>You may be overstating that a bit. I've been doing tech for a while, and I can't recall anyone ever asking me to abuse my skills for ill-gotten gain.
A few years ago, a guy contacted me from HN, asking if I wanted to team up on some stuff. He sounded pretty convincing, and like an all-round decent guy.
For some reason, despite his likability, something seemed not quite right. I searched for a few variations on his name and email, and eventually stumbled across various reports of low-level frauds directly attributable to him. Really a very unpleasant individual, targeting the self-employed and taking them for ~$5,000 each.
If I'd spent less time researching, I'm certain two things would have happened:
1. He would've screwed me out of whatever agreement him and I came up with.
2. Whatever I worked on would have been used to defraud people one way or another.
When someone approaches you, it's not always immediately obvious that they're trying to do bad stuff.
EDIT: I'd nearly forgotten, a good few years ago, someone tried outright recruiting me for illegal work after seeing a LOOKING FOR WORK post I'd written here on HN.
Of all things, they asked me to hack some local authority's death records. Bless them, they'd taken the "hacker" part of Hacker News to be a literal news site for illegal hackers.
A few years ago, a guy contacted me from HN, asking if I wanted to team up on some stuff. He sounded pretty convincing, and like an all-round decent guy.
For some reason, despite his likability, something seemed not quite right. I searched for a few variations on his name and email, and eventually stumbled across various reports of low-level frauds directly attributable to him. Really a very unpleasant individual, targeting the self-employed and taking them for ~$5,000 each.
If I'd spent less time researching, I'm certain two things would have happened:
1. He would've screwed me out of whatever agreement him and I came up with.
2. Whatever I worked on would have been used to defraud people one way or another.
When someone approaches you, it's not always immediately obvious that they're trying to do bad stuff.
EDIT: I'd nearly forgotten, a good few years ago, someone tried outright recruiting me for illegal work after seeing a LOOKING FOR WORK post I'd written here on HN.
Of all things, they asked me to hack some local authority's death records. Bless them, they'd taken the "hacker" part of Hacker News to be a literal news site for illegal hackers.