From Yahoo! News UK-Ireland:
Angered by the growing number of Internet scams, online “vigilantes” have started to take justice into their own hands by hacking into suspected fraud sites and defacing them.
These hackers have targeted fake websites set up to resemble the sites of banks or financial institutions in recent weeks, and have inserted new pages or messages. Some say “Warning – This was a Scam Site,” or “This Bank Was Fraudulent and Is Now Removed.”
The efforts by the self-proclaimed “hero hackers” come amid a surge in online schemes known as “phishing” in which victims are lured to fake websites to get passwords or other personal data.
I personally think this is awesome. Go for it, vigilante hackers!
The argument at the end of the article that vigilantism is bad is not very well supported. Most of the quoted persons liken it to vigilantes in the Old West, as if this explains everything.
But vigilantes in the Old West arose because the law couldn’t do anything. Vigilantism mostly ended once law and order asserted itself. In the meantime, vigilantes were all that stood between many people and disaster.
And so too are the vigilante hackers of today, who will keep shooting fraudulent websites dead and riding off into the sunset until the system evolves to solve the problems more peacefully.
Hi-yo Silver, away!