Anonymous

[[File:Anonymous Tin Hat.jpg|thumb|165px|Your typical Anonymous member.]]
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{{hatnote|Not to be confused with anonymous [[wiki]] users; for those see [[RationalWiki:DysLexicon#B|BoN]]. Not to be confused with the alt-right conspirituality movement; for that see [[QAnon]]. For the general concept of anonymity, see [[pseudonym]]. For the film see [[Shakespeare authorship#Anonymous|Shakespeare authorship]].}}
{{cquote|Some people call us digital Robin Hoods, [[freedom fighter]]s, all these [[Altruism|altruistic]] labels. I don't know. When it comes to all the actual core people within Anonymous groups, we're a bunch of malicious [[asshole]]s.|||Aubrey Cottle ("Kirtaner"), self-proclaimed Anonymous co-founder<ref name=vice>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNEA0sglO5A “I Left Anonymous. Now I'm Back”] (Sep 21, 2021) ''Vice'' via ''YouTube''.</ref>{{efn|Anonymous is akin to an anarchic mob, and there's no reliable evidence for the roles of claimed founders and very major individual figures.|name=co-founder}}}}
'''Anonymous''' [[File:Guyfawkes.gif]] is the moniker used by a loose collective of [[hacker|script kiddie]]s and ne'er-do-wells associated with the imageboard [[4chan]], [[Encyclopædia Dramatica]], and various other forums since 2003. While generally [[anarchy|anarchic]], Anonymous has collaborated in several high-profile acts of digital protest and [[Vigilante|vigilantism]]; this came to a head in the national [[media]] during the international controversy surrounding [[WikiLeaks]]' release of [[US]] State Department secret cables, though since 2008, Anonymous had been engaged in a [[Guerrilla war|guerrilla]] campaign against organizations like the [[Church of Scientology]].

"Anonymous" is not a defined group of people, but rather a name used by any "[[hacktivism|hacktivist]]" if they believe their goals align with the loosely defined interests of Anonymous.<ref group=note>Or not. Since Anonymous became sensationalist news fodder, invoking their name has been an easy [[lightning rod]].</ref> Thus, contrary to some descriptions of it as a [[hive mind]] or a child of cyberspace, Anonymous is not much different from other examples of [[leaderless resistance]] in the past, or flash mobs in the present. What Anonymous does can vary very widely in its qualities, along with the mentalities of those who use the name.

==Broader movement==
The most common use of "hacking" by Anonymous is in fact a [[Internet crime|distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack]]; an attack of this nature is the real world equivalent of having a group of people loiter in front of a door preventing anyone from entering (which ironically enough they would end up doing literally in their Habbo Hotel raids).<ref group=note>This is not actual hacking as much as it is having hundreds of people click to refresh a website &ndash; or the automated [[script kiddie]] version of the same thing &ndash; which, in turn, overloads the website's servers. More times than not this attack does nothing.</ref> Their other primary method of attack is to [[doxing|gather and distribute personal information]] on targets to spur mass-harassment via threatening phone calls, fake pizza deliveries, {{wpl|black fax|black faxes|,}} [[SWATting]], etc. Such tactics give Anonymous the image of being vandals and make it really easy for the general public to dismiss what they say.

