Talk:Anonymous (hacker group)

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This page is not a forum for general discussion about Anonymous (hacker group). Any such comments may be removed or refactored. Please limit discussion to improvement of this article. You may wish to ask factual questions about Anonymous (hacker group) at the Reference desk.

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Frequently asked questions

Many of these questions arise frequently on the talk page concerning Anonymous.

To view an explanation to the answer, click the [show] link to the right of the question.

Q1: I have an issue with Anonymous being referred to as a "group".

A1: The purpose for the disambiguation in the title is so that readers know we are not talking about Anonymous (the concept of being unknown). If you have a better suggestion, please include it in your comments.

Q2: Why isn't the most recent activity associated with Anonymous presented here?

A2: Wikipedia is not a news service or a promotional space for events. Important topics related to Anonymous may be included once they have become notable and are reported upon by verifiable media sources known for accuracy. These sources can then be cited within the article.

Q3: Why isn't an important topic related to Anonymous included in this article?

A3: This article is a work in progress. A topic related to Anonymous may simply go unnoticed by Wikipedia editors, lack notability, lack verifiable citations, or all of the above. If a topic related to Anonymous is notable, please help by editing and include it in the article if you can, but remember to try to confirm the accuracy of the topic with verifiable citations. If you wish to remain anonymous then just type what you would like to see in the article on the talkpage, so others can cut and paste for you. Try to tell us the web address, book, newspaper, or wherever you found the information, this will help your edit to last longer.

Q4: A particular wing of Anonymous is not liked, respected, or appreciated by another wing of Anonymous. Some consider specific sub-groups to be a splinter organizations, and no longer part of Anonymous. As such, their actions shouldn't be attributed to Anonymous. Why isn't this contention mentioned in the article? Why aren't the actions by these groups excluded from this page?

A4: See answer to previous question. There is currently no way to discern in clear terms who comprises various sub-groups of Anonymous, and individuals may only be judged by their actions in a given situation. A "member" of Anonymous may act as a cause oriented figure in a particular project, and then switch to other projects or non-participation in minutes, without a paper trail to document this. This often presents media sources with confusion, leaving attribution of actions unclear. Lacking citation, this article cannot discern which individuals and sub-groups are and are not members of Anonymous at a given time, and which actions are and are not attributed to Anonymous. Strict sourcing is necessary to reference activities as ventures carried out by Anonymous. This article may reference schisms and group infighting, but cannot exclude any wing of Anonymous from representation if verifiable sourcing is provided.

Q5: Can I leave a message for Anonymous here?

A5: Sorry, but no. This talk page is only for discussing improvements to the Anonymous article. The members of the group do not monitor this page and therefore will not see any messages directed to them. Messages left for Anonymous will be removed as violations of WP:NOTAFORUM.

This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report 2 times. The weeks in which this happened:

On 27 July 2009, Anonymous (hacker group) was linked from Slashdot, a high-traffic website. (Traffic)

All prior and subsequent edits to the article are noted in its revision history.

Sourcing on Aubrey Cottle being a "founder"

I'm having trouble with sourcing on the infobox about him being a founder (assuming a collective can even have it), currently it links to an article on "Techtimes" which appears pretty badly written, in parts reading almost like autotranslated, by one "Jamie Pancho". It cites an article on The Atlantic, which says "When 4chan began cracking down on organizing raids, Anonymous migrated to Cottle’s copycat site, 420chan, which he’d created to discuss his principal interests: drugs and professional wrestling. And Cottle became the de facto leader of Anonymous, a role he relished. It was during this time, Cottle told me, that he codified a set of half-joking rules for the group that became known as the infamous “Rules of the Internet.” They included “3. We are Anonymous 4. Anonymous is legion 5. Anonymous never forgives.”

The only source of him being a "founder" then is himself, with the article contradictingly stating Anonymous was already established in 4chan before they migrated to 420chan.

A search for his name and Anonymous only returns these chained articles. A search for his alias Kirtaner and anonymous, fails to return any relevant result. For a Good article to make such bold claims with this poor sourcing is questionable at least. Loganmac (talk) 04:15, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I'm in agreement with you here, I don't think Cottle can be listed as the founder when he's the only one to say he is and it quite clearly states that it existed before hand anyway before joining 420chan. I think he should be removed from the infobox, if anything a bit can be included in the article itself about his claim to it but you can say it's confirmed he is. NZFC^(talk)^(cont) 11:23, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Gregg Housh, who was considered the defacto resource on the early period of the group, confirmed Cottle was the founder on Twitter and the article in The Atlantic would have been above and beyond fact checked. There's also a deluge of press now covering these points. It's about to hit saturation point. People keep making the mistake of conflating Anonymous on 4chan with the hacker group proper. There is a lot of retconning in order, basically. 174.88.91.209 (talk) 12:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/founder-of-hacker-group-anonymous-reveals-his-ultimate-endgame-11604336926 https://www.thefocus.news/tech/aubrey-cottle/ https://www.9news.com.au/national/founder-of-anonymous-hacker-group-aubrey-cottle-says-taking-down-qanon-in-reddit-ama/f104e6d5-6f7b-4df2-a178-1821ce921376 174.88.91.209 (talk) 12:14, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

afaik 9news isn't a reliable source. I contacted the author of the Atlantic article and he explicitly said the founder claim isn't a statement of fact, just Aubrey's word (the wording on the article already states "Cottle told me"). Marketwatch and other are all basing their articles on The Atlantic story. The history of Anonymous as a collective is already properly sourced to existing in 2005 at least , while Cottle mentions he started "the beginnings" of it "in December 2006" in a previous AMA, where he fails to call himself a founder [1]

By then there had been multiple Habbo and Second Life raids as documented by VICE, Wired, here and here. The article on the Habbo raids has more sources on this, as well as the entry on Know Your Meme.

