The problem is previous generations who don't really understand this. No, this isn’t the reason, you’re missing some crucial context about the early to mid 90s

The problem is previous generations who don't really understand this. No, this isn’t the reason, you’re missing some crucial context about the early to mid 90s Internet - most people were using institutional accounts. It was very clear that someone with a whatever.ac.uk or .edu or .mil or even most .com that weren’t ISPs were who they said they were, and anons were explicitly anons. Many people even had phone numbers and addresses in their .sig blocks posting on Usenet, or on their homepages. There was a pretty high degree of trust, it was comparatively civilised! The problem is that people got stuck in that assumption.