Advice Girl

"I run a hacker culture blog (bsdpunk.blogspot.net), and often I get requests from people on how to use a keylogger on their computer or to view their Instant Messaging traffic. Typically my first question after receiving these are "Why don't you try talking to her?", because they are usually heartbroken 16 year olds(if that), but then I help them out anyway? Is this a bad thing? Should I not help? I am one confused punk."


I'm not exactly a "pro" on hacker culture, but I viewed your blog, which is very nice by the way (so techno-goth), and I found there about four posts on keylogging. Helping is really not a bad thing, but you can't say that you're not helping people, whether you answer their additional requests or not.

If you want to help as much as you can, you could create a sort of a FAQ or Help forum for your blog (not necessarily keylogging related), where, if you answer a question for one person, you won't have to repeat it to another, albeit a grown-up or a 16 years old. Also, if you can manage to drag a few buddies on your forum and make them admins, you won't have to deal with all the noobs on your own.

If you feel uncomfortable with helping underage kids with hacking, you could try telling them to solve their problems some other way. But I think you and I both know that if they’re really got their minds set on something, they’ll just go somewhere else.

So it’s up to you whether you’d like to keep them as they are, on your blog, or let them roam freely through the web. Most hackers and programmers start early anyway. But if you feel that what people ask you to help them with could turn out bad, you could always decline their request or warn them against it.

That's my humble opinion.