It was a hell of a time to be on the internet, for sure.

Security was basically non-existent or so badly implemented that it was a joke.

Some fond memories of my early teenage years:

- Causing net splits to steal ops / takeover IRC channels

- As part of a warez group, using site to site FTP transfers to move massive (at that time) amounts of warez without being limited by my 14400 modem

- How crazy easy it was to crash/DOS pretty much any computer on the internet

- Taking over company networks just for fun, and putting in backdoors that drove the sysadmins nuts

Yeah, I was a shithead teenager, and am sincerely sorry to the sysadmins I messed with, as I am a sysadmin myself now.

Eventually I ended up having many FBI-instigated meetings with the RCMP Commercial Crimes Division... They had boxes upon boxes of paper printouts from sniffing my connections.

I think I got off partially because of my age (about 14). But also the fact that the telecom company I was using had illegally sniffed incoming telnet sessions to my Linux box before there was any warrant, and had logged in using credentials they had sniffed to read many personal emails between my brother and myself, and other friends that used the system.

I realized what they were doing pretty quickly, but, I'm pretty sure their recklessness in doing that is what saved my butt in the end. This was a big crown corp telecom company.