[[File:Edinburgh 'Million Mask March', November 5, 2014 46.jpg|thumb|left|165px|The second annual Million Mask March in Edinburgh, [[Scotland]]]]
The anti-Scientology effort "Project Chanology" made Anonymous more known and led to growth and branching into political activism, perhaps most visible in the "{{wpl|Million Mask March}}" held each year on November 5 to coincide with [[Guy Fawkes]]' Night. Their collective engagement can in practice end up seeming to be about everything and nothing, as there is no clear overarching aim. For example, the demonstration of 2013 was held in over 400 cities<ref>[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/protesters-gather-million-mask-march From one of the handful of legitimate media outlets that actually bothered to cover it.]</ref> and was heavily touted by Anonymous supporters as a global [[revolution]] and awakening. However, participants generally seemed to number in the dozens and hundreds, and it pretty much amounted to what Anonymous does online&mdash;which didn't exactly translate well into face-to-face interaction.<ref group=note>Especially when the biggest protest, set in [[London]], [http://www.vice.com/en_se/read/anonymous-protest-million-mask-march-2013 looked like this.]</ref> The prevalence of [[crank]]s, conspiracy theorists and [[PR]] coverage courtesy of such paragons of independent media like [[RT]] add further to the whole spectacle being more hot air than anything. Another "operation" by some Anonymous groups, known as the "Worldwide Wave of Action" (April 4, 2014) shaped up to be essentially more of the same but with fewer people and less media, presenting itself as a continuation of OWS with a kitchen-sink of [[utopia]]nism and crankery.

In other words, their major method of operation is to do something that seems really "horrifying," but in reality is pretty much a waste of everyone's time.<ref group=note>''[[xkcd]]'' explains it perfectly: {{cite web |url=http://xkcd.com/932/ |title=CIA}}</ref>

===Conspiracy theorists===
Many members of Anonymous believe [[conspiracy theories]], like the [[Illuminati]] ones (or just enjoy [[trolling]] people with them); they like to show it to us in their videos.{{efn|There are a plethora of [[YouTube]] videos with titles like [[Internet law#Law of Exclamation|ANONYMOUS REVEALS NEW WORLD ORDER (Insert current year)]],<ref>[https://www.google.com/search?q=anonymous+message&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=955&tbm=vid&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=Q3YyVJ-bJ4bdoATg74HoDw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&dpr=1#tbm=vid&q=anonymous+illuminati+message Google search of videos with "anonymous illuminati message"]</ref>}} By the very nature of the [[collective]], and unlike [[Occupy Wall Street]] (OWS), it is [[Poe's Law|difficult to know]] whether they're just trolling people, seriously condoning nonsense, or ''both'' at the same time. And regarding who the Anonymous "they" are, all you really need to do is buy a Guy Fawkes mask, and you pretty much look like an Anonymous member.

Another well-known group growing out of [[4chan]] beginning in 2017 is [[QAnon]], the [[alt-right]] [[conspirituality]] movement which agitated for a [[Donald Trump|Trump]]-led revolution and "cleansing" of the "evil satanic elements" in charge of the U.S. Anonymous has denounced QAnon and [[Pizzagate]], and accused them of being created by state-backed actors and Trump supporters with knowledge of Anonymous's workings to discredit their operations.<ref>[http://archive.is/wip/mXNz1 Pizzagate was created to discredit #OpDeathEaters, QAnon was created to discredit #Anonymous. Both were creations of prominent Trump supporters / state-backed, familiar with us and our operations. That's how we know that what we are telling you is credible.] by Anonymous (12:58 PM · Jul 10, 2019) ''Twitter'' (8 Jun 2020 15:38:52 UTC).</ref>

==Anonymous' activities==
If we wanted to assign a particular moral spectrum to the organization, it would have to be a blue and orange one.  Their spawning point, and usually the place they'll spend most of their time is the /b/ ([[random]]) board on 4chan, which most people who frequent 4chan will attest actually says a lot about who you're dealing with.  And yet, while they'll gleefully DDoS and hack sites and organizations just for [[lulz]], they do sometimes take on some things most people would consider good.

