Welcome to you stuff you should know friend House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and Knowles over there. So this stuff you should know. Yeah, the Web edition. Yeah, we've heard of the web Uh huh. I want to point out there's a work party going on. This is how dedicated we are. Right outside our door, people are out there drinking and eating and having a good time and drinking alcohol. We're just in here working free alcohol. Yep. Even Knolls over there eating right in front of us. Yes, thanks for that because it's making a lot easier. So um, Chuck, Yes, have you heard of Anonymous? I have? Indeed, I have heard of Anonymous as well, because you know, I read the newspaper and things like that. You're a hip, happening guy. Super um. But I didn't understand really in any way how Anonymous actually worked until researching this episode. Very interesting. I think we should say we're not experts here, probably going to get some stuff wrong. Let's just hope it's a little like mostly right rather than maybe like the Sun episode. We're sorry and advance Anonymous right, So take take your ire out on us. I think we're in good shape. Actually, I read one of their key characteristics is that they don't talk about the group, they don't disclose their own identity, and they don't attack the media. Typically they don't. There was actually an attack carried out by an anonymous offshoot named wool sec that, um, I guess you could call it an attack of the front Line PBSS frontline website. Yeah, they posted a fake news story that said Tupac was alive and well in New Zealand. I don't know if that really constitutes an attack. I guess technically it does, but that that did get some people in the media a little little nervous, like, oh, is the media now fair game? But I think yeah, for the most part, we're media. If we're anything right, I think a we have some listeners who are a nons which is what anonymous members are called. You think so absolutely, You're probably right, not a doubt in my mind. And I think they're gonna love this because they like press, they like you know, headlines, and they like for people to know what they're doing. Even though they are in the shadows as far as their identities they are, they fully claim what they do and stand behind what they do, you know. Yeah, And then I mean, I think it's pretty smart to keep their identities anonymous because there are a lot of federalities after anybody who does any kind of computer crime these days, and the laws are really draconian and really strict and really disproportionately um tough. Yes, And the government uses some of the same tactics that Anonymous uses to go after people an anonymous, which which as we'll see, really ticks Anonymous off. Yeah. They think they're big fat hypocrites basically, and they have a pretty decent case in a lot of cases. So chuckers, Um, I guess let's start at the beginning. Yeah, I don't want to do that deal where people like you never even said what Anonymous was, right. So, Anonymous is a group of activists, hacker activists. That term was coined I think in either six by a Cult of the Dead Cow member, which was an early hackers group. They really kind of set the stage in the eighties and nineties of what computer hackers and actually telephone hackers initially are meant to do. And and the idea is that um, freedom of speech and in the freedom of information is sacro sanct should not be messed with, and people who do mess with it deserve to be messed with themselves. But even that contains real Yeah, and they are. They've been described as everything from a collective um to a uh, shape shifting subculture, so that Miko kipon En called them or Bear Brown, a Texas journalist, said, uh, they're what they really are as a series of relationships. Yeah, so it's you know, it's all very secretive. It's not and we'll get into this more, but it's not an organization and where they go and meet every week with a president and of treasurer and they wear their guy Fox masks and they get together and decide what to do next. Right, which makes them really, really really difficult to take on if you're a centralized body like the US federal government, because really, and what Anonymous is is an idea and a concept and there's an ever shifting group of people that come in and out of it. And the whole idea is pretty simple. If somebody sees a wrong going on somewhere in the world, and the person and carrying out that wrong can be gotten to via the Internet, then they go and they try to rally the troops, and if enough people say, you know what, you're right, that is messed up and we should do something about it, they that that idea will have enough support that what happens is Anonymous that ends up carrying out an op an operation against that target, and there you go. Those people may never join together again for another operation, that that operation may end up becoming an even larger operation. It's totally unpredictable and it's completely fluid, and that means that if you bust some people, which the US government has done plenty of times, there's gonna be tons of other people to come take their place. Yeah, you can't kill Anonymous, uh, And what might happen is everything from something a little more lighthearted like taking over your website and replacing the banners with your own messages, to completely disabling your website altogether so no one can even access it. The writer named Brian