USPS text scammers duped his wife, so he hacked their operation

I hate that it kicks off with "DISCLAIMER: This is not my work. I would never and don't condone illegal hacking of scammers"

You know what? I do. We all should. These scammers are awful people and deserve to be attacked. I am tired of toothless authorities like CISA and the alphabet agencies in the US doing next to nothing about it unless some YouTube scam baiter does the work for them. Scammers destroy people, not just financially, but emotionally as well, even driving some victims to suicide. As far as I am concerned, any wannabe hacker out there should be using these scammers for target practice.

vigilantism can spiral out of control. While it makes sense in this scenario, it's because the scammer is obviously breaking some law and is criminal. What happens if it wasn't so obvious?

I’m fine with a war on scammers getting out of control to the point where bombs are being dropped on scammers call centres.

They are the modern Hostis humani generis

Seems you didn't know that lots of people in scam call centers aren't there voluntarily. Trafficking and threats

> ... lured to countries through fake job adverts but are instead forced to work in scam call centers, pushing cryptocurrency investments, as well as work-from-home, lottery, romance, and online gambling scams. All this, while being subject to "abject abuse."

> A report from Interpol from earlier this year said victims are also subjected to extortion via debt bondage, beatings, sexual exploitation ...

https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/08/human_trafficking_for...

and:

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/hundreds-thousand...

Mm.

For what it's worth, I can get them to hang up immediately if I recommend they join a trade union.

Hmm what's your point? I'd think they're under time pressure, and if they see they can't fool you, they'll immediately proceed with the next target instead. (Regardless of if they're working for themselves or being trafficked & forced)

If they're a good person in a bad place, a union can help — and I suspect that if the calls are monitored, the villains who coerce them will want to avoid future calls to a number that regularly undermines their authority over those they traffic.

On the other hand, the examples people commonly share of where someone contacts a knowing scammer to appeal to their humanity, is that the scammers laugh at their victims — so if the people on the phone are the villains, then I think them hanging up immediately may cause more emotional pain than the stream of expletives they're used to.

Regardless, it saves me time.

This approach may not be so useful now that GenAI, both LLMs and synthetic voices, are getting good.

A union cannot help them. They generally are in places where there isn't a better option. Go on strike, we will just find someone else to replace you. Unions work when you are hard to replace. (hard is a trade off between many things, not just the cost of training someone new; but also things like the legal climate or future strikes)