Anonymous criticized for declaring ‘full scale cyber war’ against ISIS

Anonymous criticized for declaring ‘full scale cyber war’ against ISIS

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An Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account has declared a “full-scale cyber war” against the Islamic State (formerly known as Isis) with the aim of tracking down members of the group throughout the world who “continue to use Twitter for propaganda”.

The new Operation Ice ISIS campaign was launched over the weekend with a Twitter account declaring: “Welcome to Operation Ice #ISIS, where #Anonymous will do its part in combating #ISIS’s influence in social media and shut them down.”

However, Yahoo news is reporting that as soon as the campaign was launched, other members of the Anonymous collective voiced concerns that starting such a campaign could put members of Anonymous based in Syria and Iraq in danger.

Another influential Anonymous account – @YourAnonCentral – was among those strongly criticizing the account, claiming that “people who have been friendly in the past or supportive of Anon can be targeted for it.”

iHLS Israel Homeland Security

While the account has retweeted a picture of what looks like an IS Twitter account being hacked by Anonymous, the account in question is in fact a parody account.

Commander X?

The account also posted a video claiming to show a member of IS taking part in the Ice Bucket Challenge (ice bucket challenge: a video clip featuring oneself awash, fully or partially clothed, with ice water as a token of support for ALS; G.A., i-HLS newsdesk)), but this has also been shown to be a fake.

It is unclear who is behind the account though some suspected that it was Commander X (aka Christopher Doyon), a well-known member of the online movement who last year claimed to have quit Anonymous.

However this link has been denied by other accounts previously associated with Doyon.

The i-HLS newsdesk would like to emphasize this is not an actual ISIS video-release: