Last year, James Raj, 35, hacked into several websites like City Harvest Church pastor's wife/ singer Ho Yeow Sun's webpage, the Ang Mo Kio Town Council website, and even a Straits Times blog.

Utilising the moniker of "The Messiah", Raj threatened war with the Singapore government in a video posted online.

Raj was eventually arrested and charged on Nov. 12, 2013.

Exactly a year after this day, on Nov. 13, 2014, SMRT Ltd (Feedback) disappeared from social media after carrying out a series of high-profile acts of online vigilantism against an errant Sim Lim Square retailer.

But Singapore's only vigilante group has since returned online some two days later and pledged to carry on with their purge of unethical retailers by exposing their personal details.

These two completely different entities have taken two vastly different approaches to vigilantism, and they were received differently. SMRT Ltd (Feedback) was popularly received for its efforts, but the same cannot be said for the Messiah. Yet, there are indeed some similarities -- both were anonymous, and both attacked people and entities who they thought were doing something unjust.

Here's a comparison of The Messiah and SMRT Ltd (Feedback)'s brand of vigilantism and why there is a right and wrong way to go about it:

Triggers

The Messiah’s actions were in reaction to several events that took social media by storm. For example, a six-month old baby who suffered second-degree burns at a PAP Community Foundation infant care centre, a puppy owned by an expatriate which was improperly euthanised, and a man who was filmed spitting repeatedly in the face of two women in an argument over queue-cutting.

SMRT Ltd (Feedback)’s actions were also in reaction to events that took social media by storm. A shop in Sim Lim Square, Mobile Air, paid a refund in coins and had Vietnamese tourist Pham Van Thoai begging on his knees for a refund.

Objectives

The Messiah had a clear anti-government objective: To have the government take down a Broadcasting Act licensing scheme on news websites.

SMRT (Feedback)’s actions were clearly inclined towards the lulz justice for Vietnamese tourist Pham Van Thoai. The group saw CASE as unable to take action and took justice into their own hands by taking action against Sim Lim Square scammers themselves.

Modus operandi

The Messiah attacked mainly webpages through DNS poisoning, allowing him to post his own messages to these webpages. Other hackers who followed his lead used cross-site scripting attacks on webpages.

SMRT (Feedback) took to the practice of doxxing: Revealing personal information on the Internet, particularly IC numbers, phone numbers and residential addresses, prank calling deliveries to owner Jover Chew’s home and getting people to call Chew’s phone number.

The Messiah was also predominantly faceless in its operations, preferring to use its Guy Fawkes mask as a cover. The same, however, can be said of SMRT Ltd (Feedback), but they had a reputation of trolling other organisations like the Singapore Advocacy Awards and Singaporeans First Party. Thus, compared to the Messiah, SMRT Ltd (Feedback) was not an unknown to Singaporeans.

Reception

After the Messiah hacked into the Straits Times website and threatened government webpages, many took to rejecting their action.

Lawyer and editor of The Online Citizen, Remy Choo Zheng Xi, wrote: "(Before) anyone cheers for The Messiah, perhaps we can pause to consider: do we really want to live by the dictum that the ends justify the means, regardless of circumstance and context?"

"You sound like a petulant child. Who are you to ask that a journalist resign even if she made a misleading statement? Who are you to threaten her, as well as the veterinarian who put down a dog?” wrote Bertha Henson in response to the Messiah.

"I’m sure many people would be quite pleased to see you arrested, as an enemy of the State or even as a public nuisance."

SMRT Ltd (Feedback) was received very differently, with a tribute page by fans set up right after their disappearance. The page has gotten 7,039 likes so far. Other Facebook pages, such as Wake Up Singapore wrote: "It took the police just days to go after netizens who allegedly "harrassed" Jover Chew. It's been years since Jover Chew started cheating customers and 25 complaints later, still no action whatsoever.”

Even this site took to exalting SMRT Ltd (Feedback)’s status as a "Dark Knight".

PM Lee vowed to "spare no effort" in arresting the Messiah, saying that the government took cyberattack threats "very seriously". "(When) somebody threatens to do harm to it... we take that very seriously and we will spare no effort to try and track down the culprits and if we can find him, we will bring him to justice,” said PM Lee in 2013.

However, with SMRT (Feedback), Minister S. Iswaran simply asked for restraint on online vigilantism. In a Facebook post, Iswaran wrote: "Do exercise restraint and do not take matters into your own hands. Let due process take its course."

Conclusion

SMRT Ltd (Feedback)’s disappearance on the same day James Raj was charged is most certainly just a coincidence.

Yet, one cannot help but notice that SMRT Ltd (Feedback) has shown a more popular way to go about online vigilantism in Singapore.

One of the prerequisites of pulling online vigilantism off successfully is that the public has to feel strongly about the perceived injustice. For cases that The Messiah went after, there was more public apathy than empathy; compared to the incident where the Vietnamese tourist got scammed and which SMRT Ltd (Feedback) acted on.

And the other prerequisite it appears, is not to get caught.

Perhaps more will remember SMRT (Feedback) over what they have done.

If you like what you read, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest updates.