Comment by StanislavPetrov

Friend of mine ran a dial-up BBS in the early 90s when we were in our late teens. We had been to a few 2600 meetings (in the lobby, near the payphones) and were obviously into tech, though not as heavily as others. The BBS was comprised of a bunch of the usual doors (Tradewars 2002, ect) and a few message boards. The BBS has been up for a couple of years and, being a single line, accounts were limited to 20 or 30 minutes a day. It was rather popular and when someone logged off there would usually be someone calling and logging in right after.

Moderation was lax (at best) as we spent more time playing Tradewars than we did reading the message boards. Eventually one of the message boards became popular among serious hackers, and they would regular post back and forth there, which we found amusing. Soon after, one of our mutual friends, who was a serious hacker (albeit not connected with our BBS) was arrested for some illegal hacking activities. When he was released, he called my friend and told him that he had been questioned specifically about his BBS. Needless to say that was the last day the BBS was online as my friend rushed downstairs to turn it off and format his 40 MB hard drive!