Remember, remember, the fifth of November. Given the hacker groups' affiliation to the Guy Fawkes mask, the decision by hacker collective Anonymous to take down Facebook on bonfire night seems far from coincidental. But posting a warning to Zuckerberg and co. and social gaming giant Zynga in a stern warning message earlier this week, that's exactly what it intends to achieve.

Why? It all centres around what Anonymous is calling Zynga's “outrageous treatment of their employees and their actions against many developers.” Its message came just days after the mobile game developer and publisher bumped off around 5% of its work-force in a strategic hush-hush move largely Zynga is behind such games as Farmville and Mafia Wars.over-shadowed by Apple's announcement of the long-awaited iPad Mini on the same day. The company has been in turmoil for quite some time, of course, the recent dismissal of hundreds of its employees likely to be swiftly followed by even greater mass lay-offs if rumours are to be believed -- Anonymous purportedly has obtained secret documents that reveal exactly that.

“With a billion dollars cash sitting in a bank we do believe that such actions are an insult to the population and the behaviour of corporations like Zynga must change. Anonymous could not allow this to happen so it's starting to release confidential documents we have leaked on this plan,” the hactivist group said in its statement on AnonNews.

Facebook's part to play in this you'd have to assume is the platform it lends Zynga to get its games out to the masses. If we're to believe the threat is not yet another hoax coming from some fool-hardy Anonybee wanting to take in some of the group's limelight, then we can expect the group to start making the moves to take-down Facebook and with it, release all of Zynga's games for free on 5 November. Remember, remember.

Richard Birkett