ISIS supporters who launched a social media alternative to Facebook on Sunday were left with an offline site a day after, which was taken down apparently for security reasons.
5elafabook.com was launched on Sunday, but the site carried a message on Monday that read: "5elafabook announces a temporary shutdown in order to protect the info and details of its members and their safety."
The website's Twitter account was also reportedly suspended.
The website, also referred to as the 'Caliphate Book', was meant to be an alternative to the popular social networking website Facebook, and microblogging platform Twitter, as numerous pro-ISIS accounts on the two forums have been suspended over recent months.
The message on the site says that it is an "independent website and not sponsored by the Islamic State."
The aim of the site, as declared in the message, is to present a different image of the terror group as opposed to what is covered in the media.
"The purpose of launching the site was to clarify to the whole world that we do not carry guns and live in caves as they imagine, we do not live to kill and spill blood as the media portrays us.. we are fightuing the enemy of Allah's religion", the message says.
The site was reportedly designed to simulate the appearance of a Facebook page, complete with user profiles, though users were not allowed to upload images.
It is not clear which person or group created the website, and reportedly the question was also a major point of discussion among jihadists, according to SITE Intelligence, an online jihadist watchdog that followed conversations on a jihadist forum, in which many expressed doubt over the credibility and perils of the website.
"There is no secure website, even if it did belong directly to the Islamic State, because the servers are controlled by the governments, which can take all the IP addresses of those who visited the website," one statement read, according to Reuters.
A recent study on ISIS' use of Twitter showed that the group extensively uses the platform to spread its ideology and has been able to do so despite Twitter cracking down on such accounts.