Kelly said there are three key characteristics of the group. One an unrelenting moral stance on issues and rights, regardless of direct provocations. In other words, it's not like someone's messing with Anonymous, so they're gonna fight back. In fact, it rarely is. It's usually you know, like Westberg Baptist Church or Scientology. Uh, and that's I don't I know that that's that covers all of Anonymous. There's long almost from the beginning, there's long been fractures in the group between people who just want lulls, which is like entertaining yourself at other people's expense, basically trolling people, just a mess with them for last whatever, and others who say, no, we've got a really powerful weapon here. The Internet is serious business and we need to go um, we need to use it for like moral crusades. Basically uh number two, a physical presence that accompanies the online hacking. So don't just stop it like disabling someone's website, but get out in the streets with those Guy Fox masks. If you've seen the movie V for Fvendetta, or you know anything about the fifth of November, you know the mask that I'm referring to. Yeah. Um, And actually that mask being used by Anonymous goes back even beyond V for Vendetta. Actually there was a meme called um fail I think epic fail guy Yeah, and he was the meme. It was like a stick figure wearing the Guy Fox mask and everywhere he went. He just screwed everything up. It's cool mask. Yeah, so they were like, we'll use that mask. And number three a distinctive brand, which you know is that guy Fox mask. I mean they're great at branding. Yeah, you know that. In the in the suit and tie with a question mark in place of a head is one of their logos, which is great logo. And what is there? What is there their logline? We are Anonymous, we are legion. We do not forgive, we do not forget, expect us a little creepy. It is a little creepy. They're scaring. Uh, they're scaring people who and I'm not scared, but if you're doing something wrong, then you should be scared, you know what I'm saying. Yes, And a lot of people will say, well, no, actually there's um you know, Anonymous will come after you even if you didn't do anything really wrong. Um, that's not necessarily true. There are like offshoots to have you know, come and gone that that do believe much more in mayhem and stuff like that. But when you think of Anonymous these days, typically you do think of there is some sort of moral aspect tomension to the thing that's being carried out. And it depends on what your definition of right and wrong is too be there. Clearly a lot of people think that there anarchists that should be jailed and throw away the key. There's other people who think, no, you know what they're they're taking on the immoral corporate giants, not just corporate giants that are doing really bad things behind closed doors. Pretty interesting, Oh, it's super interesting. Should we take a break? Sure? All right, let's take a break and we'll dig in a little bit more right after this. Hey, everybody out there in podcast land, we want to alert your to what we're gonna call a podcasting event, an event like the moon landing, but for podcasting. Basically, that's right. It's a new podcast from ge Podcast Theater and Panopally called The Message. It's an eight episode series that's pretty much gonna blow your scientific mind. Yep. The Message follows the story of Nicki Tomlin, a PhD in linguistics from the University of Chicago, who follows a team of cryptologists at a research think tank called Cipher. These researchers are trying to decode a message that was received from outer space seventy years ago. It's gonna be pretty awesome, man, that's amazing. And if you want to subscribe, and you should just go to iTunes look it up or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, we'll be you and that won't we That's right available now wherever you get podcast including iTunes, g E, podcast theaters. The message. So, Chuck, let's go back to the beginning, shall we be? This whole idea of like, you know, we are legion, we do not forget, we do not forgive, expect us. That's a pretty far cry from how Anonymous ended up starting, right. Yeah. So there's this site um called four chan. Four Chan has all sorts of what are called image boards, right yeah. It was created in two thousand three by a fifteen year old and Christopher Pool. And Christopher Pool's whole thing was like, I want to have a place on the Internet that's totally censer free and anonymous. Yes self, no self censorship. No, there's nobody in charge, there's no rules, there's no nothing like that. Um, it is just whatever you want to post, whatever you want to say, you want to troll somebody troll them, and it's it's it's all. Let's just not take things too seriously, shall we? But let's also see how far we can push other people to take things seriously. And um so four chan attracted a certain kind of um net is in I guess pretty quickly off the bat and this one, this one image board in particular um b slash b slash. It's like, uh, four chan dot org slash b slashes, it's the random board, it's whatever. Um people started kind of congregating there and finding that um, they they all shared this kind of like desire to mess with people. Yeah, and then Anonymous sort of evolved out of that because there were some people saying, you know what, let's step this up a notch and let's not just goof off and have fun. Let's actually