No Anonymous did not leak Donald Trumps Tax Returns — Don’t fall for satirical!
There’s little doubt that Anonymous is a huge movement which doesn’t have any official leadership and that is precisely the reason it often gets hijacked by malicious actors who use it for their own profit or to spread fake hacks and even highly condemnable activities like paedophilia.
A similar thing happened earlier this week when so-called Anonymous hackers claimed to have hacked into the servers of the IRS and subsequently stole and leaked tax return records of American billionaire and presidential candidate Donald Trump. However, there’s a twist because this news is fake and no one broke into the servers of the (Internal Revenue Service) IRS nor did anyone leak records on Trump that’s because Trump never released his tax returns but plans to release them once the audit is completed.
The fake news was originally posted on a satire website Free Wood Post with heading:“Anonymous Hacks IRS Database – Publishes Trump’s Tax Returns.” According to Free Wood Post’s satire article:
Screenshot shows the headline of the article from Free Wood Post
“Thursday evening, the mysterious hacker collective is known as Anonymous hacked the main database for the Internal Revenue Service. The group appeared to have a singular target — Republican Presidential contender Donald Trump. Though Trump has been criticized by both parties for his failure to produce his tax returns, he has consistently refused to do so saying, “You don’t learn anything from a tax return.” After hacking Mitt Romney’s tax returns in 2012, Anonymous clearly believes that knowledge and transparency are important to the public.”
The article got thousands of shares on Facebook and readers were celebrating the breach without noticing the site’s satirical nature.
Screenshot shows readers have no idea about the satire nature of the site / Image Source: Free Wood Post
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Snopes website also cited on the satirical article and referred to CBS report stating Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort that “I will be surprised if he puts them (tax records) out,” Manafort told the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman in a wide-ranging interview. “I wouldn’t necessarily advise him to. It’s not really an issue for the people we are appealing to.”
Hence, the bottom line is that Trump hasn’t released his tax records making it impossible for anyone to hack and leak them. However, don’t be surprised by this news. In the past, another blog also claimed that Anonymous is supporting Mr. Bernie Sanders, an American politician and Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 election but big numbers of Anonymous handles on Twitter denied supporting any politicians in the US elections.
