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

(blog.smithsecurity.biz)
460 points wglb | 1 comments | 08 Aug 24 23:00 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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0xEF ◴[09 Aug 24 08:27 UTC] No.41199904[source]▶
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.

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bluGill ◴[09 Aug 24 13:01 UTC] No.41201432[source]▶
I don't because some scammers will find ways to frame their enemies. If you attack the person/organizations doing the scam fine - but don't attack an innocent organization. Most of vigilantes are not careful to tell the difference.
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1. gosub100 ◴[09 Aug 24 15:21 UTC] No.41202723[source]▶
back around 2007, the scam: "send you a check for a mistakenly huge amount and ask you to refund the difference" was in full swing. In their email they said they'd overnight a check, and I thought "good, overnight shipping is very expensive, at least if I scam them I'm costing them $20 in fees", but no. Brought the envelope to a friend at UPS, he gave it to their fraud department, and behold the letter was sent using a stolen corporate shipping account. Maybe I helped by getting that account shut down, but I also ended up costing them money.