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Anonymous hacktivists have claimed an American company is "helping terrorists" by offering digital protection to ISIS propaganda and recruitment websites.

Members of the famous masked hacking group have begun a campaign against a firm called CloudFlare, which shields its clients from digital attack.

Activists want to see CloudFlare punished for "supporting terrorism" - a claim the firm totally denies.

Its CEO told us cops and spies asked it to continue the protection of ISIS sites and suggested some of them may even by honeypots set up to snare wannabe terrorists.

He also said CloudFlare does not accept any form of payment from extremists and vowed to stop guarding terror sites if ordered to do so.

In a statement, the leader of the Anonymous "OPCloudFlare" campaign wrote: "Cloudflare is hosting more than 50 ISIS related propaganda websites.

"The group refuses to act and instead takes money from criminals in return for hacking and server protection for the ISIS websites."

We spoke to the Anonymous hacktivist who launched the campaign.

"We will not give up until this issue is resolved," he said.

"As an American it makes me sick to see one of our companies disrespect the USA.

"If these sites were removed from Cloudflare's protection, the operation would end.

"Whilst these sites are still up, ISIS is able to recruit and spread propaganda."

Anonymous is currently fighting a campaign to wipe ISIS off the internet.

Part of this involves asking companies like Facebook and Twitter to close down social media accounts, but it has also involved launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against ISIS pages or forums.

(Image: Getty)

Cloudflare offers clients free protection from DDoS assaults, effectively blunting one of Anonymous' most powerful forms of offensive attack.

When we asked Cloudflare why it was "protecting" ISIS websites, CEO Matthew Prince told Mirror Online it was not actually accepting money from terrorists, because the ISIS sites listed by Anonymous relied on its free service.

"We have reached out to law enforcement agencies to review the different sites in question and at no time have any of them asked us to remove them from our network," Prince said.

"A company should not set its policy by listening to random kids making a load of noise on Twitter."

He also hinted that some of the sites could be honeypots, but did not reveal which ones.

"In this world, things are not always what they seem," he added.

(Image: PA)

"There are websites which appear to be sympathetic to criminal activities, but are in fact being used by law enforcement agents to attract people who might fancy themselves as criminals."

However, an Anonymous hacktivist told Mirror Online he did not believe spies and police ran honeypot websites.

"If law enforcement has these sites, we would be the first to know," he said.

"When CloudFlare proves police involvement, we will back off."