Charges pending after Praag web attack

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Johannesburg - Afrikaans language activist group Praag intends to lay criminal charges against people responsible for attacking its website, the group said on Thursday. Pro Afrikaans Action Group (Praag) founder Dan Roodt said the website and servers had been under a “distributed denial of service” (DDOS) attack, causing disruptions since Tuesday. He believed the attack was aimed at bankrupting Praag and its service provider through the consumption of bandwidth and damage to network infrastructure. “We are going to lay charges with the SA Police Service under the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Act 25 of 2002 for the DDOS attack against us, but also against those anonymous individuals slandering us on Facebook, social media, and in relation to potential advertisers on our site,” said Roodt. On Sunday, Rapport reported that Google had decided to stop channelling advertising to Praag, and this threatened the future of the website.

Roodt told the paper that Praag made thousands of rands from advertising on its website, and would not be able to function without advertisers.

He said Google told him that Afrikaans was not a recognised advertising language and it could channel advertisements only to the English version of the Praag website.

Roodt, however, alleged that a woman who opposed Praag was behind the problem.

He claimed the woman had started a “malicious and fanatical” Facebook group called “Speak Out Against the Website Praag”.

In a letter she reportedly posted on the social media network, she accused Praag of being racist and of spreading hate speech, and shared the letter with companies she claimed were helping it spread this message by advertising on the website.

On Thursday, Roodt said he had the backing of supporters to take on the attackers.

“We will not be using the distasteful and underhanded techniques of our opponents but will be defending ourselves in an open, transparent and legal manner,” he said.

Sapa