Text hosting site steps up enforcement
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – AUGUST 15: A demonstrator wears a mask during a protest inside the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Civic Center station on August 15, 2011 in San Francisco, California. The hacker group “Anonymous” staged a demonstration at a BART station this evening after BART officials turned off cell phne service in its stations last week during a disruptive protest following a fatal shooting of a man by BART police.
Whether it’s Anonymous, LulzSec or LulzSec Reborn, the information dissemination tool of choice for global hacker collectives has usually been pastebin.com, a site that simply hosts text. However, pastebin is no longer taking kindly to hackers using their site to publish hacked data and personal information.
Hackers use the site to post emails, passwords, phone numbers, addresses or any other choice nuggets lifted from hacked servers they’ve chosen to make available to the public. But now, in an attempt to stop the use of their site by hackers, pastebin is hiring more staff to keep an eye out for posted information that violates the site’s terms of use.
“Hopefully this will increase the speed in which we can remove sensitive information. This will give us more time to look at trending items in detail if they haven't been reported yet. Often articles contain a lot of information, and part of that can be a person's details. This does not mean straight away that it should be removed. Reading all those items, and determining which ones are hurtful, and which ones aren't, requires a lot of time. That's why we rely on the abuse report system at the moment. But there are plans to improve on this,” said Dutch entrepreneur Jeroen Vader, the owner of pastebin.com, to the BBC.
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Anonymous took notice and let it be known that they were not happy with the decision.
“Srsly Pastebin, fuck you – @Pastebin to hire staff to tackle hackers' 'sensitive' posts | http://bit.ly/HixoFQ All aboard the Censor Ship!” tweeted @YourAnonNews, one Twitter account closely associated with the Anonymous collective.
Even if pastebin closes its doors to hackers, it isn’t the only text hosting site on the internet. There are several others, look to pastebay.com for information from forthcoming hacks.