<story><title>Man counterhacks paypal phisher, deletes data, warns other victims via phone</title><url>http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/io76r/i_received_a_scam_paypal_verification_email_this/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>yaix</author><text>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 &quot;periculum in mora&quot;. An example would be that you enter another person&apos;s apartment without consent, because you noticed a strong smell of gas on the other side of the door.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Apparently (and to my surprise), in the US the idea of &quot;periculum in mora&quot; only applies to law enforcement agents (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance_in_United_States_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance_in_United_...&lt;/a&gt;), 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?</text></comment>
<story><title>Man counterhacks paypal phisher, deletes data, warns other victims via phone</title><url>http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/io76r/i_received_a_scam_paypal_verification_email_this/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jasonkester</author><text>I haven&apos;t been over to Reddit in a while.  Is this really what it&apos;s like now?&lt;p&gt;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&apos;s just a bunch of people making silly jokes.  Sad to see it go that way.</text></comment>