Are Anonymous: Freedom Fighters or Criminals?
To understand Anonymous you only need three words: Activists, Hackers and Guy Fawkes.
Anonymous is a global network of activists and hackers with members in countries all over the world. Its members are known as “Anons” and all hide their identity by wearing Guy Fawkes masks, similar to those worn in the film “V for Vendetta.”
What do they do?
Anonymous first started out on the image website 4chan. Visitors to the site show up as “Anonymous” hence the name.
4chan users raided and hacked websites including several attacks on social networking site Habbo Hotel. These led to the first media reports on the group.
A common Anonymous tactic is a “denial of service” attack. This crashes a website by sending LOTS of internet traffic its way. Death by spam, basically. Soon the group started pranks and “operations” in the real world. Anonymous first wore Guy Fawkes masks to protect their identity whilst protesting against the Church of Scientology. The church had tried to remove a video about Scientology by serving a legal copyright notice. Anonymous saw this as trying to censor the internet.
The motto commonly associated with Anonymous is: “We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”…
