Anti vigilante.

The media seem to love the term “vigilante” when it comes to anyone in the anti scam community.  Some may love it, but we definitely don’t.  It implies doing things outside the law, and that’s not how we work.  There have been times when the police have approached us asking us to explain how we managed to identify a scammer’s real details.  It would be impossible to do that if we in any way did anything that wasn’t completely legal.  Likewise, when the media contacts us, we have to be able to jump through numerous hoops to keep their legal departments happy.  Most of the time we even have to prove that it was the scammer that contacted us first so we can’t be accused of entrapment.  In short, we have to be whiter than white and be seen to be so.  That’s why seeing the media bandy round the term vigilante drives us round the bend.  We’re not Batman.  Most of the time we’re nothing more than people sitting at a desk copy and pasting information between Google and our forum.  It’s not exciting, it’s not glamorous and it’s definitely not vigilantism.