Please take this in the spirit it is intended:

I would never under any circumstances ever share personal information with a company that behaved as you have documented.

You believe this guy has scammed you so you went through his personal artifacts and shared communications to get vigilante justice. Fair enough as a person I dont blame you and find it funny, as a business you just cannot be trusted with personal information.

In the grand scheme of things, all you really illustrated is that for 25K empireflippers is willing to 'hack' someone who as you say yourself hasnt been established guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but who you have 'good enough' info on.

'Professional' means operating by a business driven code of behavior. You let this issue become 'Personal', and as such took steps to get 'revenge'. You literally committed crimes during the course of getting revenge, and you 'transparently' confessed to these crimes in writing on a public forum that is tied to your 'professional' endeavor. You should have consulted a lawyer both before you took these steps, and before you confessed to taking this steps.

I can appreciate where you're coming from here, I really can.

I will say that we did consult our lawyer before writing this post, actually.

Additionally - business is done on trust. Some will read this and (like you) not trust us and won't do business with us. Others will appreciate it and do business with us. No worries either way.

Did your lawyer seriously say that posting this is OK? I'm having really hard time believing that.

Keep in mind he didn't vet the ACTUAL post before I pushed it live.

In reading it back, I wouldn't say he was enthusiastically pushing it or anything:

"I think you guys have your minds made up. The reality is the risk is probably low. Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. It's unlikely a couple Russians would try to sue you, but you never know. My boring attorney answer is try not to go too far to minimize any risk. Stick to the verifiable facts."

Honestly, you might seriously want to consider getting a new lawyer. No good lawyer would ever tell you that it's ok to publicly admit to a felony just because it's unlikely that you'll get sued.

I'm not the author of the post, only defending it (somewhat).

Hacking is what a person does in violation of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986[1]. Which doesn't discuss needing to actively try to break encryption or exploit a security vulnerability but rather talks about accessing something to which you do not have permission.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act

I stand corrected - although my comment was tailored for a community (HN) that usually get's all worked up about the use of the term "hacking" (and others) when it comes to computer crime.

If this was an article about the US Government convicting or charging people for "hacking" we'd most likely see numerous comments and complaints here about the improper use of the word.