9 ms·

I did really enjoy this post, but is it just a tiny bit weird how casual he is about repeatedly committing fraud? Not asking for some grand apology (lord knows

I did really enjoy this post, but is it just a tiny bit weird how casual he is about repeatedly committing fraud? Not asking for some grand apology (lord knows the crap I did as a kid), but the post is written like defrauding an ISP is just a normal and fine thing to do. Am I off base here?

adastra22 4y ago
Yeah this also struck me as quite strange. Not that he did it, but that he was so cavalier about it, even after all this time.
bluedino 4y ago
It seems like for a while there we all did shit like that. Or at least said we did.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
What you ever see 'hackers'? The 90s were cavalier. We're talking over 20 years ago, different time. The big difference was that people were... for lack of a better designation, intensely naive back then. There just wasn't a lot of understanding around consequences.
- serf 4y ago
  > What you ever see 'hackers'? to be fair that movie follows a group of teenagers showcasing illegal activities that finally culminate into their federal arrest. yeah, they're later exonerated because 'Movie-FBI' has a heart and a sense of justice, but that's probably not the best movie to try to pull criminality psych from. my guess : Eric Corley injected a lot of his own personal ethos into that movie. He was apparently an unpaid consultant.
  - jamal-kumar 4y ago
    It's what people had to model their own behaviour on in a time where most depictions weren't exactly positive I guess? I'm purely speaking retrospectively here
- pigtailgirl 4y ago
  -- 1997 - 11 years old - figured out the username password & dial up numbers for everyone in our small town are based on the mailing address - once the bandwidth limit was reached on the account - id just switch to someone elses - at the time i justified it as 'borrowing their internet' - in retrospect it was wrong - oh well --
- riffraff 4y ago
  I don't think that people were more naive, they were just young. I am pretty sure kids today are also doing some different mildly illegal stuff with technology, but we'll have to wait 20 years to find out about it.
  - trevyn 4y ago
    Photoshopping printed documents (school enrollment records, event tickets, covid stuff, etc.) was definitely weirdly popular among a certain demographic. Also scamming product returns, food delivery refunds, stuff like this. Curious what other things people have run across.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
makeitdouble 4y ago
The credit card fraud is to me the worst, as any random number might actually match an existing one, and back in the days I wouldn't expect much scrutiny from the card processor. That's then up to the poor soul who's number was used to go through paperwork purgatory to dispute the charge. Orherwise ISPs are the poster child of monopoly giants that had to be broken down kicking and screaming, but kept screwing the customer over and over because there is litteraly nothing that we can do about it (voting won't help). They can burn in hell I wouldn't care.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  Back then it was a giant pain in the ass. These days isn't it a lot easier to deal with that? You basically just get on the phone with equifax/transunion and upload some documents. Guess that trial and error had to start somewhere. Also I really wonder what the mathematical chances are that the card actually matched with someone back then. Like obviously a collision risk here but how large?
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    There's 12 random numbers, and I assume banks reject some numbers based on obviousness (e.g. all 0, all 1s, 1234, all 3 groups are identical etc.) so I'd assume there's actually less probability space than what we'd expect. Even if it's still a pretty huge space.
    - nickles 4y ago
      Credit card numbers aren’t entirely random [0] https://medium.com/@ma.juber/mathematics-behind-credit-debit-card-numbering-340bf68d27d2 https://medium.com/@ma.juber/mathematics-behind-credit-debit...
      - makeitdouble 4y ago
        Sorry I think I'm missing it, does that page explain somewhere how the 12 digits that are not set by the MII/IIN and check digit rules are not random ?
Waterluvian 4y ago
I pictured him being 14 through all that and that made it a wee bit better.
3np 4y ago
There is a statute of limitations at play here I assume.
dQw4w9WgXcQ 4y ago
You must be Gen-Z or younger. Small-time "fraud" antics like this were part of the hacker ethos throughout the 80s and 90s, some highlights being the Anarchist Cookbook, Matthew Broderick changing school records in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Kevin Mitnick as one of the notable poster children of the new era of cyber enforcement crackdowns. Even the word "hacker" meant something a lot different than today where kids now say that someone "hacked" their Instagram.
- dhosek 4y ago
  Not to mention Matthew Broderick changing school records in Wargames (before almost starting World War III). He was doing a lot of changing school records back in the 80s.
- Agamus 4y ago
  ^ This is accurate. And when I saw the William Poundstone "Big Secrets" reference, I knew I was home. For anyone who hasn't played in that series, do yourself the favor! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Secrets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Secrets
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Suzie changing Dustin's grades in a direct lift from Wargames, right there in the current series of Stranger Things.
- hnbad 4y ago
  Outside of movies these antics were confined to a specific (wealthy, male, usually white) demographic, though. Likewise a lot of 80s movies happily depict "funny" antics that would even at the time have been considered sexual assault or rape if the perps weren't wealthy white college "boys". Sure, culture has become more sensitive to these things overall and criminal prosecution of credit card fraud and computer crimes has become a lot more effective but there's a tangible difference between generating fake credit card numbers and masking your identity to defraud ISPs and hacking the Pentagon to access government secrets (namely, the latter fits into the hacker ethos of "liberating information" and rejecting authority whereas the former just provides personal gain). Changing your school records as a student is a childish version of the latter (as the intent is not to create false credentials for monetary gain but to defy the authority of teachers by subverting their means of "punishment").
tomc1985 4y ago
It was, for a time. Much better times than now, that's for sure.
mherdeg 4y ago
This is more or less the tone of 2600 magazine though -- people very cheerfully admit to stuff which, yes, is totally unwise to write down that you have done. The weird thing is we have had the CFAA hanging over us as some kind of Sword of Damocles for decades and we just collectively ignored it. Honestly everyone was even pretty cavalier about this stuff during and after the Mitnick prosecution... In the 2000s when I talked to people who do urban exploration there was at least an understanding that you should not be taking photos in sensitive locations -- "please don't make a felony diary".
drc500free 4y ago
There is extremely low risk of colliding with a real number, and people didn't feel guilty about using services that had nearly zero marginal cost. Phreaking or fake-cc-number fraud was considered pretty victimless, and if there was a victim it was a baby bell that had just been busted up for being a massive monopoly.
kfrzcode 4y ago
You are on "Hacker"News...
AlbertCory 4y ago
You're not off base for now. You are for then. Those were different times.
currency 4y ago
Hacking systems was just something a lot of computer users did. Often interest in hacking and interest in computers were strongly related. Check out any history of phreaking [0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box
driverdan 4y ago
As others pointed out a lot of us did that kind of stuff. I signed up for AOL at least a hundred times using fake credit card and bank account numbers. After that I picked a random person out of the phone book and signed up for a local ISP that mailed the bill, no credit card required. That worked for something like 6 months before they cancelled the account. You have to remember how expensive this stuff was in the 80's and 90's, how low risk this type of fraud was, and how us teens didn't really think about it. ISPs billed by the hour, something a teen could not afford.
donkarma 4y ago
don't be a snake
pavel_lishin 4y ago
It's approximately equivalent to admitting you've pirated movies.

adastra22 4y ago

Yeah this also struck me as quite strange. Not that he did it, but that he was so cavalier about it, even after all this time.

bluedino 4y ago

It seems like for a while there we all did shit like that. Or at least said we did.

jamal-kumar 4y ago

What you ever see 'hackers'? The 90s were cavalier. We're talking over 20 years ago, different time. The big difference was that people were... for lack of a better designation, intensely naive back then. There just wasn't a lot of understanding around consequences.

serf 4y ago
> What you ever see 'hackers'? to be fair that movie follows a group of teenagers showcasing illegal activities that finally culminate into their federal arrest. yeah, they're later exonerated because 'Movie-FBI' has a heart and a sense of justice, but that's probably not the best movie to try to pull criminality psych from. my guess : Eric Corley injected a lot of his own personal ethos into that movie. He was apparently an unpaid consultant.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  It's what people had to model their own behaviour on in a time where most depictions weren't exactly positive I guess? I'm purely speaking retrospectively here
pigtailgirl 4y ago
-- 1997 - 11 years old - figured out the username password & dial up numbers for everyone in our small town are based on the mailing address - once the bandwidth limit was reached on the account - id just switch to someone elses - at the time i justified it as 'borrowing their internet' - in retrospect it was wrong - oh well --
riffraff 4y ago
I don't think that people were more naive, they were just young. I am pretty sure kids today are also doing some different mildly illegal stuff with technology, but we'll have to wait 20 years to find out about it.
- trevyn 4y ago
  Photoshopping printed documents (school enrollment records, event tickets, covid stuff, etc.) was definitely weirdly popular among a certain demographic. Also scamming product returns, food delivery refunds, stuff like this. Curious what other things people have run across.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

makeitdouble 4y ago

The credit card fraud is to me the worst, as any random number might actually match an existing one, and back in the days I wouldn't expect much scrutiny from the card processor. That's then up to the poor soul who's number was used to go through paperwork purgatory to dispute the charge. Orherwise ISPs are the poster child of monopoly giants that had to be broken down kicking and screaming, but kept screwing the customer over and over because there is litteraly nothing that we can do about it (voting won't help). They can burn in hell I wouldn't care.

