
Man counterhacks paypal phisher, deletes data, warns other victims via phone - lawnchair_larry
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/io76r/i_received_a_scam_paypal_verification_email_this/
======
yaix
I was a little surprised that the legality of this was questioned, so looked
it up. In Roman Law tradition this kind of action would apparently be called
"periculum in mora". An example would be that you enter another person's
apartment without consent, because you noticed a strong smell of gas on the
other side of the door.

The OP in the linked article had strong reasons to believe that the people who
submitted their credit card data were in imminent danger of large financial
damages if he did not stop the fraud quickly.

Apparently (and to my surprise), in the US the idea of "periculum in mora"
only applies to law enforcement agents
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance_in_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance_in_United_States_law)),
though. Does that mean you would have to let the apartment explode if the
police is too slow to show up and stop the gas leak?

~~~
there
yes, it may technically be illegal, but that is why we have trial by jury.
unless the story sounded made up, i can't really imagine anyone convicting
someone that smashed a window or broke down an apartment door to save
someone's life.

but really, who would vote this guy guilty of illegal access to a computer
system when he was clearly helping phishing victims? and who would press
charges against him in the first place, the hosting company where the phishing
site was hosted?

~~~
bluedanieru
Jury nullification (basically what you're referring to here) was a major
justification of juries in the first place as it was thought to be a check on
state power, but of course the state has neutered it over the last century
along with most other checks on its power. Jury nullification is mostly a
memory at this point and juries are generally instructed only to consider
whether the defendant actually broke the law as such - not whether the law
itself is just.

~~~
derleth
Remember that jury nullification was often used to acquit whites of killing
blacks in a time and place when killing a given black could often have been
seen as something akin to shooting a raccoon or other vermin.

(This is why violating someone's civil rights is a Federal offense in modern
American law: Homicide is a state offense, and the juries in the relevant
state courts of that era would not convict for certain kinds of homicide.
Federal courts were not nearly as prejudiced.)

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jasonkester
I haven't been over to Reddit in a while. Is this really what it's like now?

I remember when I left, /r/programming read pretty much like HN does now, with
an occasional mean comment or joke thread left alive to get in the way. The
linked thread, though, has no actual discussion. It's just a bunch of people
making silly jokes. Sad to see it go that way.

~~~
jedberg
Usually when I tell people about reddit, I tell them to skip the front page
and go straight to the reddits page and find topics that interest them.

The front page has too many cat pictures and crap for my taste these days.
Hopefully they eventually have the time to implement one of the solutions I
suggested to alleviate the problem.

~~~
pavel_lishin
What solutions did you suggest?

I've actually been showing up regularly at NYC's reddit events, and made quite
a few friends in the community, but I don't really load up Reddit anymore -
too much junk.

------
wccrawford
Reddit's down. This appears to be the same thing.

<http://imgur.com/vNqt3>

------
iwwr
Anyone have a mirror?

~~~
remi
This is the image linked in the post: <http://i.imgur.com/vNqt3.png>

------
Tomis
Man gets 18 years in prison for hacking account and inflicting unfathomable
psychic damage, making his victim feel vulnerable in their own home.

------
dolphenstein
Commenting on an aggregator to a link to an aggregator with a link. Feels like
Inception. Someone should post this on digg and go to the 3rd level.

------
darklajid
When did "found out that an FTP password is 'password'" start to be something
that is a 'counterhack'? Except in Hollywood movies?

Replace the headline with 'Guy that seeks naive people for his phishing site
is too dumb to use his own software'.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Hmm. I wonder if I could do a Fermi estimate on the amount of time wasted by
this pointless discussion? Let's call this Rob's Fermi Hack on Hacking "Hack":

\- We'll start with a semi-reasonable approximation of the number of forums in
which people have discussed the word "hack": usenet threads, mailing lists,
social news sites. I like 100,000 for this number. Do you think that's too
high? I'm thinking that we have to count everything that's been around since,
oh, 1995 or so -- since hackers didn't really seem to care about the
definition of the word before then.

\- Then we need the mean number of times that this discussion has taken place
on those forums. According to my semi-private little search engine for HN, the
query `comments with "hack"` returns 45,000+ results, going back to 2008.
Amusingly, the oldest result is about exactly this same debate. So let's use
100 for this value, because why not?

\- Next we need the mean number of replies generated each time this comes up
on one of these forums. Let's say "3". I like "3", because my comment here is
the third in the thread started by your comment, and I expect my comment to so
dazzle readers with its brilliance that nobody else will bother responding.
So, 3.

\- Finally, we need some kind of time estimate for time-blown-masturbating-
about-"hack"-per-comment-per-forum. I'm skewing the curve a bit here with my
comment, but that's because I'm a sucker for meaningless gratification.
Anyway, let's say 2 minutes for this, because I haven't used the number "2"
yet. (I think Fermi is now spinning at relativistic speeds in his grave.)

So we get: 100,000 * 100 * 3 * 2, for 60,000,000 minutes, or 1 million hours,
which would probably be enough to write and polish an entirely new operating
system from the ground up.

And that would be a neat hack.

(FWIW: I agree with you, especially when the word "hack" found its way into
all kinds of silly little timesaving tricks -- "hack your breakfast routine by
using paper bowls!" -- but, at this point, seeing someone mention that they
disagree with its usage _every single time it's used_ is even more annoying.
That battle was lost. The horse is dead. It's time to stop beating it and move
on.)

------
synnik
Responding to one illegal action with another illegal action is not exactly
praiseworthy in my book.

~~~
sjs
Your book stinks. Standing by while people are taken advantage of and robbed
should not be praiseworthy in anyone's book.

> Essentially on discovering I had the power to stop this illegal act without
> causing any harm, I felt morally obliged to do it.

This guy is a real human and a good man. You sound like a robot, legality is
black and white and you don't even bring morality into question.

His entire comment:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/io76r/i_received...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/io76r/i_received_a_scam_paypal_verification_email_this/c25boxw)

~~~
synnik
When did I ever say anything about standing by?

~~~
sjs
My sincere apologies, that was a big and incorrect assumption on my part.