let's like actually trying to accomplish something for good. Yeah, and again that caused that caused a riff, like right from the beginning because some of the people were like, no, originally, we're doing this for fun. There was this thing called the Hebo Hotel, which is basically like a kind of a weird second life hang out that they went and infiltrated and just populated UM with characters that would like block the pool or basically just like shut down the site, take it over, just to mess with people, and it was fun. They were having fun doing it, just screwing with people, and other people said, um, no, let's use this for good. And that actually kind of came accidentally out of messing with a guy named Hal Turner. Have you heard of him? Uh? Hal Turner? Right? So Hal Turner was this um extraordinarily racist radio host and he UM got pranked by some of the original four Chun message board members, right Uh. He was getting like prank calls or whatever, and he recorded the calls and some how got the data and UM published it on his site or released it to his fans and said, hey, why don't you guys go figure out who these people are? And they figured out some of them, including some underage message board members whose parents addresses were posted now on this virulently racist radio hosts UM website. And so the people from Fortune said take that down, and he said no, and they said, okay, well that was your one warning and they went to town on this guy. And by the time they were done with Hal Turner, UM, he was off the air. He was off the air, UM and in prison for I think a couple of years, threatening federal judges. They basically went and found like all these emails and stuff and just published everything, including like his home address, all this stuff. They took like his tactic and just turned it on him a million times over. And that was the one where people said, hey, we just did something really good. We just got a racist radio host off air that was thrilling. We should use our stuff for good. And again some people said no, we're just in it for the lulls. Other people said no, we should do this morally. And then even other people said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, what are you guys doing, Like that guy had a right to free speech and you just drove him off the air. How can you possibly be proud of that? The prong that said no, there was some good moral dimension to what we just did using our computing skills for good. What we determine is good, um, is that's the direction we should go. And it kind of took off from there. It was supported by the Operation against Scientology. Yeah, that came along in the two thousand and eight. That was one of their first big ops. It's called the Channeology And basically what they came across was a video UM that we've well, I was about say, we've all seen everybody obsessed with Scientology, but to the famous Tom Cruise video where he's um, oh, he's sort of just rambling and he seems a little crazy and cookie and talking about Scientology, and it got out there and Scientology said, um, not very smartly, like, we want to remove this from the Internet, which is impossible. I can't do that because it's two thousand eight at the time, but they were doing a pretty good job of it. Apparently, Yeah, I saw it, and this was before the channelogy op so they were trying to get it down and UM anonymous basically city you know it. Now, what we're gonna do is, we're gonna we're gonna attack your website. We're gonna get your everything about Scientology off the internet. We're gonna um what's it called a di DOS attack, right, a distributed denial of service attack, which is kind of key to an anonymous op um. They attacked Google um with a google bomb for Scientology, So if you typed in dangerous cult, it directed you to the Scientology website. They had hundreds and hundreds of pizzas ordered and sent to Scientology offices worldwide, have you heard of black faxes. Yeah, they sent them jet black facts so they would just run out of the ink right over and over again. Yeah, which all you know, those are all pretty silly, little harmless um pranks. The Scientologists didn't take it that way. No, they weren't happy. In fact, I think they went to the FBI. They did, you need to look into these people, right, and so we have to we have to pause her for a second and point something out. One um. With both the hell Turner oup and Project Channology, a lot of people say, like, oh man, they went after this um, this racist uh radio host and got him off the air. So they went after Scientology, which is a roundly hated cult and and tried to drive them out of business. And the idea is it just stops there. But if you go a little further, both of those operations were based on infractions by the offending parties against the Internet. Hell Turner posted underage four chain users parents addresses on his website. Wouldn't take it down. That's a rule broken. That's why they went an after him. Scientology. They tried to censor the Internet, and Anonymous thinks of the Internet is like their Internet they're the cops of the Internet as far as they're concerned, and the Internet is not to be messed with, and they protected like that. UM. And so when Scientology tried to take that video down and was trying to sue people who kept it up, that was that was censorship ship of the Internet. That's why Anonymous went after the Internet. But again, just like