[jiggy2011]

Still arguably breaking the law. You'd also most likely need more access than just FTP to do that so that so that would involve having to break into a shell or something.

It would difficult to know what to do in these situations because your choices are going to be limited to doing nothing and letting them get away with it or going vigilante and possibly exposing yourself to legal risk.

You could inform law enforcement but they are likely to either do nothing or decide to arrest you instead (I knew someone who had the police come to his house and confiscate his computer for over a year because a fellow student saw him using DOS prompt on a school computer and decided to report him for "hacking").

[bkruse]

I find this very hard to believe (the last part). With any confiscation, you can argue in court. 1 year without a computer was his fault. I'd slap that agency with a lawsuit.

[jiggy2011]

I'm sure he could have got his computer back much sooner if he was sensible but he was a dumb kid, I imagine he just waiting for the police to give it back to him (probably low on their list of things to do).

He had a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way, bragging about being having 'leet' computer skills (he didn't) and doing idiotic things like mass net sends at school so I'm sure it was in many ways his fault. Does show how paranoid the police can be about "hackers" though.

[Chico75]

When did the "DOS Hacking" happen ? I did the same thing in middle-school (launched tracert from DOS) and was caught by a professor but didn't get reported to police luckily.

[jiggy2011]

Around 1999-2001 during the dotcom boom when "hackers" were the new tabloid menace.