jamal-kumar 4y ago
Back then it was a giant pain in the ass. These days isn't it a lot easier to deal with that? You basically just get on the phone with equifax/transunion and upload some documents. Guess that trial and error had to start somewhere. Also I really wonder what the mathematical chances are that the card actually matched with someone back then. Like obviously a collision risk here but how large?
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  There's 12 random numbers, and I assume banks reject some numbers based on obviousness (e.g. all 0, all 1s, 1234, all 3 groups are identical etc.) so I'd assume there's actually less probability space than what we'd expect. Even if it's still a pretty huge space.
  - nickles 4y ago
    Credit card numbers aren’t entirely random [0] https://medium.com/@ma.juber/mathematics-behind-credit-debit-card-numbering-340bf68d27d2 https://medium.com/@ma.juber/mathematics-behind-credit-debit...
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      Sorry I think I'm missing it, does that page explain somewhere how the 12 digits that are not set by the MII/IIN and check digit rules are not random ?

Waterluvian 4y ago

I pictured him being 14 through all that and that made it a wee bit better.

3np 4y ago

There is a statute of limitations at play here I assume.

dQw4w9WgXcQ 4y ago

You must be Gen-Z or younger. Small-time "fraud" antics like this were part of the hacker ethos throughout the 80s and 90s, some highlights being the Anarchist Cookbook, Matthew Broderick changing school records in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Kevin Mitnick as one of the notable poster children of the new era of cyber enforcement crackdowns. Even the word "hacker" meant something a lot different than today where kids now say that someone "hacked" their Instagram.

dhosek 4y ago
Not to mention Matthew Broderick changing school records in Wargames (before almost starting World War III). He was doing a lot of changing school records back in the 80s.
Agamus 4y ago
^ This is accurate. And when I saw the William Poundstone "Big Secrets" reference, I knew I was home. For anyone who hasn't played in that series, do yourself the favor! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Secrets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Secrets
Gordonjcp 4y ago
Suzie changing Dustin's grades in a direct lift from Wargames, right there in the current series of Stranger Things.
hnbad 4y ago
Outside of movies these antics were confined to a specific (wealthy, male, usually white) demographic, though. Likewise a lot of 80s movies happily depict "funny" antics that would even at the time have been considered sexual assault or rape if the perps weren't wealthy white college "boys". Sure, culture has become more sensitive to these things overall and criminal prosecution of credit card fraud and computer crimes has become a lot more effective but there's a tangible difference between generating fake credit card numbers and masking your identity to defraud ISPs and hacking the Pentagon to access government secrets (namely, the latter fits into the hacker ethos of "liberating information" and rejecting authority whereas the former just provides personal gain). Changing your school records as a student is a childish version of the latter (as the intent is not to create false credentials for monetary gain but to defy the authority of teachers by subverting their means of "punishment").

tomc1985 4y ago

It was, for a time. Much better times than now, that's for sure.

mherdeg 4y ago

This is more or less the tone of 2600 magazine though -- people very cheerfully admit to stuff which, yes, is totally unwise to write down that you have done. The weird thing is we have had the CFAA hanging over us as some kind of Sword of Damocles for decades and we just collectively ignored it. Honestly everyone was even pretty cavalier about this stuff during and after the Mitnick prosecution... In the 2000s when I talked to people who do urban exploration there was at least an understanding that you should not be taking photos in sensitive locations -- "please don't make a felony diary".

drc500free 4y ago

There is extremely low risk of colliding with a real number, and people didn't feel guilty about using services that had nearly zero marginal cost. Phreaking or fake-cc-number fraud was considered pretty victimless, and if there was a victim it was a baby bell that had just been busted up for being a massive monopoly.

kfrzcode 4y ago

You are on "Hacker"News...

AlbertCory 4y ago

You're not off base for now. You are for then. Those were different times.

currency 4y ago

Hacking systems was just something a lot of computer users did. Often interest in hacking and interest in computers were strongly related. Check out any history of phreaking [0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box

driverdan 4y ago

As others pointed out a lot of us did that kind of stuff. I signed up for AOL at least a hundred times using fake credit card and bank account numbers. After that I picked a random person out of the phone book and signed up for a local ISP that mailed the bill, no credit card required. That worked for something like 6 months before they cancelled the account. You have to remember how expensive this stuff was in the 80's and 90's, how low risk this type of fraud was, and how us teens didn't really think about it. ISPs billed by the hour, something a teen could not afford.

donkarma 4y ago

don't be a snake

pavel_lishin 4y ago

It's approximately equivalent to admitting you've pirated movies.