As a 14 year old in 1998, I was the sole computer user in my family and my parents wouldn't let me have internet access. Of course, that didn't stop me and I us

As a 14 year old in 1998, I was the sole computer user in my family and my parents wouldn't let me have internet access. Of course, that didn't stop me and I used ad-supported free ISPs like K-mart Blue Light (yes, K-Mart had an internet service!) and Freeinet to dial in when my parents were asleep and download files from Hotline. I used ResEdit to hack the client binary and make the ad windows minimizable :) What a thrill it was to connect to a fast server and download the blazing speed at 3KB/s. Getting access to a new Hotline server could be involved. Some came with instructions to visit a set of web pages (each with ads), copy a specific letter from each site and put them all together to get the server password. Once you were in the server, you never knew what you would find. Hotline is where I downloaded a lot of warez (like adobe products) but some servers had really strange and NSFW stuff - including the first snuff type images I had encountered. At some point, my parents would get clues that I something was "wrong" with their phone lines. Call waiting didn't work with modems so incoming calls wouldn't come through, and word got back about the issues. Luckily I was able to buy a product called "Catch a Call" which sat between the phone line and your modem, and when an incoming call was detected it would ring, and I would rip the cord out of the computer to let the house phone ring. I started going online more often while my parents were awake and I would just listen for them to hit the "talk" button on the 900MHz wireless handset and rip the phone cord out of my iMac as fast as I could so they wouldn't hear the modem noise through the phone. Sometimes when I wasn't fast enough, my mom would yell "Jer! Something's wrong with the phone!" and I would walk out, hit a few buttons to pretend I was fixing it, and hand it back (my mom would usually thank me for helping). She passed away a few weeks ago... I never told her about this deceit. Eventually around 2000/2001 they got a cable modem and life with broadband was very sweet.