VICE says "by 2004, users of 4chan's /b/ message boards were collectively referring to themselves as "Anonymous" whenever they organized internet pranks (the name comes from 4chan users posting anonymously on the site, as you don't have to register for an account). It is unclear which was created first: their catchphrase poem—"we are Anonymous, we are Legion, we do not forgive, we do not forget, expect us"—or the black and white graphic of the headless man in the suit that became their logo.

Either way, both were in heavy circulation by 2005 whenever the collective came together to harass people, like teen girls who had turned down or cheated on a 4channer, MySpace users with cringe-worthy profile photos, or animal abusers. At this point, Anonymous was mostly for dicking around" Loganmac (talk) 13:56, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be a self serving claim without any real corroboration. We should remove it. - MrOllie (talk) 13:59, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who was around back then, there was a lot of confusing misreporting on the origin of the hacker group this article represents. Consider the timeline of anonymous article as your flashpoint, Aubrey was basically driving that. Gregg Housh’s statements backing him up are not insignificant whatsoever and are in essence the most solid confirmation here. Either way, his name has been present on this article for quite some time now and it is questionable that suddenly detractors have shown up after a clearly demonstrated vendetta on Reddit. 2605:8D80:669:3E37:ACAC:1CF1:BB66:70E0 (talk) 15:04, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would advise you to please assume WP:GOODFAITH, we can only go with what reliable sources say. Gregg Housh has already said he doesn't speak for Anonymous as a whole, with HuffPost saying he's a controversial figure for the group and that he doesn't speak for the entirety of it, a claim he repeated for an interview with CNN. In his book summary, he mentions "Anonymous features no distinct or recognized organization or leadership", a statement he repeated to Salon: “There is no leadership. There can’t be. That is the point of it all. That is why things like OpLastResort happen after all of these 'big arrests.' For those reasons it is absolutely ridiculous to say that Anon's leadership has been dismantled,” Housh appears to have been constantly reached for being one of the only publicly identified individuals in the early days. Loganmac (talk) 16:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Leader is not the same as founder. Housh has also publicly confirmed that he intentionally protected any information on Cottle’s involvement for his safety on Reddit and you can contact him via Twitter to confirm this. Yes, this is a lot of very confusing news, but it is verifiable. An earlier comment said they asked an article author about the claims, this is also before Housh publicly confirmed the veracity of it. I suggest reaching out to him. 2605:8D80:669:3E37:ACAC:1CF1:BB66:70E0 (talk) 16:19, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Our article was based on the Atlantic story, and the author has disavowed that claim. We're going to have to wait for some other reliable source to become available (if one does). We cannot base claims in our article on 'Go ask Housh about it' or 'check reddit'. MrOllie (talk) 16:23, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 24 November 2020

This edit request to Anonymous (group) has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In the Operation Nigeria section, there is this sentence with four citations:

Anonymous even shutted down banks! [180] [181] [182] [183]

The grammar is poor, please change to something like:

"The websites of many banks were even compromised!" "Anonymous even successfully compromised the security of banks!" SonOfLain (talk) 19:21, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Done – Thjarkur (talk) 21:04, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 28 February 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 18:07, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Anonymous (group) → Anonymous (hacker group) – WP:PRECISION : Anonymous (band) is also a "group". Also "(group)" on en.wp is the dab used by music editors for boy-bands. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:57, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Move to Anonymous per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. This article gets 10 times the pageviews of the next most sought article and over 80% of all views. It's clearly what most readers expect at the title. This will also solve the issue of any possible confusion with the band. Move the dab page to Anonymous (disambiguation). - Station1 (talk) 23:09, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Oppose this suggestion, the internet group is clearly not WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in terms of long-term significance.--Ortizesp (talk) 23:41, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also oppose this suggested counterproposal, Anonymous is a populous dab page, and the internet group is clearly not WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in terms of long-term significance. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:34, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose while a band of 4 people may technically be a group of people I doubt anyone looking up this term would be looking for the band.--70.27.244.104 (talk) 06:15, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nomination. An imprecise and extremely broad stand-alone parenthetical qualifier, "(group)" definitely needs enhancement. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 10:10, 2 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom. Also, most certainly not the primary meaning of the word. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:57, 5 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Edit request - 29 June 2021 : Irrelevant reference

Reference 3 seems to be unrelated to where it is linked, and furthermore only mentions "Anonymous" very marginally. I would remove it entirely :)

Sebpiq (talk) 14:54, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request - 29 June 2021 : Link to Operation Payback article

Link the section about "Operation Payback" to the main article Operation Payback.

Sebpiq (talk) 14:56, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 16 August 2021

It is requested that an edit be made to the semi-protected article at Anonymous (hacker group). (edit · history · last · links · protection log)

This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, that is, specify what text should be removed and a verbatim copy of the text that should replace it. "Please change X" is not acceptable and will be rejected; the request must be of the form "please change X to Y".

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Request to add some of Anonymous' 2021 associations. Specifically, there are multiple articles on "Anonymous" threatening Elon Musk over Bitcoin which would be an interesting snippet of history. Based on the assessment of the various news articles, I would say that the threat cannot be validated to the main group, however it's interesting nonetheless as Elon Musk actually took the time to respond to the threat with a meme.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2021/06/06/did-anonymous-really-just-threaten-elon-musk-over-viral-bitcoin-tweets/?sh=4d52db143279

Elon Responds: https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/elon-musk-mocks-hacktivist-group-anonymous-with-meme-after-their-viral-clip-101623742808031.html Johnjhacking (talk) 15:47, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]