4 ms·

As a teenager in the 90s I was a bit of a pyromaniac. The early internet allowed us to purchase long fuses, nitromethane from eBay, and “homemade C4” from Amazo

As a teenager in the 90s I was a bit of a pyromaniac. The early internet allowed us to purchase long fuses, nitromethane from eBay, and “homemade C4” from Amazon. An FBI field agent had a knock and talk to the address we had ordered the fuses to. They don’t mess around! Not sure how they found out either.

macintux 2y ago
I have a very old, very fuzzy memory of someone telling a story about sending a completely meaningless, “encrypted” (garbage) snail mail letter to somewhere in the Soviet Union. Despite taking great precautions to obscure their identity, they still received a visit from government law enforcement.
geor9e 2y ago
That unique 90s time period where any kid could print out bomb making recipes on the school printer from alt.anarchy or whatever, but columbine hadn't occurred yet so we didn't really get in trouble when a teacher found out.
- StanislavPetrov 2y ago
  In the early 1990s a friend of mine ran a dial-up BBS. It was completely unmoderated (aside from spam), and ended up become a rather active board for (mostly black hat) hackers to post and trade information. My friend wasn't involved in any hacking directly - he simply ran the BBS which also hosted a bunch of doors (games) like TW2002 that were also quite popular. One day, a mutual friend of ours (who was an aspiring black hat hacker) got picked up by the FBI for a variety of phone phreaking offenses. During questioning, they asked him a bunch of questions about the BBS. As soon as he got out on bail, he relayed this information to my friend who ran the BBS. Needless to say, the BBS was shut down and all of the disks/hard drives trashed within an hour. Thankfully there were never any legal implications for my friend with the BBS, but you can be damn sure there were quite a few sleepless nights subsequently as he waited for a knock on the door!
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Or the '80s, when you could just order the Anarchist Cookbook from a willing bookstore (some would refuse). At the time I recall that there were definitely kids into this stuff. Not literal anarchy or violence, they just liked making bombs and setting them off out in the woods somewhere. Homemade fireworks really. They got into the chemistry of it, just nerdy stuff. No harm intended.
  - ternnoburn 2y ago
    I was also around then, and even then it had a reputation of being trash, not really anarchist, and probably dangerously poorly put together.
  - pstuart 2y ago
    I've heard the two gateways into becoming interested in chemistry are getting high and blowing shit up.
    - Auracle 2y ago
      A friend and I want to make a small amount of nitroglycerin in chemistry class in HS. The teacher was all for it, but it got bumped all the way to the superintendent who shot it down. Boo.
      - magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
        Anything fun in life is illegal, immoral, fattening, or dangerous. In high school chemistry, I once superheated magnesium in a covered crucible and then blew on. That was fun.
    - magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
      All chemists are pyros, by definition and by requirement.
  - jandrewrogers 2y ago
    To be honest, the Anarchist Cookbook had some really dodgy recipes. It was arguably a collection of future Darwin Awards.
- jcims 2y ago
  In the mid 80s my best friend brought in a select fire (aka full auto capable) mauser c96 with the case that doubles as a stock. His grandpa acquired in wwii, the teacher just asked if it was loaded.
underlipton 2y ago
These kinds of posts are always fascinating to me, as someone who had to move heaven and earth to get a graphics tablet and a PC that could run XP and Blender c. 2006. It's not like we were in particularly dire straits financially, and were on the more rational side of "overly sheltered" (having known people who couldn't attend school clubs or who had a parent hovering over their shoulder every time they got online), but the freedom and access some of y'all had is just... hard for me to fathom. Like, whose credit card were you using??
- ganoushoreilly 2y ago
  For some of the stuff in the early days we could mail cashiers checks with the order number, bypassing need for credit card. Sure it took longer, but you could still buy a lot of stuff that way.
- boomboomsubban 2y ago
  Before eBay acquired PayPal in 2002, buying something then mailing the person a check was fairly common.
- icameron 2y ago
  You could buy western union money orders for 45 cents at the minimart, and mail it to the seller with the item number. Sometimes even send cash.
jokoon 2y ago
> Not sure how they found out either. I surely hope they can find out, and the harder it is to know how they found out, the better it is since fewer people will be able to evade it.

