BBS question: Why do some ask for your information? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PromiscuousOxlip · 2018-03-05 02:51 Not all of them, but quite a few of them ask for your full name, even your address. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kirkman14 · 2018-03-05 02:59 In the old days, many sysops wanted to "validate" their users: ensure that they were who they said they were. (e.g. not cops, not kids, etc). Many would even "voice validate": they would call the phone number the user listed on their application, to make sure it was a legit, working number, and that the user actually lived there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Shimasho · 2018-03-05 03:41 Aaah, voice validation.. Any time I dialed up a new bbs after midnight I always expected a phone call. Sure enough, nine times out of ten the sysop would call and a 30-45 minute conversation would be had, lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2018-03-05 04:36 This reminds me of that exchange from Wargames: David Lightman: Joshua called me. McKittrick: [incredulous] David, computers don't call people! David Lightman: [shrugs] Yours did. Some bulletin board systems would automatically disconnect you after the new user process then call you back (data-wise) at your number to verify the phone number was accurate, and your session would continue, the BBS having called your computer. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2018-03-05 04:45 This was in the days where you wanted to stop troublemakers from making multiple accounts, or you had all of them warez and bomb and mayhem g-ph1L3z on your board and wanted to make sure whoever calling wasn't a cop (in fact, many boards had a kind of absurd disclaimer where you were asked to affirm you weren't law enforcement when you logged in - which is a great way to entice law enforcement to log in, if law enforcement even knew what a BBS was or cared. There was paranoia about this at the time - the big busts of the era - like [Operation Sundevil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sundevil) - were exceptions that proved the rule. For the most part law enforcement wasn't very interested in what happened online until someone with a lot of juice (like a megacorp) complained. This disclaimer thing was a variant on the brolaw "entrapment" defense where if you ask a cop if they're a cop and they deny it "it's totally entrapment" (it isn't.) A lot of sysops were fairly proprietary about their boards so they considered letting you use their board as sort of letting you into their living room. From their perspective, they let you use their system, and you tell them who you are for accountability sake, lest someone 99E99 your board while you were at school. This was a far different time and on the the modern Internet, caring about fake users is sort of impractical. Facebook requires it but *I have it on good authority* that people still maintain accounts under fake names for years at a time. If it seems odd to you, it's because times have changed a whole lot since then. Even on the early Internet and ARPANET, people were far more accountable for what they said and did, and were more likely to do it under their real names (on the early Net, anyway - not so much on BBSes). I believe in the value of anonymity but something has definitely been lost (perhaps it was a worthwhile tradeoff) in the anonymous, troll- filled, unaccountable digital world we find ourselves in now. Fidonet - as far as I know the oldest BBS messaging network - still requires real names. However I see some boards have an instruction to "use a pseudonym that is believable so the Fidonet people don't get pissed off at me" during the new user process. There was also a pecking order. As now, being 13 is some kind of terrible sin. Back then you knew because people would tell you. Like the 15 year olds. Sometimes you wanted to avoid the 13 year olds... ...or people [like this](http://textfiles.com/bbs/r0dent.txt). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WikiTextBot · 2018-03-05 04:45 **Operation Sundevil** Operation Sundevil was a 1990 nationwide United States Secret Service crackdown on "illegal computer hacking activities." It involved raids in approximately fifteen different cities and resulted in three arrests and the confiscation of computers, the contents of electronic bulletin board systems (BBSes), and floppy disks. It was revealed in a press release on May 9, 1990. The arrests and subsequent court cases resulted in the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The operation is now seen as largely a public-relations stunt. *** ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&me ssage=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/bbs/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot) ^| [^Donate](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/donate) ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.28 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jhavard · 2018-03-06 01:43 I know with Wildcat and I think TriBBS, they actually had the personal info questionnaire as a default. Not to mention BBSs tended to be local, so it was like meeting a neighbor. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2018-03-06 04:45 if they ask nowadays, it's a throwback to the old bbs days, or the sysop has a 'you are visiting my house' attitude. i ask for name and location and that's it. sometimes due to software, it asks you questions but the sysop doesnt care. that's usually the case. i notice that after i setup a questionaire that was a demo for a mod i made that it filtered out the bad people. the wanna be hackers and the unstable people didnt like filling out what their hobbies,etc were and would hang up. so i kept it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- luvjOi · 2018-03-08 13:51 I didn’t know about this. Maybe it’s a good thing I only discovered bbses a little over a year ago lol, Text is easier for me and don’t think my mom would’ve liked that if hypothetically I was older at the time of the heyday but still young and into calling bbs then ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-03-26 03:10 Some of these boards ask for more info than Zuckerberg ever thought about asking for. I have news for them. The trend for many of us fleeing from social media hell is towards more anonymity, not less. You know, the way the Internet was before the advent of Faecesbook. As hard as it is for BBSes to recruit new users, you'd think they wouldn't go out of their way to scare off the few who are interested in joining. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mmaxmmouse · 2018-03-31 21:21 its basically the default setup on most BBS programs and Sysops dont usualy toggle itoff even though they never actually use any of the information.. i dont ask all that at LushBBS (96.48.105.1:23)