Anonymous blamed for Facebook outage, group denies involvement

A little over a while ago, we wrote to you about the Facebook outage that recently affected a few of our folks from different parts of the world. But as far as the problem was concerned, we never knew what the cause was. Facebook acknowledged the problem and it released a statement via email explaining what happened: “Some users briefly experienced issues loading the site. The issues have since been resolved and everyone should now have access to Facebook. We apologize for any inconvenience,” Facebook said. The social networking giant, however, didn’t offer any technical explanation.

On the other hand, downforeveryoneorjustme.com, a site that tracks outages, flashed an info citing that Facebook was down since early Friday morning but has since resumed around 9 A.M. on the same day (we’re not sure how accurate that tracking is). But a new angle to the issue recently emerged when the Internet activist group known as Anonymous sent a tweet yesterday suggesting that the group is behind the outage. The group’s Twitter account, YourAnonNews, tweeted “Oh yeah… RIP Facebook a new sound of tango down bitches” and “Looks like good old FaceBook is having packet problems”.

While web reports have been quick to suspect Anonymous as being behind the outage, the group actually never claimed responsibility. On the contrary, it sent a follow-up tweet today that said “Anonymous would never attack Facebook, we have said this many times. Why would we attack a tool that many anons use to spread info?” Sources familiar with the group reportedly told TechCrunch that the group wasn’t the source of the outage. A Facebook spokesperson also confirmed to the publication saying, “I can confirm that yesterday’s issues were not the result of a denial-of-service attack.”

Gene Ryan Briones
Categories: Web
Tags: Facebook