Pro-ISIS Facebook knockoff “5elafaBook” lasted about a day
With mainstream social media sites like Facebook and Twitter blocking groups involved with acts of terrorism, supporters of the Islamic State decided to create their own alternative. The site was called 5elafabook.com – pronounced Khelafabook, meaning “Caliphate Book.”
The domain of the website is registered under the name Abu Musab in Egypt. It stayed up for roughly one day before it was taken down, allegedly by the hacker group Anonymous, and the site’s Twitter account was also suspended. A message on the 5elafa says nothing about being hacked, instead saying that it has closed down temporarily “in order to protect the info and details of it’s [sic] members and their safety.”
“5elafabook is an independent site and not sponsored by the Islamic State,” the site says. “We reiterate that the purpose of launching the site was to clarify to the whole world that we do not only carry guns and live in caves as they imagine … we advance with our world and we want advancement to become Islamic.”
During the short timeframe that 5elafa was open, the site appeared unfinished and contained a large number of placeholder graphics and text.
“There is no secure website, even if it did belong directly to the Islamic State”
While the site is supposedly intended to be a safe space for Islamic State supporters to communicate, some of its users questioned the security of the website, worrying that it could be used by enemies to keep track of them.
“There is no secure website, even if it did belong directly to the Islamic State, because the servers are controlled by the governments, which can take all the IP addresses of those who visited the website,” wrote a user who identified himself as Taqni Minbar.
Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. have both be actively suppressing pro-ISIS accounts to inhibit communications between terrorist cells. Social media has been used by people planning terrorist attacks in the past, such as the 2013 killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby in London.
As a result of that attack, the U.K.’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament conducted an investigation into the role played by social media services in the attack, finding that if Facebook had shared the online conversations between the two attackers with the U.K., the attack may have been prevented.
Image credit: @cyberrog/Twitter
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