FaceBook DoSed - April 2010

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DATE:
2010-04

AFFECTED COUNTRIES:
Multiple

AFFECTED SITES:
facebook.com

EFFECT OF ATTACKS:
Users banned

SOURCE COUNTRY:
n/a

ALLEGED ATTACKERS:
Conservative Islamist activists

TYPE OF ATTACK:
Crowdsourcing exploit/unconventional DoS

ATTACK SPECIFICS:
A user with religious/political ideology disagreeable with the perpetrators is identified. A large group then swarms the account to report abuse to FaceBook in order to get the account banned.

EVENT DESCRIPTION:
Since the a FaceBook privacy policy update made more profile information public, "a group was created on Facebook (in Arabic) for the sole purpose of reporting, and thus having removed, Facebook profiles of atheist Arabs. … Once identified, the group members would then attempt to report such users." (1) Several users have been banned this way.

URLS:
1. http://jilliancyork.com/2010/04/08/on-facebook-deactivations/
2. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_new_policies_make_harrassment_easy.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29

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