the Hall Trener operation, the the Project Channology thing took on this moral dimension and Anonymous was called upon just by UM a guy named Mark Bunker, who was already an ardent critic of Scientologists, and he said, why don't you guys like use your your your what you're doing for legal productive ways, And so Anonymous called for actual physical protests of Scientology's churches around the world. Yeah, and I think now that's that's become one of their hallmarks. That's why they want to pair the activist activity with a physical presence and a YouTube video which says have you ever seen those? Yeah, they're creepy and awesome they are. They're really well done. It looks it's it's just the whole thing is like very Mr robot esque, right, And with every with every video that they released, with every operation, they release a video ahead of time saying what's gonna happen, what's going down? Right? Yeah, exactly. And it's very smart to do that because number one, um, they're they're taking account they're showing that they're accountable for their actions. They're taking accountability for it. But also it keeps them from being scapegoated, and it keeps other people from claiming uh their work, you know. Yeah. In two thousand ten, with Operation Payback, UM, they realized they found out that MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal said we're gonna stop. You won't be able to donate to wiki leaks using our services anymore. We're gonna shut that down, which in and of itself they figured was bad, but as evidence they went and found like, um skinhead websites that you could still donate to using those three mechanisms, but you couldn't donate to wiki leaks. They were like, okay, that's messed up. Yeah, so they said, you know what we're gonna do, Um, We're gonna shut you guys down. And they did. It was a cyber attack, and they disabled the home pages of Visa, master Card, and PayPal and um, you know, gloated they had their own special little smarmie messages back like U. There are some things Wiki leaks can't do. For everything else, there's operation payback. Yeah, And so like I said before, with UM, with an anonymous ops like that, people may disband and never worked together in another one, or your operation may grow to include even more stuff. An operation payback is a really good example of the ladder of those two. It started out because UM at some point the United States government hired an Indian firm, an Indian software firm UM to launch d d o S attacks on these two sites, Mega Upload and pirates Bay, and UM shut them down basically. And both of those are file sharing sites, typically illegal file sharing sites. And so the US government was using the same tactics d d o S attacks that they were also prosecuting the hackers and an Anonymous for using. But they were using it with impunity, and that really ticked Anonymous off. And we should also say what a d d o S is, right, So Chuck, it's basically it's taking when you contact a website. When you go to a website, you're contacting its server to request all the information on the page. If a bunch of people do that at once, the server becomes overloaded and the people who legitimately want to use the site can't get in, or the server becomes so overloaded the site crashes down right. So one of anonymous is key tactics is to do a distributed anallyis service where a bunch of people are doing that all at once, hitting the site to overload it. And then there's even software called the low orbit Ion Cannon which anybody can go download and use and you type in a U r L and this thing like really hits a site like it's like a bunch of people all at once hitting it with just this one computer. Um, we should say that you can be prosecuted, and many people have been prosecuted in says, to jail just for using that. Yeah, not unless you're the U. S. Government. Again, but that's what set off Operation Payback was that the government was using these the same tactic that they were prosecuting other people for. Yeah, and uh, because they didn't want any confusion, um, and for people to say, oh, yeah, well they clearly just want to download movies for free and stuff like that. They have their YouTube video where they're like, no, that's not why we're doing this, right, We're doing that because you guys are using the same taxics tactics that you're prosecuting us for for other people for exactly, and so Operation Payback. Then at about that time they found out about the Wiki League stop payment from UM PayPal and MasterCard and Visa, and they extended it even further. PayPal said it costs them five and a half million bucks. Yeah, which is a small dent and PayPal, but still it's you know, no, it is substantial. The idea though. UM. There's this really great UH documentary that's that's available for free on Anonymous official YouTube channel. I haven't seen that when this one's called the Story of Anonymous UM and it's it's pretty good. It's very straightforward, and it's got a lot of the people who were involved in the early days UM. And I think he goes up to like two thousand eleven or twelve UM, but it's definitely worth watching. But it interviews this kid who downloaded the low orbit ion cannon and engaged in UM project channelogy against scientology, right, and the FBI came to his door and arrested him, and he got like he's he I think he got like time served, so he didn't actually have to serve prison time, but he was