by Lauren Indvik on Mashable
Anonymous, the loosely knit hacker collective that has taken credit for a range of data breaches, information leaks and website takedowns over the past eight years, is now topping the Time 100 Poll in the final hours of voting.
The organization has accumulated 382,574 “yes” votes — 100,000 more than runner-up Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, India.
But are those votes valid — or has Anonymous rolled out yet another hacking campaign?
One tipster thinks it’s the latter. The tipster, who declined to reveal his name to us, is a supporter of Modi’s. He noticed that Anonymous has been accumulating around 14,000 votes per hour, jumping from approximately 40,000 votes by midday Thursday to more than 380,000 votes by midday Friday.
Voting for Time‘s 100 most influential people of the year ends at midnight. The final list — which will be determined by the magazine’s editors and not popular vote — will be announced April 17, alongside the poll winner.
We’ve reached out to Time to see if the votes are authentic and where they’re coming from. We’ll update this post with information as we get it.
UPDATE: With official comment from Anonymous:
This @mashable article on the #Time100 vote is complete rubbish. ALMOST as bad as the WSJ’s NSA fearmongering article | on.mash.to/HVNMSK— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) April 6, 2012
The Poll
