You may remember the incident reported by wired.com one year ago in which Anonymous posted the home address, phone number and cell numbers of a Stockton 59-years-old man who barely knew anything about computers, claiming he was a member of the hacker group who targeted them in retaliation of Anonymous hacking of Scientology sites. The poor man then started to receive daily obscene and threatening phone calls. After receiving a death treat, he and his wife got really scared because their address was posted as well.
Now this is happening again, this time towards a 15-years old boy who dares make a decency campaign, which Anonymous has decided is "threatening free speech". Here is the article in full, which of course you can also read through the link.
'No cussing' teen faces net hate campaign:
'No cussing' teen faces net hate campaign
07:00 AEST Sun Jan 18 2009
2 hours ago
By Shaun Davies, ninemsn
A boy's crusade to stop swearing has drawn the unwanted attention from notorious internet group Anonymous.
McKay Hatch's No Cussing Club, which encourages teens to "chill on the profanity", claims to have over 20,000 members worldwide.
Hatch, a 15-year-old from South Pasadena in California, garnered wide media coverage for his anti-swearing campaign, including a appearance on Dr Phil.
But at the beginning of the year, Hatch's email inbox began clogging up with hate mail from an unknown source.
Pizza and porn deliveries became commonplace for his family, who eventually called in the FBI after numerous receiving death threats and obscene phone calls.
Anonymous appears to be behind the attacks, with threads on sites such as 4chan.org and 711chan.org identifying their members as the culprits.
And the pain may not yet be over for the Hatch family — Anonymous appears to be planning future raids and has threatened to "wipe this cancer [the No Cussing Club] from the face of the internet".
In one 4chan thread, a number of users boasted about sending bogus pizza deliveries and even prostitutes to the Hatch's house, although it was impossible to verify if these claims were genuine.
The same thread also contained a credit card number purported to be stolen from Hatch's father, phone numbers, the family's home address and Hatch's instant messenger address.
In an interview with US network ABC, Hatch's father said the boy had been reduced to tears by the flood of messages from "bullies".
Hatch himself defended his anti-swearing campaign, which his enemies were deriding as an attack on freedom of speech. "A lot of people were saying I was taking away their freedom of speech … All I was trying to do was raise awareness," the teen said.
It appears that the earnestness of Hatch's campaign, including his faux-gangster rap video “No Cussing Club Song”, may have drawn Anonymous's ire.
A line has since been posted on the No Cussing Club website, claiming that Hatch is the "most bullied boy on the internet".
Anonymous is perhaps best known for its extended campaign against Scientology and has been embroiled in a number of other controversies.
It was a 4chan user who hacked Sarah Palin's email and posted it to the site's "random" section, otherwise known as /b/, during the US election.
Anonymous is difficult to define — less an organised group than a loose affiliation of certain websites.
When enough of these users decide to take action against something or someone, they will do so in the name of Anonymous.
The group has no leaders, no set agenda and has a tendency to focus on soft targets for its own amusement.
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