Those were the days where if you knew someone’s real name and town that they lived, you could just go and get the telephone directory for that area (the library had all of them) and look up their address and phone number. It would have to be quite a big town before you found multiple people with the same name.
Comment on Browser Fingerprinting And Why VPNs Won’t Make You Anonymous
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 day agoI remember in 1996 my neighbor was in one of these fancy new things on the internet called a “chat room”.
He got into an arguement with someone. It got heated. Until the other guy threatened to show up at my neighbors house.
My neighbor scoffed and laughed.
Then the guy put in my neighbors real address. To this day, that still scares me. And back then internet crime wasn’t taken seriously. In fact doxxing back then may not yet have even been a crime.
eleijeep@piefed.social 1 day ago
pumpkin_spice@lemmy.today 1 day ago
FYI:
thefire.org/…/doxxing-free-speech-and-first-amend…
In the US, “doxxing” laws are pretty much state-by-state and many may be violating the first amendment.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Today, yes. In 1996 “doxxing” wasn’t a term. The internet was so new to people that nobody knew what it could even do.
I’ll give you a great example. I remember watching a news report fall of 2000, where K*B Toys was trying this untested idea. Could they use the internet to sell things? The experts said no, and that the internet was a fad. It simply wasn’t a medium you could use for commercial things…ebay aside.
In 1996 Google didn’t even exist yet. I don’t think Amazon was even a bookstore yet. The internet in those days was primitive, and the wild west of the technology realm.