Anonymous, the secretive online advocacy group, publicly released hundreds of names of current Ku Klux Klan members as well as many people who are known to belong to other white supremacist organizations. The huge release of data on Friday marked the group’s long held promise to do battle with the Ku Klux Klan.

Anonymous had originally promised one thousand names were to be released and, perhaps, there are more to come. The names were dumped at Pastebin and were redistributed through Twitter. The names all included links to social media profiles almost all of which were Facebook accounts, reports The Washington Post. News got out earlier in the week and many Facebook pages were taken down in advance of the group’s announcement.

Some of the names are already known to be members of the Klan or other white supremacy groups. Many of the names, though unverified, contain certain public and high profile figures in the country. Not all seemed to go according to the declared strategy as sometimes happens with a splintered group such as Anonymous who operates without a central command structure or leader.

What Anonymous has basically done is to expose a real and ongoing secretive network of white supremacist groups and organization that were highly active on Facebook. Anonymous sources said that all of the intelligence was gathered through publicly available records as well as experts. The group also said it gathered much of its intelligence by chatting online with actual members. Anonymous released a statement that said: “You never know who you’re talking to on the Internet.”

The information, however, seems to be not as accurate or complete as it could be. Many names seemed fake and some clear aliases have been used and released. Because of the lack of central organization, separate individuals or cells can act independently of one another. One Anonymous release actually contained pictures of phone numbers and addresses associated with the membership names.

However, some experts contend that this could be a major disaster for Anonymous and could greatly damage their brand to the point where they are no longer taken seriously by anyone. On such expert, Gabriella Coleman, is considered the number one expert with regard to Anonymous. She said the fact that the data dump can’t really be verified makes her somewhat suspicious of it all. She does feel, however, that Anonymous does possess members who are thinkers and educated people. People who talk knowledgeably about race and who wish to bring the whole matter more out into the open for public discussion.