# Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, and other sites attacked. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 6, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-facebook-livejournal-and-other-sites-attacked/505543 "2009-08-06T16:58:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-facebook-livejournal-and-other-sites-attacked/505543/1 "2009-08-06T16:58:04Z")
Looks like there’s been a bit of a denial of service attack today affecting many popular social networking sites. > **[Twitter hit by denial-of-service attack - CNN.com](http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/06/twitter.attack/)** > > Internet attacks shut down the social networking site Twitter for about two hours on Thursday morning and caused glitches in other sites like Facebook and LiveJournal, a blogging site. It’s slightly amusing, though, seeing a lot of my friends’ Facebook status’ going crazy with frustration. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2009, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-facebook-livejournal-and-other-sites-attacked/505543/2 "2009-08-06T17:09:13Z")
“Oh no! I can’t do nothing useful on the internet!” ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2009, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-facebook-livejournal-and-other-sites-attacked/505543/3 "2009-08-06T17:58:42Z")
> [@](#): > > Twitter users to post 140-character messages, and many of Twitter’s users have complained about feeling disconnected from the news of the day while the site is offline. Is there a typo in that sentence, or am I missing something? “users to post”? The rest of the sentence is sad, but less confusing. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2009, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-facebook-livejournal-and-other-sites-attacked/505543/4 "2009-08-06T21:16:21Z")
Guess I might as well just look at porn, then. ---
**Author:** ![Risha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@Risha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Risha)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2009, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-facebook-livejournal-and-other-sites-attacked/505543/5 "2009-08-06T23:12:27Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > “Oh no! I can’t do nothing useful on the internet!” Yes, many of my online friends have had to get work done these last two days. ☹ (Assuming that’s also why Journalfen went down for hours yesterday.) ---
**Author:** ![the\_first\_supraliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f475e1/32.png) [@the\_first\_supraliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_first_supraliminal)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2009, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-facebook-livejournal-and-other-sites-attacked/505543/6 "2009-08-08T20:03:59Z")
The problem would seem to be that there’s not enough tracking for email. On the one hand, I like to use anonymous free emails when I rant at newspaper editors, and hate the thought they could ever find me. On the other hand it would be nice to keep these spammers at bay. Perhaps the answer is a universal tax or fee per email sent? Although I suppose that would just let sponsored spammers pursue their agenda.