By now everyone has heard about the weekend verdict in the Steubenville Rape case: Two teen Steubenville High Big Red football stars, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, charged with the rape of the 16-year-old girl known as “Jane Doe”, and the posting of related images on social media, were found guilty of the charges. What many don’t know, however, is that KnightSec, a branch of the hacking group Anonymous, outraged by what they saw as a cover-up, played a role in bringing the online materials to the attention of prosecutors and the court. And that the Ohio Attorney General is calling for a grand jury to force the sixteen other teen witnesses to divulge what they know about who else was involved. (Includes graphic video, images, and texts.)

Hacktivist collective Anonymous, citing Operation Last Resort (#OpLastResort and #WarHead1) took control of the website belonging to the United States Sentencing Commission Saturday with a clear message: the government must agree to reforming the legal process and allowing for freedom of information, or else the collective will begin releasing internal documents that they claim they collected from the systems of the Department of Justice (DOJ). They cited the recent suicide death of Internet activist and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz as motivation for this latest mission.

Hunter Moore, the guy who invented revenge porn, is at it again and this time Internet hacktivist group Anonymous, specifically Kentucky Anonymous (@kyanonymous), has vowed to not let him get away with it in a campaign they’ve dubbed “Operation Hunt Hunter,” or, #OpHuntHunter. Despite the fact that he sold his original revenge porn website IsAnyoneUp.com, where users could submit naked pictures of others without consent, to an anti-bullying organization, and wrote what appeared to be a heartfelt letter apologizing for the mayhem his site caused, he told BetaBeat.com, “I literally had a half pound of cocaine on a fucking table with like 16 of my friends and we were busting up laughing taking turns writing this stupid letter.”

The Hacktivist group ‘Anonymous’, most recently best known for its role in attacking sites that withdrew services from Wikileaks after the infamous Wikileaks leak of the U.S. State Department documents, has announced that they intend to hack Facebook and take Facebook down – apparently permanently – on November 5th. (November 5th is Guy Fawkes Night (or Guy Fawkes Day, depending on your bent) in the U.K., honoring the day that, back in 1605, Guy Fawkes was caught beneath the House of Lords, guarding a cache of explosives intended to be used to assassinate King James I.)

Earlier this month, the NATO Rapporteur (and we explain what that is) released a draft report addressing, among other things, the scope and impact of the leaking of the Wikileaks documents by Private Bradley Manning, the threats and actions by “hacktivists” (activist hackers engaging in “hacktivism”), including the hacker collective known as “Anonymous”, and what counter-measures NATO and other such bodies might take.

Jonathan McRae was arrested while wearing an Anonymous mask during a public hearing regarding election and voting issues in Maricopa county, Arizona. Note that we did not say that he was arrested for wearing the Anonymous mask, but rather while wearing the Anonymous (Guy Fawkes) mask. And, in fact, the mask wasn’t even covering his face (he had it up on his head – see the below video link).

The hacker group known as Anonymous has declared cyber war on ISIS (the Islamic State, which also goes by ISIL and Daesh). While Anonymous has actually stated this previously, they have stepped up their game, and their public announcements of this war on ISIS, following last Friday’s attacks in Paris. In response to the announcement, ISIS released their own statement, calling Anonymous “idiots”.

If you’re tired of the privacy concerns of Facebook, the anonymous social network called Social Number may be right up your alley. Giving the question, “what’s your number” a whole new meaning, Social Number lets users pick a user number, which is their only identifier on the social network. That means users will not have user names or identifying photos, just assigned numbers.

Personal email addresses from 235 million Twitter accounts hacked over the last several years have been exposed, according to Israeli security researcher Alon Gal — making many vulnerable to having their accounts further compromised or identities exposed if they have used the site anonymously to criticize oppressive governments, for instance….

No matter where your sympathies lie, nobody can deny that the events in Charlottesville on Saturday were tragic. As tensions that have been simmering for months erupted to a full boil this past weekend, opposing forces have been rallying their respective mobs in ways that harken back to the 1950s and ’60s in this country, and even the 1860s and ’70s. But with a twist: this time the mobs have taken not just to the street, but to social media, and vigilante justice has become online vigilante justice.

For those of you hearing about the Ashley Madison hack and wondering who the heck Ashley Madison is, well, first of all, it’s not a who, it’s a what, or, if you like, a where. Ashely Madison is ashleymadison.com, and it’s a ‘dating’ site for married people. Yes, it’s a hookup site for married people who want to play around or have an affair.

Behavioral advertising, also known as behavioral targeting or behavioral marketing, is when an advertiser or advertising server hooks into the data that is stored by your browser or app, to serve you interested based ads. These things tell the advertisers and networks things such as what searches you recently conducted, what sites you visited, etc.. Behavioral advertising is increasingly being used by advertisers and their publishers (Facebook just announced they are using behavioral advertising), and consumers are becoming increasingly concerned for their privacy. So how can you opt-out of behavioral advertising?

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) “Here I am” technology will be required in every car in the future, if the U.S. Government’s plans come to fruition. v2v technology is a wireless technology similar to 802.11, such as what you may be using to read this article, only it is a vehicle-to-vehicle intranet, rather than the Internet.

AT&T has updated their polices to allow them to collect and sell data from your phones (this most especially applies to smartphones such as the iPhone and Android phones). This includes your location, and what ‘groups’ you may belong to based on geolocation. Here is how to mostly opt out from AT&T collecting and selling your data.

YouTube now strongly encourages real names before leaving a comment. As the subject of cyber-bullying continues to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind, theories have been swirling that people are more emboldened to make inflammatory comments online because they can hide behind anonymity. Now YouTube is proposing to counteract that by encouraging users to use their real names when leaving comments on YouTube videos.