Don't you have to ask for permission to be white-hat?
Personally, I don't see it as worth it to pursue a company that does not hang out some sort of public permission to poke at them. The upside is minimal and the downside significant. Note this is a descriptive statement, not a normative statement. In a perfect world... well, in a perfect world there'd be no security vulnerabilities to find, but... in a perfect world sure you'd never get in trouble for poking through and immediately backing off, but in the real world this story just happens too often. Takes all the fun right out of it. YMMV.