um like he wasn't allowed near a computer for twelve months or else he would be arrested. Um And it was really bizarre punishment considering that he was just requesting the Church of Science Atology's website for its information to it to the nth degree. But that was it. He didn't make any threats, he didn't order any pizzas, he didn't do anything. And when you when you think of the other term for d d O S attacks, they're called virtual sit ins. It really kind of drives home the idea that this is a form of protest that's being harshly, harshly punished by the federal government in the US, which is really strange. Like there's a Wired article written by a guy named Tore Ecklin who's a very famous lawyer for these kinds of cases, and um, it's called America must end its paranoid war on hackers, And he really kind of lays it out there, like here's what's going on. Like most people don't realize this, but there's a there's an untoward amount of punishment being leveled at people who are protesting stuff legitimately by using things like d d O S attacks And they're going to prison for like ten years for this stuff, and that's messed up, it says, and I agree, I agree to. Uh. Some of the other things they've done. We mentioned Westboro Baptist Church UM, which a lot of people just say as a hate group in disguise as a church. I think it's labeled by by the government as such. Well, they would like take over their website and put messages of peace and tolerance. Probably really rankled them. Uh. They would pose as uh young girls online to Laura in sexual predators and then send that information to the police to expose pedophiles. Uh. What else have they done? Well, they were instrumental in the Arab spring. Yeah, they basically had a pretty large hand Anonymous did in um overthrowing the Egyptian government. Yeah, they like to top of dictators. Yes. And the reason why, specifically in Egypt that really ticked them off was Mubarik shut off the Internet. And again, just like with hal Turner, just like with scientology, just like with the government, you don't mess with the Internet if you don't want to excite uh, Anonymous, as I are right, UM, and so they they helped Egyptian dissidents by UM basically instructing them on how to get the internet back online there, how to set up like virtual networks UM that couldn't be shut down by the government. Some of them went to the point of just communicating with these people and then turning those communications into tweets for them, and then they also disseminated video of the government UM carrying out violence against protesters and spread it out to the world. They had a huge hand in the Arab spring, not just in Egypt and in Tunisia as well. Yeah, they've they've also had their hand in the the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, UM, Occupy Wall Street, UM, untold amounts of like police brutality cases or a police cover ups. Stupenville rape case, that was a big one. Yeah, in two thousand twelve, sixteen year old girl sixteen year old girl was sexually assaulted and they found out, you know what, there's a cover up going on here. So there was an offshoot called night KAY and I g h D SEC and they launched a crusade that said, you know what, here's what's going on here. There's a cover up going on. Uh, And they finally uncovered and publicized the names of two star players in the high school football team that allegedly committed this assault. That we're being covered up. So it was a big deal, they basically and and it was. That's a perfect example of an anonymous op. Right, there's an injustice in this little tiny corner of the world where Ohio meets West Virginia that no one else had ever heard about. That somebody got onto the four cham board and tell told everybody about this, and people started saying enough, people started saying we should do something about this. And um, they they left the message board, hit the I r C Internet relay chat channels right and started communicating with one another and figuring out how to launch this attack and what to do and who to attack. And then they attacked and and in the real world there were repercussions. And that's that's anonymous. This whole jam is they go do something, get a bunch of headlines. And then not only did anonymous do this, Why did Anonymous do this? Who did they do it too? Oh, we should go look at that. And now all of a sudden, this little tiny corner of where Ohio, West Virginia. Everybody's heard of and everybody's heard about it in the absolute, wet, worse terms. That's an anonymous operation. And then all the people who who were part of it disbanded. But on the other hand, UM, the data dump that Anonymous had about about Steubenville, the rape case UM contain a lot of unvetted facts and things like that, and a lot of people were unfairly treated, targeted from the docks thing that resulted. So, I mean, I guess the point is that Stephenville is a good example of how anonymous UM, even when herring out some sort of moral justice, also has a there's an amoral dimension to it, and that there's a lot of innocent people who can become casualties as a result too. There's actually a really good Gawker article about UM stuben Ville a year later. I think it was UM the town that was torn apart by what two people did or something like that. Alright, so let's uh, let's take a quick break here and we'll come back and we'll talk about who Anonymous is and uh, how you can