… When computers didn’t all have permanent internet connections, which limited the damage it was possible to do by having a persistent executable running on someone’s computer.
There was little to no spyware or malware risk because this was a time when stealing CPU cycles couldn’t make you money, machines couldn’t be used to anonymously generate internet traffic, and exfiltrating captured data was essentially impossible.
As soon as all the computers went online, the frivolity had to stop.
> As soon as all the computers went online, the frivolity had to stop.
Very insightful. They ceased to be "our" (user's) machines and became "everybody else's" (vendors, criminals, scammers, "debug-by-update" OS-vendors, etc., etc.)
There was little to no spyware or malware risk because this was a time when stealing CPU cycles couldn’t make you money, machines couldn’t be used to anonymously generate internet traffic, and exfiltrating captured data was essentially impossible.
As soon as all the computers went online, the frivolity had to stop.