Pastebin Is Now Purging Anonymous’ Data Dumps From The Net

The hackers' impressive body of work is in jeopardy.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Over the course of the past year, Anonymous has successfully looted personal information—to the tune of e-mail logins and in some instances, even credit card data—from databases belonging to the likes of Sony, the CIA, and even the Arizona sheriff’s department. In the process, text-hosting site Pastebin essentially became an accessory to Anonymous’ crimes, as the hackers repeatedly used the site to post their findings despite no official affiliation between the two.

Now, Pastebin owner Jeroen Vader has enlisted a full-time staff to delete all of Anonymous’ hard-earned data dumps, with hopes of resuming operations as a completely legitimate entity. The rub is that Anonymous basically put Pastebin on the map, helping site traffic to grow from 500,000 monthly unique visitors to about 17 million in under two years. 

As far as Anonymous is concerned, with rumors of their own social network floating around, they should be just fine in terms of getting heard. That is, if the Feds don't come knocking first.

[via Gizmodo]

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