become a member right after this. Alright, So Anonymous is UM. It's tough to define it's stuff to pinpoint because they are hiding in plain sight. There's not You can't go to anonymous dot com and and sign up for their newsletter and buy your mask in the in the store and um, say I want to become a member, just fill out this application. Uh, it doesn't work that way. You should probably not accept applications to be a part of anonymous because it's probably a setup. Yes, exactly. But there is something called a non news which does post information about ops. Uh, you're probably not gonna you're not gonna learn too much inside real information as a casual Internet browser. No. And it's more like, um, if you follow a non news on Twitter, say you may like for operation payback. Um, I think they listed like the visa site or something and they said fire at will, and um, it was a link to the low orbit ion cannon and the visa website that you post that you r l in and it was a way to just get anybody involved in the d D O S thing. The problem is is that that's that is that can be very dangerous if you're just a casual person downloading low or a bit ion canon and you're just doing this because you're having fun helping Anonymous and you're not covering your trucks in any way, shape or form. In the FBI comes and knocks on your door, you may be facing several years in jail because they're looking to make an example out of you. Absolutely no, you gotta do a lot of work in fact to even get in there. Uh. And once you find yourself um in one of these forums where there's real information being discussed, you sort of need to prove your worth uh with either ideas or specific skill or knowledge you might have. And then you may be invited to participate in one way or another as an ANON. And again, even if you are at the top of your game at at what anybody in the media would think of as like a member of Anonymous, like one of the true um, the long term members who's done a lot of ops. Um, you can still get busted. A guy named Jeremy Hammond was busted and got years or some stuff. Named Barrett Brown was busted and got five years for some stuff. And all again, all of this is just computer crime we're talking about. So again, if this is really like cranking your case, just there's a there's a lot of repercussions to this. Yeah, there's there's a misconception to that. UM it is Uh, it's a bunch of brilliant UM code writers and hackers. Apparently only about a fifth of ANNs or true hackers. UM. Who who said that? Um, there's an anthropologist, Gabriella Coleman. Actually, UM, she is an expert at Anonymous and has written several books and is in that documentary I was talking about. So only a fifth or are hackers and the rest are quote geets and protesters. But UM, apparently you don't have to be some brilliant hacker. They will call on you if you have some other skill, if you have good ideas, if you're a graphics signer, if you're have if you're a good writer, you can help put together a press release, if you're a filmmaker and you want to do these YouTube videos. There's all sorts of ways that UM, you can contribute if you want to contribute and being ANN aside from being a coder. UM and the idea that they're completely what's put out there is that they have no hierarchy whatsoever, that everyone's equal, everyone has equal footing, There is no leader whatsoever. UM. It is just this big amorphous group of a non's that isn't entirely accurate. Um, they may not have a president and vice president per se or a treasurer, but um, supposedly they do have uh, four or five people who are really good at doing what they do. So they sort of take turns emerging as the leader of a specific op maybe because then the fall of the background in another perhaps and you become a leader whether you want to be or not, based on your skills as an organizer. Yeah. Um, if you are just naturally somebody who can rally the troops, then your ops are going to be the most successful because you're gonna attract the most people, and um, you're going to attract the guy who wants to put out like a good video for it. You're gonna get the most results. You're gonna get the most information, the biggest data dumps. Just naturally, that's how it happens. And people follow like, Commander X does it did a really great job on that ops, so let's listen and hear what he does next, right, But then other people are like, well, Commander X, you need to shut your mouth because you talk to the media and even though you've been you know, in in the hacker culture since the eighties or whatever. You Um, you have a loud mouth, and that's not cool for this. So on on a message board, he could be getting deferential respect. Commander X is a real person, by the way, UM, and he could be being called opposer at the same time, and both of those comments have equal weight on the message board no matter how long Commander X has been doing this. Yeah, there's a lot of duality with anonymous UM. Some people look at him as a as a beacon of light for those who don't have a voice. UM. Attorney General UH Eric Holder in two thousand thirteen said they are a steadily increasing threat to America's economy and national security interests. Uh. People uh A, nons will say, you know what, I don't say that because we're not We're not stealing money, we're not robbing h banks digitally, we're not after financial gain at all. UM. We're out to expose people that are doing