Although that's amusing, there's a pretty good real moral to this story: > It appeared that Monteiro had been arrested on the basis of a misinformation campaig

Although that's amusing, there's a pretty good real moral to this story: > It appeared that Monteiro had been arrested on the basis of a misinformation campaign. > There had been warning signs for a while, at least since the point at which Yura had threatened to expose him as a cop. In June 2016, when Monteiro hacked into Yura’s Gmail account, he had noticed that the scammer had created email addresses under the name of Chris Monteiro Until I got to this point in the article, I hadn't realized that the initial denunciation of the site[1] was done under Monteiro's real name. This is a good example of why messing with internet scumbags, even if they're pretty clearly not actual mafia capos, is an activity best undertaken pseudoanonymously (at the very minimum). Although what happened to Monteiro was a bit nastier than usual skiddie fare, there are a lot of ways, from financial fraud to swatting, for someone who wishes you ill and possesses your dox to seriously mess with your life. Seems like Monteiro was too wrapped up in the acquisition of personal notoriety to care about opsec. My intent isn't necessarily to victim-blame Monteiro, but hopefully this episode will serve as a lesson to other well-meaning but potentially naive vigilantes. Some of the nasty stuff that's happened to Krebs[2] also falls into this category. I guess in his case it's probably more of an intentional, aware-of-the-risks tradeoff, but man, I don't think that's a deal I'd be willing to make, especially since many such incidents don't end so peacefully[3]. --- [1] https://pirate.london/assassination-scams-the-next-generation-16faccef578e https://pirate.london/assassination-scams-the-next-generatio... [2] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-for-cowards/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-fo... [3] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/man-pleads-guilty-to-swatting-attack-that-lead-to-death-of-kansas-man/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/man-pleads-guilt...