Sorry about me only posting this the day before the alleged attack. I meant to write this a few months ago.
Anyway, a group of Hackers called Anonymous or Anon plans to shutdown Facebook on November 5, 2011 (if you could not tell that from the title). Here's a little background: The group was formed around 2003-2004 and members, when in public, to show they are part of the group, will generally wear a Guy Fawkes mask. However, that is not really important. They usually attack websites using DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. In the past they have Anonymous has launched DDoS attacks against Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, and the Swiss bank PostFinance. Because of those attacks, the MasterCard and Visa websites were brought down on December 8, 2010. All of that information came from Wikipedia by the way.
Will Anonymous be able to shutdown Facebook?
It is possible that they could bring the site down, but I highly doubt they could completely destroy Facebook (which is what they want). Members of Anonymous, in general, are script kiddies. According to pcmag.com a scrip kiddie is "An amateur who tries to illegally gain access to a computer system using programs (scripts) that others have written. Although they may have some programming skill, script kiddies do not have the experience to write their own programs that exploit vulnerabilities. They also tend to be indiscriminate and may try to compromise any computer on the Internet they can reach." Most likely Anonymous will not completely shut down Facebook, but like I said it is possible they could bring the site down for a while. It is possible that Facebook could be down for a few hours to a few days, but I can almost guarantee that if Facebook is taken offline, it will be back up.
What should you do?
If Anonymous is able to take Facebook offline, it is possible that they could gain access to your personal information such as status updates from forever, your contact information, and possibly even your password.* For this reason I would suggest that you change your password, especially if your Facebook password is used for other accounts. If nothing happens I would assume it would be safe to change your password back on the 6th, but if you want to be on the safe side you may want to wait until the 10th or even the end of the month. I would also suggest removing any personal information from Facebook or/and anything you wouldn't want someone else to see. Again, you can add this stuff back later if nothing happens. Another thing you can do, this is for people who are worried Anonymous can take down Facebook, is download a copy of all of your Facebook data. This includes photos and videos you have shared on Facebook, your wall posts, messages, and chat conversations, and your friends' names and their email addresses. It will not include your friends photos and statuses, other people's personal info, or comments you have made on other people's posts. I mostly care for the friends list so I would be able to search them all on Google+ if Facebook were shutdown. You can download your archive of information by clicking the little drop-down arrow right next to the Home button on any Facebook page. Then click Account Settings. At the bottom of that page will be a link that says "Download a copy of your Facebook Data," click that.
This brings you to another page, just click the big green button that says, "Start my Archive." Then another confirmation page appears. Click the green button again. After that, you will get an email when your stuff is ready to be downloaded, once you get that email, download your archive.
I hope this was useful for you and provided you with some insight. If not, please leave a comment telling me what I can do better on. Thank you and have an awesome day because you are awesome!
*This is just a guess of what might happen, I do not know for sure if they will have that kind of access. If you know more than me about this please leave a comment.
