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.

Disclaimers exist for legal reasons, not for moral ones or a personal opinion.

I think we all agree that hacking scammers is a net positive for society.

I don’t think disclaimers really work. I think it’s just urban legend that they do.

I find it hard to believe if some scammer is hacked and the evidence shows the hacker learned everything from solely this video then this disclaimer won’t mean anything legally.

I think disclaimers are just a bit of noise that people put in out of an abundance of caution.

Out of curiosity, are you a lawyer or is this comment missing the IANAL disclaimer that is customary when opining about legal matters?

At least some disclaimers aren't just noise—they add context that would otherwise be missing to help the reader navigate the subtext. The "this is not my work" portion of that disclaimer is highly relevant and useful information for interpreting the blog. The afformentioned IANAL disclaimer helps readers to understand whether your opinion has any stronger basis in law than their own.

I also strongly suspect that some disclaimers would have legal value in the event of someone misusing information being dispensed, but IANAL.

When a lawyer posts on a forum topic related to the law they usually tell you they’re a lawyer, but not your lawyer and it’s not legal advice.

Safe to assume everyone else is not a lawyer.

Probably safe, yes, though it's still polite to leave the marker for other people to follow later.

And, to the topic at hand: if lawyers consistently do that, that again speaks to the legal value of at least some disclaimers.

Appeal to authority is considered a courtesy nowadays? Fascinating.

Like the previous commenter points out, actual lawyers are quite clear that their statements in this kind of non-professional capacity hold no more weight than any other random Joe. There is no situation of authority. IANAL/IAAL may have once been a funny meme – albeit one quite tired at this point – but doesn't add anything, and may be a detractor if one falls prey to the logically fallacy it potentially introduces.

Defering to an Expert =/= Appealing to Authority

Concluding that a statement holds greater significance because it was stated by an expert === appeal to authority. The person is irrelevant. Just as lawyers regularly point out, their work done outside of a professional context is no different than work done by anyone else. Their expertise is only significant in that when work is done in a professional context they promise to go over and above to put in the proper care to ensure that the work stands up to scrutiny. But even then the work must stand alone! They cannot just throw down whatever gobbledygook and call it something notable just because they are acting as a lawyer. The person is irrelevant.

As before, it used to be a funny meme – albeit one that has become tired – but there is no significance to it. Who the person is tells absolutely nothing about the rest of the comment.

> Just as lawyers regularly point out, their work done outside of a professional context is no different than work done by anyone else.

This is not at all what "I'm not your lawyer" means—that's a disclaimer to say that they're not taking legal liability for their advice to you because you're not paying them. They're still far more qualified than I am to talk about law in the abstract and dismissing that as "appeal to authority" is a false appeal to egalitarianism.

I don't think they understand what appeal to authority means. Better to just let it go.