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Comment by ipince | Hacker News Reader

While it's fun to do this, sometimes I think of the flipside. This scammer is probably trying to make a living and support his family. The company's owner though, is probably not in the need to do these unethical things. He/she should be screwed over.

I'm not advocating for his actions, just offering another point of view. Is it always correct to assume that the guy who xut you off in traffic is just an asshole, or does he really really need to be somewhere right now (eg. a hospital)?

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What else would you suggest? Sure, the guy making the call is probably desperate, but by wasting his time, you are keeping him from calling gullible people. Even if the guy making the call never costs the owner because the caller gets paid on numbers gleaned, it still ties up the owner's phone lines and costs him rent.

Do you give money to scammers, then? After all, they're probably just trying to make a living....

No, bu why actively screw with the file and rank employee? Assuming he just gets a salary, cool, waste all his time (which costs the scamming company). But if he works on commission then why bother?

I would put my efforts in bringing down the company itself. (In fact I am actively fighting a company that tried to scam me. But their low-level employees? I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt).

Because he is actively harming people, most of whom are honest, and by screwing with him you are reducing the amount of harm he is able to do.

ok. I think it's more worthwhile to spend that time trying to bring the company down, not wasting 1 guy's time, out of hundreds or perhaps thousands.

If everybody tied these people up uselessly, then their business model would become untenable and they'd have to think of some other scam.

That's entirely fair (and I think you're right, if your goal is to mitigate their harm as much as possible), but you were previously arguing that it was actually bad to screw with these people, not just a sub-optimal use of time.

Maybe wasting his time will get him fired, and he can go get a real job instead. It's not like he wouldn't know he was working in a scam operation.

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