A Decade of Have I Been Pwned

troyhunt.com

125 points·LaSombra··13 comments

Previous discussion here (150comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38519257

A decade of “oh. I have been pwned”.

> You know why it's called "Have I Been Pwned"? Try coming up with almost any conceivable normal sounding English name and getting a .com domain for it. Good luck!

Maybe he's addressing a slightly different topic, but I remember hearing/seeing "Pwned" long, LONG before this.

I remember in the usenet/bbs days "pwn" was just a typo of "own" given the "p" and "o" are next to each other on the qwerty keyboard, and it stuck.

The article links to this[1] article which mentions pwn being used on BBSes in the 80s.

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/pwned-meaning-definition-orig...

I think they mean more why it wasn't called something like "haveibeenowned.com" or "hacked.com". Not that they invented the term "pwned".

Yes, from the FAQs:

What does "pwned" mean? The word "pwned" has origins in video game culture and is a leetspeak derivation of the word "owned", due to the proximity of the "o" and "p" keys. It's typically used to imply that someone has been controlled or compromised, for example "I was pwned in the Adobe data breach". Read more about how "pwned" went from hacker slang to the internet's favourite taunt.

I think this website is the main place keeping the term "pwned" alive haha. It's pretty much died out among Gen Z

The gen z equivalent is taking the L.

I remember having to send the link to my mother in law. I suppose now that the event is all over, and it mostly affected my mother in law, I can say 'good times'.

What protects the privacy of queries to this service themselves?

It's like déjà vu all over again.

10 years?! Congrats

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