The Operations That Will Make You Love Anonymous By Beau Iverson  [16 more lists]

Anonymous is a group of independent people acting in the same accord to achieve the same goals. The goals are not assigned by one person, but by the consensus of the whole.

Supposedly started in 2003, Anonymous as a group enacts forms of "hactivism", where they centralize on one goal and work in unison against that person or company. The group formed on imageboard sites like 4chan or 7chan and continue to use such sites as their base of operations. They are most commonly known to take down websites with "DDoS" or Distributed Denial of Service attacks. Though this is accomplished through multiple means, the most common way is for a group of different computers to log on to a single site over and over again until the resources for the server are completely consumed and it is forced to shut down. They have also been known to stage live protests throughout the world. The group is most commonly seen in public wearing the Guy Fawkes mask from "V for Vendetta".

Facebook is one of the largest sites on the internet. It comes in at #2, only being beat by, you guessed it, Google. That means that it is one of the highest trafficked sites, millions of people use the site daily, and every single one of those people is giving the site information. You know all those terms and conditions you agree to to use the site? Some of those say that you agree to having your information stored and used by Facebook as they see fit. It is because of this that Anonymous feels like the site should be burned to the ground.

In a statement released by the group, come the 5th of November, the day made notorious by the groups patron saint Guy Fawkes, they will launch a full out attack on the site in an attempt to halt all operations and bring it down. The main focus of the attack seems to be because of the way that Facebook takes your data, stores it and use it to it's own devices, like ads and giving it to other groups. Also, the group has critisied that site for making it very difficult to actually delete an account once it has been made.

A person claiming to be a high up in the ranks of Anonymous, however, has come forward and said that this supposed planned attack is not officially sanctioned by the group and will not go forward. That being said, Anonymous is not a governed body, but a group of individuals, so there is no way to say who will try the operation and who will not. Since the date is only a few days away, I will update this list once we see exactly what happens.

Until then: Remember, remember, the fifth of November.



*UPDATE*
As you probably noticed, Facebook did not go down on 11.5, no official statement was released by Anonymous other than them continuing to state that they had no intention of trying to take the site down.

Project Canhology started in 2008 when an in-house Scientologist video featuring Tom Cruise was released on Youtube. When the Church of Scientology forced the site to remove it, Anonymous saw it as an act of internet censorship. The group started denial of service attacks on the churches various websites along with prank calls and black faxes (sending a fax with only black showing in an attempt to run the machine out of ink).

In February 2008, multiple protests were formed at various Scientology centers around the world. More than 8000 people are estimated to have converged on the churches, many wearing the Guy Fawkes mask. This was done as a part of Operation Reconnect, which was an additional protest against Scientology's disconnection policy, which states that a member of the church must cut all ties with any family or friends who are against the church in any way.

These protests are ongoing and take advantage of any Scientologist media events or events involving high profile members of the church.

When the Australian government announced that they would start censoring any internet sites that contained pornography. Specifically porn that involved ""women with small breasts and female e*********n"" stating that it was to crack down on pedophilic imagery. (I understand the small boobs, but why the e*********ns? Are they under the impression the little girls do that?)

As we have seen, Anonymous are not fans of censorship in anyway. If you let one case through you leave yourself open to more. So in response to the announcement the group sent out the above statement. When their demands were not met, they proceeded to respond with a DDoS attack on different Australian government websites. Though the sites did go down for 2 days, the government claimed that they were not concerned and left the sites down until the attacks were over.

The attacks were accompanied by email spamming, prank phone calls and junk faxes. The faxes were requested to focus directly on the offensive material the government wanted to ban. (Namely that of small breasted women and female e*********n.)

While Anonymous might seem like they only go after governments and other entities that might be considered ""good guys"" in some people's eyes, they have made a bold move against a group that you would be hard pressed to find a sympathizer. At the end of October 2011 the hacktivist group took down a ""darknet"" that was providing services for pedophiles.

""Darknet"" refers to a part of the internet that lies in plan site of regular users but can only be accessed by users with special permissions. In this case the darknet was called ""Lolita City"", and Anonymous was able to gain access and fool almost 190 users to download a tracking program that made it possible for them to get the offenders IP address which they then posted public and gave officials the information. Information that included the pedophiles posts, child pornography and all. Anonymous also crashed 40 other sites, which made up for more than 100Gb of material, which was housed on the Tor server.