And while early 2000s might be pushing it, in the 1990s, it was most certainly normal for people to put their home phone numbers in Usenet signatures. The internet was initially just this small subculture thing for nerds, generally not on the radar of anyone not wishing you well. Your employer wasn't there. Your parents weren't there. Your stalker wasn't there. Your insurer and your bank and your local PD weren't there.
And I hate to say this, but the privacy dystopia we now live in is largely of our own doing. We had a bunch of really naive ideas about how information wants to be free. It made for a couple of wonderful years, but then allowed bad actors to abuse every single bit of it. And the bad actors weren't exactly external: the companies were founded and staffed by techies who now lament the status quo.