bad things for the most part. And but like you said earlier, though, when they're offshoots, there's always gonna be bad apples. I guess, yeah, there are. I mean, like, for example, the Westboro Baptist Church. They did, um, they doxed. It's where you get the person's personal information, home address, phone number, all that stuff and post it out to the masses. That's tricky and dangerous, it is, but it's Fred Phelps, so nobody really shed a tear the problem as they also did that the Libby Phelps, who was Fred Phelps, his granddaughter who had very publicly distanced herself from the church and denounced it and said, I don't agree with what my grandfather des ert says. She's still got docs out there and my personal information exactly. So so yeah, there's a lot of like lull sec is another another example they they were They were this group I think of like six or seven people, um, who carried out what's commonly called fifty Days of Mayhem where they just went crazy. They just hit whoever they wanted. The Uh. This this business called Magnets dot com got hit because they called their customer service reps and asked them how magnets work, and the customer service reps couldn't tell them, so they launched an operation against them. They should have told them listen to our podcast on Max totally should have I assume that our podcast probably spurred that phone call to begin with. But um, so, yeah, there are groups that do this. But then overall, if you think about Anonymous, it is they do the ones that get the most pressed, the ops they could most press, usually have the most moral to mention, it makes Anonymous seem the most robin hoodie. Like the Ku Klux Klan dump, Yeah, that just happened within the past couple of weeks, and they went after the clan and um got doses on several hundred members. And I don't think there were any huge revelations necessarily, and there there were a few, Okay, so there were some. But the point is they went after the clan and they basically shined a light on the idea that the clan is still very much around. Yeah, but there were also people, I think there was a senator or congress person or something that was exposed that were like, I have never been involved in the clan. So there was there was a separate dump that occurred before the actual one that Anonymous came. Because they can communicate with the media, they're able to do this and they said, that wasn't us, that's not our research. We can't vouch for that interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, like I said, that's that's tricky business. When you're exposing people, those are real lives. Um, you better make sure you've done your homework and you've gotten it right, you know what I mean. And I think Anonymous thinks they're getting it right. Yeah. I think they tend to think that. Sure, Like I don't think they're just generally going about their business willy nilly because they want to be effective to not get a bad rap. They don't want to have anything that people can use against them, you know, to say like, well look what they did here. They were completely wrong. Yeah. At the same time, though, there is definitely a thread of you know, appreciating Mayhem for Mayhem's sake, and with some people who who work under the anonymous banner as well well, which is what you're gonna get when you're not a well defined like group with boundaries. When you're this a morphous everyone is anonymous type of thing, you know you're gonna have that happen. But I think it is kind of a pretty astounding that despite no central authority whatsoever, it isn't just more like crazy and frenetic and just way more Mayhem centric that it actually does carry out these ops that do have like repercussions that the average person can look at and say, I kind of agree with that, Like I agree with the outcome of this. I think somebody got there due who had it coming anything else I do. There's one last thing, so that the name anonymous came from four Chan. If you log into four chan, you can post anonymously, like you said I think early on. The whole reason why it's because that just helps the keep people from self censoring because you're posting anonymously. But then the this joke kind of developed on four Chan that Anonymous all these people with the thing that the anonymous handle, we're really just one omnipresent person. And that's where the using that term for these ops, this group, this collective group came from. Did you ever go to Fortune? Did you check it out? I've never felt so old than when but even Reddit does that to me. I just go to Yeah, read it's definitely look like that, and I'm just like I don't even know where to look, you know, I feel like an old man for sure. Yeah, And I'm like I don't understand what this means. I'm sure it's hilarious, but I don't understand it. Some of it's funny on its face, for sure, but others just like, yeah, I spent a little time on four Chune earlier today just sort of looking around and yeah, it's not my bag. But people are into it. They definitely are. Yes, Uh, you got anything else, dude? No. I thought I enjoyed this and I thought it was good. Oh we left out the HP Gary thing. What's that? So? So in a few years back, this security company named HB Gary. The CEO named Aaron Barr came out to the Financial Times and said, I've infiltrated Anonymous. I know who all the top guys are, and I'm going to the FBI with it. So some people in Anonymous, so let's