Scraping emails and sending spam is passive aggressive and wrong. It is much more disruptive and hostile than calling someone a name, and nitpicking the use of

Scraping emails and sending spam is passive aggressive and wrong. It is much more disruptive and hostile than calling someone a name, and nitpicking the use of "utter scum" here is drawing attention away from the real offender, the spammer. If calling someone utter scum might get them to rethink how they are exploiting others, I will have no issue using it. OP did nothing wrong here.