After reports that Pastebin was handing over IP addresses to authorities, Anonymous teamed up with the People Liberation Front to create a Pastebin alternative.
Along with the Peoples Liberation Front, hactivist group Anonymous released a statement on Tuesday announcing that it's launching a totally secure and safe alternative to PasteBin. According to the group, the new site will have no connection logs, no moderation or censorship, and no advertisements. All uploads will be encrypted by the browser using 256-bit AES encryption.
"As many might be aware, PasteBin has been in the news lately for making some rather shady claims as to what they are willing to censor, and when they are willing to give up IP addresses to the authorities," Anonymous states. "And as a recent leak of private E-Mails show clearly, PasteBin is not only willing to give up IP addresses to governments - but apparently has already given many IPs to at least one private security firm. And these leaked E-Mail's also revealed a distinct animosity towards Anonymous. And so the PLF and Anonymous have teamed up to offer a paste service truly free of all such nonsense."
Anonymous claims that all data stored on their servers will be unreadable even by the hactivist group itself (if that's possible). This means the responsibility for the legality or appropriateness of any paste lies solely with the person posting. Not only will Anonymous not police the service, but it supposedly doesn't have the power to delete posts and associated files.
"Paste services have become very popular, and many people want to post controversial material," Anonymous adds. "This is especially so for those involved in Information Activism. We feel that it is essential that everyone, and especially those in the movement - have a safe and secure paste service that they can trust with their valuable and often politically sensitive material. As always, we believe in the radical notion that information should be free."
According to the AnonPaste website, the service is based on "the open source ZeroBin software. It is a minimalist, opensource online pastebin where the server has zero knowledge of pasted data." More information on the project can be acquired by heading to this page.
Earlier this month, 28-year-old Dutch entrepreneur Jeroen Vader, owner of Pastebin, said that he currently receives on average a total of 1,200 abuse reports a day, as hackers have gravitated towards the site more frequently, posting dumps of illegally-gained personal data. The site was originally created for programmers to temporarily store and share segments of code and configuration information.
Vader also previously said that he has even discovered personal information about himself. To combat the problem, he has chosen to hire extra people to monitor the website's content, not just the items reported. "Hopefully this will increase the speed in which we can remove sensitive information," he said at the time.
Funny how people mock them, yet they still have more power than those who mock them.
They aren't out there to wreak havoc, they have a cause unlike Lulsec etc..
People really misunderstand what Anonymous is about, well the official Anonymous anyway, and not those fake Anonymous groups claiming to take down the internet or Facebook etc..
You just need to do your research before you can judge Anonymous.
I know I'm probably going to get thumbed down a ton, but some people just don't understand, they read the papers, watch the news, see others posting negative things about them when really they are reporting on copycat groups.
Anon itself isn't exactly bad, they don't abuse their power for fun.
Funny how people mock them, yet they still have more power than those who mock them.
They aren't out there to wreak havoc, they have a cause unlike Lulsec etc..
People really misunderstand what Anonymous is about, well the official Anonymous anyway, and not those fake Anonymous groups claiming to take down the internet or Facebook etc..
You just need to do your research before you can judge Anonymous.
I know I'm probably going to get thumbed down a ton, but some people just don't understand, they read the papers, watch the news, see others posting negative things about them when really they are reporting on copycat groups.
Anon itself isn't exactly bad, they don't abuse their power for fun.
I agree
If their "cause" is to push the governments of the world to constrict our internet freedom and violate our privacy in an attempt to catch these "hacktivists", then I'll go ahead and call it a success.
It's astounding to see how many blindly follow Anon without considering the collateral damage they cause. The businesses they hit may have a little PR party afterwards, but any damages they accumulate throughout the attack will simply be passed down to the consumers... us. The governments they attack will use Anon's actions as an example as to why restrictions should be placed and anonymity barred.
If you think something good will come of this, you're naive. Enjoy the spectacle and enjoy your freedoms while they last.
The restricting of the Internet has nothing to do with Anon or any hacker group. It has to do with lobby groups like the MPAA, RIAA,...
Also in your view any kind of manifestation should be illegal, independently if it's done on the web or on the streets.
You obviously don't know what activism is primarily all about: raising awareness to the issues at hand. You can't measure the success of activism via immediate results. It's also very naive to believe that Anonymous is responsible for any legislation or business decisions that restrict/infringe on human rights.
What, the past 2-3 decades haven't been a large enough sample of how much momentum the rich white men of America have gained in terms of power and wealth? Does protesting in Zucatti Park somehow rile up those in power to pass legislation that allows more access to citizen's private data on the web? Nope, that type of spying has been standard practice for atleast a decade. You could ask any of the thousands of independent journalists who have suffered the most from all this Chinese-esque govt. behavior.
Those who make statements like "Anonymous does more harm than good" are simply defending their own cowardice and feelings of hopelessness brought on by this govt.
Challenge accepted.
Paste ALL the internet!!!
I'm not even the biggest Anonymous fan, but that's one of the dumbest things I've ever read. Support them or not, you can't honestly blame Anonymous for a few stooges in the government trying to restrict the Internet, especially when those initiatives are more or less a direct result of lobbying from organizations who have no concern for the public interest. Democracy shits the bed right in front of you, and you shoot the messenger. And you wonder how the government gets so screwed up.
And also: if corporations and governments worldwide are going to continue to embarrass themselves by putting a bunch of clowns in charge of their security systems after countless warnings, that's their own problem. It's not like they're picking on people who can't defend themselves. And when it comes down to it, I'd much rather have this issue enter the public eye through a group of idealists launching attacks to make a statement than a group of thieves or terrorists doing the same thing to actually hurt people. So keep talking about freedom, you should really be thanking them for exposing the ineptitude of the people we trust to protect us before someone actually did some real damage.
Ummm, I trust them more than Facebook and Apple.
Yeah, very shady to cooperate with the authorities to catch people openly participating in criminal activities with the help of your network.
Also, I see we have quite a few Anonymous supporters here. Oh, to be so naive to think that defacing webpages is activism. That posting personal information of innocent police officers accomplishes something good. That they're anything other than a bunch of brats with delusions of grandeur and just enough skill to follow simple instructions to use tools other, more talented people wrote.
I get it, you're angry. But this kind of shit is counterproductive. Ignoring everything else, it's giving ammunition to the "censor the internet" crowd. It's certainly not the driving force, but it is helping the fear mongers trick the populace into thinking we need garbage like SOPA, PIPA, CISPA and ACTA.
Counterproductive at best.
Yeah, that's like hiring a known pedophile as a nanny for your 2 year old !
Sure bad stuff will happen on it. But plenty of good stuff has the potential to come out also.
Anonymous is a pretty fair and interesting group. It's those a part of the false anonymous that ruin the image. When the false anon claim a bogus statement that does more harm than good people who have little knowledge of anonymous will lose their trust. This is bad for anonymous because some companies will pick up on that and continue the beating by bashing any anonymous group by calling them "terrorists". Then the mindless public will believe it.
I mock them, and I understand them. I also like how some of their "members" get stupid people to run LOIC to DDOS sites and innocents get caught. You can't say Anonymous and Lulzsec aren't handin-hand, no matter what they say publically.
And their claim about not having the ability to delete the data is FUD, too...because, you know, all you need to do is SELECT the record and then delete it using whatever database tool works with their database.
But hey, keep being a fanboi. Perhaps you'll change when your private info gets out in the wild.