People who voluntarily police the Internet to make it better and safer. Also called "online vigilante" and "digital vigilante," digilantis use their expertise to expose spammers, deceitful websites, bogus software and other annoying or harmful scams. Coined from the term "digerati," which means "digital elite," digilantis may shame people or organizations that disrespect others, and they can do anything a crook might do such as flood a website espousing harmful information with excessive queries to slow it down (see
denial of service). See
digerati,
Illuminati,
phishing,
spam and
malware.