phil, I'm 100% opposed to hackers doing what they did to you. however, my experience is that there may be unforeseen consequences for coders who insert those directory-erasing subroutines into hacked versions. I recall one chap who was so angry about folks trading his video app (for OS X) via bitTorrent and limewire, that he wrote a similar version that flushed the hacker's home directory. no doubt they deserved it, but as a result this coder faded into obscurity and probably had to quit selling his apps, as he became infamous as the second person to write what became known as a "Malicious OS X trojan" (the first malicious OS X trojan was a version of Word that also erased the hacker's home directory).