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90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

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Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#131

Post by Fatnino »

bityard wrote: post #84
INTPenis wrote: post #35

I was a little bastard in the late 90s, a script kiddie who executed anything I could find. Ran very obnoxious port scans against everything online. Eventually I got a letter from my ISP and it was a thick binder with "netiquette". How to behave online. And a letter saying basically "we see everything you're doing, cut it out". They probably had complaints on the abuse address of my home IP, since I was a total moron…

Hopefully the statute of limitations has run out, but but when I was young and stupid, I "hacked" a local telephone box in the area to route a payphone line to my house. I grew up in a supremely rural area. We were not at all wealthy but still one of the few households that could even afford a computer. The computer came with a modem and I wanted to use it to connect to the world. The problem was that every phone cal…

When I was a kid we moved from one condo to a different one in the same building. (major improvement in landlord)

Instead of going a couple weeks without a phone line, my dad went to the phone box and rerouted our old condo's line to the new one.

Some weeks later when the old condo had a new tenant move in a tech came to our door to ask wtf was going on. He was like "the people who used to live there have been unknowingly paying for your phone service. You're stealing"

Yeah, they (we) don't mind, lol.

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#132

Post by Dylan16807 »

ry4nf wrote: post #114
pcdoodle wrote: post #105

Back in the AOL days, I couldn't afford internet as a teenager. Well that problem was easily solved. There was some software that would use windows API to iterate public chat rooms listbox and collect screen names for later use. After that list was pretty full and both parents went to work, the magic happened: each dial into AOL allowed 3 attempts at login before it would hang up. Adding *67 to each AOL dial maybe pr…

AOL had some crazy password vulnerabilities. For awhile "12345678" would validate if your password was actually 1234, 12345, 123456, 1234567. So that means you could speed up your cracking by removing some of those shorter passwords from your list. Another I remember was for awhile(99-2000ish?) you could change your password and old passwords still worked. I don't know how long it took AOL to fix those but at least a…

> AOL had some crazy password vulnerabilities. For awhile "12345678" would validate if your password was actually 1234, 12345, 123456, 1234567. So that means you could speed up your cracking by removing some of those shorter passwords from your list.

I wouldn't call that a vulnerability, even if lets you attack passwords 2% faster.

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#133

Post by locusofself »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #128
locusofself wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was totally the same. Got several phone calls and had my ISP service terminated when I was 13-14. Portscanned and war-dialed everything. Went to defcon when I was 16. I got my first job at a local ISP after the owner busted me for running "John the Ripper" password cracker against his system that I had a shell account on. As completely careless and reckless as I was, this kind of interest in hacking was my saving g…

When were you hired to the FAANG? There used to be a culture of hiring hackers like you without a second thought, but sadly nowadays my cynical assumption is that most FAANG companies would be too corporate and buttoned-up to even consider it, at least not without needing to cut through some red tape about degree requirements and background checks.

I resisted joining a big company for most of my career, which in hindsight I now somewhat regret (I thought I would be worked too hard, turns out working at startups and no-name companies is just as bad and typically pays less unless you are lucky). 3 years ago is a the real answer, far into my career (I'm 39). Pretty sure every single person I work closely with has a BA or Masters in computer science. I just have a lot of experience.

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#134

Post by locusofself »

sen wrote: post #121
locusofself wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was totally the same. Got several phone calls and had my ISP service terminated when I was 13-14. Portscanned and war-dialed everything. Went to defcon when I was 16. I got my first job at a local ISP after the owner busted me for running "John the Ripper" password cracker against his system that I had a shell account on. As completely careless and reckless as I was, this kind of interest in hacking was my saving g…

Same here. I was a relentless script kiddy who flunked out of grade 10 because of undiagnosed ASD, but having “tech skills” in the early 90s meant I had no problem finding random IT jobs and working up to a career in Gov IT. I remember hitting a point where there we no more local ISPs who would give us an account, so we’d go to the library and use BO to steal dial up accounts from random companies (always targeting l…

so true! and I'm glad I've finally reached the point in my career where I was will never have to fix a printer again... printers are the worst!

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#135

Post by climb_stealth »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #123
climb_stealth wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard about Aussie Broadband before. I take it you would recommend them then? I hadn't known about Internode going downhill either. I'm still using them as their support is great. Price-wise looks like they both charge the same. Unfortunately no great connection here, so it ends at $100AUD for 100Mbps on a good day.

They've got the best support, for sure. But how often do you need support? Our business is with Superloop 1000/50 ($109, and actually gets 1000Mbps solidly). Used to be with MyRepublic and would get between 300-700Mbps depending on time of day. At home we just use a cheap provider - Spintel. It seems that for the lower speeds (we're on 50/20) you don't run into CVC issues like you used to.

You are right, I almost never need support but when I do I appreciate it. Apparently they have a flag for accounts of people who know IT stuff. Found that out when my partner ended up talking to them and she got a bit flustered over the questions they asked.

I also like to think of it as doing my bit against the enshittification of everything. Cheap internet is a race to the bottom and it's not pretty.

But Aussie Broadband looks pretty promising. I like that they are open about CVC issues. Will consider them next time we move.

I'm amazed you throw these ISP names out there that I never heard of before. Probably not doing advertisements and bill boards and stuff. Maybe the internet situation in Australia is not as bleak as I always thought :)

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#137

Post by defrost »

climb_stealth wrote: post #135
AussieWog93 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've got the best support, for sure. But how often do you need support? Our business is with Superloop 1000/50 ($109, and actually gets 1000Mbps solidly). Used to be with MyRepublic and would get between 300-700Mbps depending on time of day. At home we just use a cheap provider - Spintel. It seems that for the lower speeds (we're on 50/20) you don't run into CVC issues like you used to.

You are right, I almost never need support but when I do I appreciate it. Apparently they have a flag for accounts of people who know IT stuff. Found that out when my partner ended up talking to them and she got a bit flustered over the questions they asked. I also like to think of it as doing my bit against the enshittification of everything. Cheap internet is a race to the bottom and it's not pretty. But Aussie Bro…

The motherlode of Australian ISP inside knowledge and recommendations is likely still Whirlpool forums where noobs and line engineers rub shoulders.

eg:

Choosing an ISP https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/92

RIP Broadband Choice tables: https://bc.whirlpool.net.au/

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#138

Post by DropInIn »

int_19h wrote: post #126
nocoiner wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, I definitely recall how space constrained things felt back then. Still, five megabytes of traffic per day doesn’t feel like much of an allowance, even back then. I guess it was really just intended for text-only personal pages. I wonder what kind of hardware their web server was hosted on… I bet you’re definitely right about my ISP being on a T1. What was bandwidth on those, 1.5 Mbps? I don’t blame them for…

How many pages that weren't mostly text were around on the web in 1995, really? FWIW around that time I was still using a BBS, and that place had a download limit of one 3.5" floppy (1.44 Mb) per day per user.

5 / 1.44 is??

Not many users....

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#139

Post by DropInIn »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #109
dylan604 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what geographic region are you (or "your friend") located with dial-up access?

https://www.interwrx.com/residential.php

That's for an active company?

In the USA?

Wtf is going on in Arizona? (Or perhaps _not_ going on)

Re: 90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president

#140

Post by cjbprime »

qingcharles wrote: post #118
artofcode wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can still remember my dad's reaction when the first proper high phone bill came in... Oh boy...

Yes, it was brutal in the UK in the mid-90s. That first £1000 phone bill almost had my parents divorce me.

Same. I remember the day the letter came from BT suggesting that my parents switch to the "Heavy User" tariff. I'd been using the nearest CompuServe POP in a different city.
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