websites or initiated DDoS attacks. Two methods of attack, that’s it. They’re not smart, they’re not coding their own software or manually breaching networks. They are using programs that you or i could download right now and use against whoever we wished with the same results.
Please dont do anything on my behalf “oh great HACKTIVIST GROUP Anonymous (sarcastic tone of choice)” I choose to be ignorant I choose to be the sheep everyone is fond of calling me. I choose facebook because I can.
Go and do something of real benefit to the world and do some voluntary work with the sick and starving and make a difference that way
Creepy voice in the video
I hope they succeed. If Facebook goes, I might just do something with my life, apart from talking crap on Facebook and posting on TheJournal.ie. =P
Anonymous and Lulzsec have a good track record of these attacks although they rarely announce them in advanced. I can see Facebook beefing up their security in the meantime just incase.
I don’t think they’d announce this unless they genuinely believed they could do it. I think I’ll be making popcorn on Nov. 5th :)
Correction: Lulzsec have come out against the planned attack and they say that it’s only a small group of Anonymous supporters who are planning this.
Describing themselves as “the rulers of the internet” shows just how hollow Anonymous’ justification for their acts are. The Arab Spring would not have happened without Facebook, simple as that. This is just another example of pig headed attention seeking from this bunch of basement dwelling man-children who live in a delusional hero fantasy with no real idea of the consequences of their actions. If they wanted to do change the world they’d do to News Corp and Fox News like they, or rather their predecessors who have all left after getting bored of the ‘newfags’ did to Scientology
Now what will the arts students do during lectures?
Its not so easy Killing Facebook but here is the complete update http://itwel.com/facebook-killing-hacked-5th-nov-anonymous.php
Wonder has Bono cashed in his shares in Facebook, maybe he can move the cash to some other tax haven !!
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