go see what this guy's talking about. Cracked into their website, found out he was totally full of it, but found a presentation that's that had all these dirty tricks for undermining Anonymous and wiki leaks and like getting people to turn on one another all that. So they're like, we're gonna go after this guy because he was He was publicly boasting too that he was going to take down Anonymous, and that is not a smart thing to do. No, And there's actually in that Anonymous UM documentary. Uh, there's some hilarious clips from Stephen Colbert explaining what this guy did and equated it too. He put his penis into a hornet's nest and this is gonna turn out about the same way and it did physical reaction. Yeah. Image, So the guy the CEO ends up stepping down a CEO and like drops out of public. They totally just really got the guy and and really I think they Yeah, it was that was a dumb thing to do on his part, But not only was it dumb for him personally, it also gave Anonymous a really great opportunity to show just how you don't mess with Anonymous. You know, that was it. That's Anonymous. If you want to know more, seriously, go check out that UM. Well, every documentary you can see that's over an hour and a half long is probably pretty good. And then also there's this UM there's a presy by a person named Choi Ju Hook called Copy of Anonymous, which is a really great basic explainer on Anonymous and how it works and functions. By it sounds like somebody who's at least hung out with members if if isn't one himself for herself, I bet you you've hung out with a member of Anonymous. We may have one or two in this office. You never know my bunnies on Ben Bowlin sure stuff, but he's such an obvious choice. It's got to be somebody wouldn't think they don't want you to know? Yeah, Like is it you, Chuck? It's yeah, it's like it's a Holly from stuff you mis't right, Yeah, she loves star wars and activists. If you want to know more about Anonymous, also, you can go type that word into the search part how stuffworks dot com instance, they said search parts time for listener mail. Yeah, and speaking of mail, if you are an Anonymous member, right us because I want to know something. I don't know if I'm gonna buy it though somebody's like, I'm an Anonymous dear Josh and Chuck. Yeah, love Arey from Gary Jones at No. But if I get some weird and cryptic thing, uh, I don't know. I think we'll mem what if we like posted video to YouTube and be awesome unless it's saying like we're coming after you guys know, did we do a good job? Um? All right listener mail, what is this? Um, I'm just gonna call it from an English listener. Hey, guys, I'm just an eighteen year old from the UK, but you have my most sincere congratulations for running the bets podcast out there. And I've listened to Cereal right. Your flowing conversation style works so well and it's always a pleasure listening to you. Uh. And you guys have to compete with British radio voices, so that's saying something. It really is because they are class. Having burned through eight hundred two episodes and seven months, I finally ended in a wonderful, spooky spectacular. You have been there with me through break up, six flights, eight long distance trains, three A levels, which is some sort of education thing in England. Oh, I think that's um like exams finals, four new jobs, one bite crash, one results day. All of this in six months, uh, seven months, an InterRail trip around Europe and a very lonely night in Brighton train station. Four jobs in seven months? Is this guy? Hit man? You have four new jobs? Huh? Interesting? It's been a crazy time in my life, sounds like it, and you've been the constant that's kept me saying so big, thanks to all of you. That's awesome. I show no favoritism. You've made it, Barrel, I think you're saying, like between us, Yeah, you run an awesome podcast. Keep it up, look forward to the next eight hundred. Do you have one question? Do you guys get along when the mic is off? Fantastic chemistry and I've always wondered if it overcomes from your friendship or if you two are just the most professional people ever. I've gone on too long. All the best, Hector Leech Clay. Thanks. Oh that's a British name. Uh, you guys better come to the UK for a live show. We are yes, and of course we get along off the air. We would not you've seen our TV show. You know we're not actors. We would not be able to take our way through this. Check has been gazing into my eyes this whole episode. Yeah, if it was this not some Sunshine Boys situation? Was that? Um? Is that George Burns? Just feel google at people Sunshine Boys. That'll it'll all become clear. Nice good reference. Thanks Hector Leech Clay Esquire the third Yeah, or he's Hector Leech from Clay. I don't know it's Clay at place? Is it Leech hyphen clay because that would be his last name, but that they know, they do that a lot over there, big on that. Yeah, um, well thanks a lot, Hector. We appreciate that, and thank you for not playing flavors. Isn't that the ideal human somebody who appreciates us both equally? Sure? Sure so um. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast tweet. You can join us on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, book book, You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, us to how stuff Works dot com type type, and as always, joined us at at home on the web Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com. Yah