Their usual methods of operation include:
*DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service), essentially flooding a computer or site with outside connections and making it to where no one can reach it (think of it like a bunch of copy-paste robots lengthening the lines at the DMV exponentially).  90% of their "hacks" involve this for the most part, and almost none of the DDoSers do it without programs such as "Low-Orbit Ion Cannon," making their "hacker organization" little more than a bunch of script kiddies thinking they're "1337 h4xx0r5."
*[[Doxxing]], releasing personal information about a person or persons, allowing people to order pizza and [[porn]] in their name.
*Black Faxing, in which they just send faxes with nothing more than black characters filling up the page, both to waste paper and ink, and to jam up the fax machine for days.
*Actual hacking.  Don't get us wrong, they rarely do this (and even then, it's usually their "senior" members, such as LulzSec back when it still operated), but these occasionally turn up. They tracked people who bought child porn on [[Silk Road]] by messing with their [[Tor]] clients to bug a certain IP, they used SQL injection among other things to take over HBGary's databases, and they have brute-forced their way into numerous [[DAESH]] social media accounts (in addition to the times they took over the [[WBC]] and [[KKK]]'s accounts).

Some of their more well-known activities include:
*Project Chanology, their ongoing protests against the Church of Scientology.
*Occupy Wall Street, an event they had a heavy hand in publicizing and carrying out.
*{{wpl|Habbo Hotel}} raids, one of their earliest "raids," where they sat in front of the virtual hotel's pool to trap people in, and formed [[swastika]] formations. This was before they had really formed a separate identity from 4chan (it wasn't until Project Chanology that the two began to diverge).<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20080824174022/http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/Net_users_insist_its_joke.html Net users insist 'racist' sign is joke] by Roger Croteau (07/17/2008 12:57 CDT) ''Express-News'' (archived copy, August 24, 2008).</ref>
*A feud with [[Westboro Baptist Church]], resulting in one of the lulziest moments in the history of the "church," where Shirley Phelps-Roper proclaimed on the air that there was nothing they could do to silence the "[[Word of God|words of God]]", followed immediately by all of Westboro Baptists' sites all being taken offline for several days. This feud was renewed in the wake of the [[Sandy Hook]] and [[Boston Marathon bombing|Boston Marathon]] attacks.<ref>[http://www.inquisitr.com/440545/anonymous-hacks-the-westboro-baptist-church-posts-all-their-personal-information/ Anonymous Hacks The Westboro Baptist Church: Posts All Their Personal Information] Inquisitr.com. 2012-12-16.</ref>
*In 2008, circumstantial evidence pointed to Anonymous attacking an Epilepsy Foundation discussion board with intent to cause seizures by flashing gifs.<ref>[http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/03/epilepsy Hackers Assault Epilepsy Patients via Computer] by Kevin Poulsen (03.28.08) ''Wired''.</ref> Self-proclaimed Anonymous co-founder{{efn|name=co-founder}} Aubrey Cottle finally admitted in 2021 that it really was Anonymous that did this but that it was misguided and wrong.<ref name=vice/>
*The 2011 HBGary raid (though this was mainly performed by LulzSec, a subgroup of "senior" Anon members with actual hacking skills).<ref>[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/anonymous-speaks-the-inside-story-of-the-hbgary-hack/ Anonymous speaks: the inside story of the HBGary hack: After interviews with the hackers from Anonymous who invaded HBGary Federal …] by Peter Bright (2/15/2011, 6:00 PM) ''ars Technica''.</ref>
*The 2011 Operation Darknet, resulting in the takedown of a large child pornography site, and the arrests of hundreds of purchasers of said porn.<ref>[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2057068/Hacker-group-Anonymous-publishes-internet-addresses-190-paedophiles-hi-tech-sting.html Hacker group Anonymous publishes internet addresses of 190 paedophiles in hi-tech 'sting'] (08:10 EST, 3 November 2011) ''[[Daily Mail]]''.</ref>
*The 2011 PlayStation Network outage, which they denied for a while, before finally taking credit in the wake of the 2014 PSN outage perpetrated by Lizard_Squad.<ref>[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/04/anonymous-goes-after-sony-makes-it-personal-very-personal/ Anonymous goes after Sony, makes it personal… ''very'' personal: Not content simply to flood Sony's websites this week, some members of …"] by Nate Anderson (4/7/2011, 12:17 PM) ''ars Technica''.</ref>
