From very early on, there were crossovers of classic scams and MLM, such as $$$MAKE.MONEY.FAST$$$ [0]. By the late 90's spam email of this sort was common enoug

From very early on, there were crossovers of classic scams and MLM, such as $$$MAKE.MONEY.FAST$$$ [0]. By the late 90's spam email of this sort was common enough that people wanted a filtering solution; at first keywords were enough, and later Bayesian filters. Eventually Gmail stepped up to the plate and hit a home run on automatic spam detection, which played a big role in positive early reviews. The late 90's also saw the rise of retail electronic stock trading(where previously, one called up the broker and they handled the trade), which created a huge boom in pump group activities. Often the tactics were quite simplistic and just involved spamming forums with sockpuppeting. Though there were prosecutions years later, the learnings of these pump groups did persist in the penny markets, and ultimately carried over into crypto and created some foundational archetypes. During the 2000's, scam activity shifted towards ecommerce, affiliate marketing, MMO item trading and the like. This was when "search engine optimization" first became a thing. And as you can see by looking at the current results of most Google searches, SEO has basically won. The open Internet outside the walls is overrun with noise. So, while you can absolutely have gotten around back then without being personally affected, I believe it is also correct to say that it was always there, and in fact, has become a deeper problem over time. Blockchain tech is another useful vehicle, but it's one among many, and the open nature of the most popular ledgers makes for more eye-popping headlines. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Money_Fast https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Money_Fast (I recall it with the excessive dollar signs, the article has it with periods. So I did both.)