Post #3225332

2025-10-02 16:15 UTC

@wonshu@mastodon.social @hedders@mas.to To the best of my knowledge, none of the folks I knew had ventured to the dark side -- we all understood the benefits of anonimity, because it was trivially easy to identify people in the early days... Back in the day, your IP usually gave away your location or the name of the organization you worked for (or the school you attended). Your UNIX login name was closely related to your real name. Services like 'whois' and 'finger' and 'ident' made it trivially easy to geolocate networks, or definitively identify folks. Hell, the phone number and names of network admins was (and still is to a lesser degree) listed in WHOIS records -- getting someone in trouble was as easy as picking up the phone and tattling.

Replies (3)

@wonshu@mastodon.social 2025-10-02 20:16

@JustinDerrick@mstdn.ca @hedders@mas.to well the one thing that was always in the air was that advertising would be the best way to finance services on the web. But yes, I absolutely believe you and I know myself, that there have always been decent people.

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@psa@masto.ai 2025-10-03 06:48

@JustinDerrick@mstdn.ca @wonshu@mastodon.social @hedders@mas.to For those who don't quite get how much an IP was part of identity back then, it was common to see an IP or netblock written on a conference badge.

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@xinit@mastodon.coffee 2025-10-05 06:19

@JustinDerrick@mstdn.ca I had to justify my request for a .net domain registration. I got a call from The Internet (was it internic then? I forget) asking how we were network infrastructure up in Canada. I had to talk to some guy in Virginia (?) about how we were internet infrastructure in frigid Alberta. Had I realized what I had with a three letter .net, I'd have taken it with me when I left.

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