*Operation Payback, a retaliatory attack on credit-card companies that refused to service accounts belonging to Wikileaks.
*Operation Ferguson, in which Ferguson, [[Missouri]] Police Chief Jon Belmar was doxxed in retaliation for the August 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown.
*The Steubenville [[rape]] case, in which they doxxed the football players responsible as well as several police officers that they believed to have covered up the scandal.
*The 2014-15 hacking of the [[Ku Klux Klan]] America twitter feed, resulting in the doxxing of several members of the organization's senior staff.
*In 2016, Anonymous participated in attacks against [[Hillary Clinton]] and [[Donald Trump]].
*After a four-year period of inactivity, Internet users claiming to be affiliated with Anonymous came out in support of the 2020 [[George Floyd]] Protests and hacked the Minneapolis and Buffalo Police Department websites.<ref>https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52879000</ref> However, doubt has been raised on whether hackers are truly affiliated and the attacks themselves have been noted to be rather crude.
*On May 31, 2020, a person or group claiming to be part of Anonymous published a series of tweets and posted to a Scribd account alleging numerous serious crimes against an array of people, such as claiming to have receipts of Donald Trump participating in child molestation with [[Jeffrey Epstein]] and [[Princess Diana]] being murdered for discovering the British Royal Family's involvement in sex trafficking.<ref>https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/anonymous-is-back-and-has-proof-against-trump-epstein-the-royal-family-and-many-more-2646765.html</ref> These posts were deleted, although screenshots were saved by Internet users.
*Operation EpikFail, an attack on the far right hosting provider [[Epik]] (having serviced websites like [[8chan]] and ''[[The Daily Stormer]]'' in the past) was revealed on September 13<sup>th</sup> 2021, releasing all information associated with the company, including credit card details and numerous subpoenas the registrar had been served by the US Federal Government.<ref>[https://www.dailydot.com/debug/anonymous-hack-far-right-web-host-epik/ Anonymous says it will release massive trove of secrets from far-right web host], ''Daily Dot'', September 14<sup>th</sup> 2021</ref> The contents of the hack would be released the following day.<ref name=epikfailwapo>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/21/epik-far-right-hack-anonymous/ Huge hack reveals embarrassing details of who’s behind Proud Boys and other far-right websites. Researchers say it will allow them to gain important new insights into how extremists operate online] by Drew Harwell et al. (September 21, 2021 at 1:58 p.m. EDT) ''The Washington Post''.</ref> On September 29<sup>th</sup>, Anonymous released the "/b/ sides" to the hack, containing a full dump of Epik's server.<ref>[https://www.dailydot.com/debug/anonymous-new-epik-leak/ New leak of Epik data exposes company’s entire server], ''Daily Dot'', September 29<sup>th</sup> 2021</ref> Then on October 4<sup>th</sup> came a third part, "You Lost The Game", with a dump of Texas GOP data.<ref>[https://www.dailydot.com/debug/anonymous-texas-gop-epik/ Anonymous releases data on Texas GOP in latest Epik hack dump], ''Daily Dot'', October 4<sup>th</sup></ref> In total, the hack has been characterized as "[...]the biggest domain-related hack I've ever seen[...]" by a researcher from the Washington Post.<ref name=epikfailwapo></ref>

==See also==
*[[Encyclopaedia Dramatica]]
*[[Barrett Brown]]

==External links==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNO6G4ApJQY Fox11 'investigates' Anonymous], doing it wrong!
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmcItS5sZSg ''Rick Mercer Report'' on Anonymous]
*{{wpa|Timeline of events associated with Anonymous}} &mdash; a more complete timeline

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}
[[Category:4chan]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theorists]]
[[Category:Doxers]]
[[Category:Internet culture]]
[[Category:Internet kooks]]
[[Category:Organizations]]
[[Category:Political activists]]
[[Category:Scientology]]
[[Category:Trolls]]

Categories: 4chan, Conspiracy theorists, Doxers, Internet culture, Internet kooks, Organizations, Political activists, Scientology, Trolls