Facebook to be destroyed on Nov. 5, says Anonymous Hacker Group

Notorious hacker collective Anonymous on Tuesday threatened to “kill” Facebook on Nov. 5, according to a YouTube video spotlighted on official channels used by the group.


“Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed,” the group wrote in a transcript of its YouTube video. “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 [sic] for the sake of your own privacy.”

Anonymous claims it is doing Facebook users a service because the company is “selling information to government agencies.” It also asserts that Facebook’s privacy controls are a joke and that users cannot actually delete their accounts.

“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,” the group wrote. “Changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more ‘private’ is also a delusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family.”

Nov. 5 is Guy Fawkes Day, which commemorates when Fawkes and others placed explosives under the British House of Lords in 1605. The likeness of Guy Fawkes is used commonly used by Anonymous as a symbol and hackers from the group wore Fawkes masks at the Defcon hacker conference last week (as pictured above). The Fawkes mask and story was popularized in the ten-issue comic series V for Vendetta and the movie based upon it.

The @YourAnonNews Twitter account appeared to confirm that the video was issued by Anonymous, with a tweet on Tuesday night stating: “Remember remember the fifth of November the FaceBook treason and plot…”

The threat to destroy Facebook comes only a day after the group successfully hacked and defaced the Syrian Ministry of Defense’s website. Anonymous has gained much exposure in the last year with attacks on PayPal, Visa, Amazon, Bank of America, and various world governments. The group was blamed for the massive attack on Sony’s PlayStation Network, but it denied involvement.

Even though Anonymous has had success in hacking some major websites in the past, it’s questionable that it would be successful against Facebook. When you consider that the hacking group has given Facebook several months to prepare for an attack, it’s extremely unlikely Facebook would be brought down. But when you’re talking about a group of hackers with an aim to sow discord, you can never be certain.

Check out the video to see the message from the anonymous group:




Latest update as on 15.8.2011:
@OP_Facebook tweeted this clarification about "Operation Facebook":
"ok im making one thing clear here, We Cant Take Facebook Down...Yet. This is an awareness campaign and spreading the word is good enough."

So, what do you think??
what was the earlier message all about? Is this their new trick??
Doesn't seem so, as they fight for users, not against users.

Share your views..

Cheers,
Team

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Prachi Desai, Aayush Jindal - Author of this post, TheWebCrunch

Add her to your Circles in Google+ - Prachi Desai