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Comment by hippich | Hacker News Reader

If you don't mind me asking, what motivated you? Were you afraid of law enforcement ever catching up? Was is just pure scene cred it even that did not matter much?

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Initial motivation was being a teenager without enough money to buy all the new computer games coming out. From there, it was partly just excitement using new technology that was relevant to the scene (Linux, high speed networks, cool ANSI art). In general scene cred was a big motivator. I also ran a BBS, and being well known in the scene also meant that artists made you great art for your board for free, which was a nice benefit if you wanted a cool aesthetic on your BBS.

Aside from cred, there were a lot of like minded people and back then it was hard to find locals who were into computers/tech, so it was sort of a social network of sorts on IRC back then, I made real friends that I still keep in touch with today, so in a way it was a shared social activity.

One fun anecdote: When I was like 14, I got on a PBX 1800# call with some folks in a group I was in and it kind of blew my mind that I was talking to someone in Israel. It was like the world opened up. That is not novel today, but back then the idea of socializing and sharing ideas with people across the world in real-time (for free) was extremely exciting. Keep in mind back then long distance cost per minute, as did much of the dial-up internet.

About law enforcement: not much. Because I did see that minors were usually spared any real consequences, I mainly avoided anything that involved profit (though I once unwittingly bought a stolen modem for cheap, when it's that cheap you kind of know). There was an uptick of paranoia when Kevin Mitnick was busted (in the town I lived in), but for the most part we weren't doing the same kinds of crime he did (some of the folks I knew were, one ended up in prison for ~13 years). I also stopped being involved when I turned 18, which was a smart move. I got a visit from the FBI or state police (I don't remember) once, and my parents nearly shit a brick, and gave me a stern talking to because they were freaking out, but it turned out they were looking for a flasher who had been going around on Halloween! whew!

When I was a kid, my dad worked for the government in a handful of fairly remote places, and even though I could dial in to places like TOTSE and The WELL, it cost a ton of money in long distance fees. As a result, there was always incentive to get access to 1-800 numbers that did things like give you a telnet prompt or a modem in a different city. I remember the first time I got access to a network that had internet connected hosts distributed around North America, and I sent an email across the country that arrived in the blink of an eye. When I saw that I was like, "Who the hell is paying for this...this dedicated high speed phone call that's probably been running nonstop since I was in kindergarten?" It didn't occur to me that by the late 80s and early 90s, a "phone call" was really more of a metaphysical fiction than anything else.

I didn't do any cracking, but I was a teenager in the late 90s and I share your thoughts on the way that computers and the internet eventually opened up my experience. I ended up making friends with any internet café owner in my city because that was the only reasonable place to use the internet before broadband.

Thanks for sharing!

Happy to share! I ended up working for an ISP at 16 so I could have T1 access and free ISDN at home. I was lucky the scene provided motivation to teach myself Linux and sysadmin stuff, which is where my career ended up going at the time.

Thanks for sharing!

Not who you asked.

The reason was the juice. The excitement of sending stuff around the world before everyone else. I never cracked on x86 just a little bit with 6809.

I was a courier in late 90s(anyone recall FlashFXP). Fall of 1999 is when isonews.com(some old schoolers here will remember this website) got their homepage owned by the FBI. I left the scene that day.

1999 was still pretty early! iSONEWS launched in December '98, but really it was the spring of '99 when things really gained momentum. The domain seizure was 2003.

FlashFXP was insane! It's funny to think now a 1.2ish meg disk in 2 seconds between two servers seemed nuts and now I have almost 100Mbps to my house.

Ahh the memories

As a 15yo in the mid-90’s I was a member of and courier for a group called FaTe. Did it all over a 28.8k and later 56k modem. It was so much fun and I never once considered actually getting caught - it never felt real and the friends made along the way were worth it, at least in my case. Went to college and gave it all up. Studied a science but came back to IT and get paid today off of the skills I started learning back then.

Hope you guys are all using VPNs. I wasn't busted for piracy, but almost lost my freedom (even though I was a minor) for other computer related 'stuff'. I will neglect to say anything more for 'reasons'. :)

IIRC the statute of limitations for the CFAA only has a statute of limitations of 2 years, but there are so many other laws outside the CFAA (and copyright, etc.) that you can violate.

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