macintux 2y ago

I have a very old, very fuzzy memory of someone telling a story about sending a completely meaningless, “encrypted” (garbage) snail mail letter to somewhere in the Soviet Union. Despite taking great precautions to obscure their identity, they still received a visit from government law enforcement.

geor9e 2y ago

That unique 90s time period where any kid could print out bomb making recipes on the school printer from alt.anarchy or whatever, but columbine hadn't occurred yet so we didn't really get in trouble when a teacher found out.

StanislavPetrov 2y ago
In the early 1990s a friend of mine ran a dial-up BBS. It was completely unmoderated (aside from spam), and ended up become a rather active board for (mostly black hat) hackers to post and trade information. My friend wasn't involved in any hacking directly - he simply ran the BBS which also hosted a bunch of doors (games) like TW2002 that were also quite popular. One day, a mutual friend of ours (who was an aspiring black hat hacker) got picked up by the FBI for a variety of phone phreaking offenses. During questioning, they asked him a bunch of questions about the BBS. As soon as he got out on bail, he relayed this information to my friend who ran the BBS. Needless to say, the BBS was shut down and all of the disks/hard drives trashed within an hour. Thankfully there were never any legal implications for my friend with the BBS, but you can be damn sure there were quite a few sleepless nights subsequently as he waited for a knock on the door!
SoftTalker 2y ago
Or the '80s, when you could just order the Anarchist Cookbook from a willing bookstore (some would refuse). At the time I recall that there were definitely kids into this stuff. Not literal anarchy or violence, they just liked making bombs and setting them off out in the woods somewhere. Homemade fireworks really. They got into the chemistry of it, just nerdy stuff. No harm intended.
- ternnoburn 2y ago
  I was also around then, and even then it had a reputation of being trash, not really anarchist, and probably dangerously poorly put together.
- pstuart 2y ago
  I've heard the two gateways into becoming interested in chemistry are getting high and blowing shit up.
  - Auracle 2y ago
    A friend and I want to make a small amount of nitroglycerin in chemistry class in HS. The teacher was all for it, but it got bumped all the way to the superintendent who shot it down. Boo.
    - magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
      Anything fun in life is illegal, immoral, fattening, or dangerous. In high school chemistry, I once superheated magnesium in a covered crucible and then blew on. That was fun.
  - magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
    All chemists are pyros, by definition and by requirement.
- jandrewrogers 2y ago
  To be honest, the Anarchist Cookbook had some really dodgy recipes. It was arguably a collection of future Darwin Awards.
jcims 2y ago
In the mid 80s my best friend brought in a select fire (aka full auto capable) mauser c96 with the case that doubles as a stock. His grandpa acquired in wwii, the teacher just asked if it was loaded.

underlipton 2y ago

These kinds of posts are always fascinating to me, as someone who had to move heaven and earth to get a graphics tablet and a PC that could run XP and Blender c. 2006. It's not like we were in particularly dire straits financially, and were on the more rational side of "overly sheltered" (having known people who couldn't attend school clubs or who had a parent hovering over their shoulder every time they got online), but the freedom and access some of y'all had is just... hard for me to fathom. Like, whose credit card were you using??

ganoushoreilly 2y ago
For some of the stuff in the early days we could mail cashiers checks with the order number, bypassing need for credit card. Sure it took longer, but you could still buy a lot of stuff that way.
boomboomsubban 2y ago
Before eBay acquired PayPal in 2002, buying something then mailing the person a check was fairly common.
icameron 2y ago
You could buy western union money orders for 45 cents at the minimart, and mail it to the seller with the item number. Sometimes even send cash.

jokoon 2y ago

> Not sure how they found out either. I surely hope they can find out, and the harder it is to know how they found out, the better it is since fewer people will be able to evade it.