Anonymous Vows To Destroy Facebook On November 5

Hacktivist group Anonymous, which has been responsible for cyber-attacks on the Pentagon, News Corp, and others, has vowed to destroy Facebook on November 5th (which should 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.

Read Also: Anonymous Inventing a More Sophisticated DDos Tool

The statement of intent cites privacy issues for Facebook users as their main impetus for turning November 5 into a Facebook Gunpowder Plot:

Operation Facebook

DATE: November 5, 2011.

TARGET: https://facebook.com

Press:
Twitter : https://twitter.com/OP_Facebook
http://piratepad.net/YCPcpwrl09
Irc.Anonops.Li #OpFaceBook
Message:

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. http://www.physorg.com/news170614271.htmlhttp://itgrunts.com/2010/10/07/facebook-steals-numbers-and-data-from-your-iph....

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, 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

Facebook is widely known for its issues around user privacy - most notably, that they’re terrible with it.

The list of Facebook’s privacy failures and transgressions is lengthy and probably not complete, including Danah Boyd’s Harvard/UC Berkeley paper Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck to frequent changes to user settings without notification, to new issues raised by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Anonymous is known for launching distributed denial-of-service attacks which harms its target by getting a large group of people to access the site continually until the influx in traffic slows the site down so much that the servers can’t handle it.

Since Facebook is such a huge site–750 million users huge–it would take a lot for Anonymous to slow down Facebook’s servers. Anonymous tried to take down Amazon in the same way earlier this year, but Amazon’s huge amount of server power was too much for the group.

The group is giving us time to think and “prepare for a day that will go down in history” before they deploy the attack on the 5th of November.