<< February 26, 2007 >>
i could have been a contender

(or, how i didn't make my millions)

back in the day, even before i worked on gnome, i ran an aol phishing site.

accidentally.

this was our squares game, a free and web-based version of a popular game that had been available on AOL for some time. my friend was part of that squares community, so when we published our version of the game, most of the people who came and played it were AOL users.

i thought it would be good to have people log in, so that their stats etc. could follow them around, and so there could be ladders and tournaments, so i put a login/password dialog when they first started the game up. if you typed in guest for the user you could log in with a blank password, i think.

but almost nobody did this.

they all typed in their AOL usernames and passwords! and i logged them; not out of malicious intent, but so that it was easy for me to see when i had accidentally hit my caps lock key. i probably still have hundreds (well, more likely threes) of old usernames and passwords on a disk somewhere in my apartment. maybe several disks. i wonder how many of them haven't changed their passwords?

since i was just a student at the time, and did not yet "appreciate the realities of living in this society," i didn't try to profit from this serendipitous creation. and it has me wondering where i would be if i'd taken advantage of that opportunity i was given, and had been at the forefront of the phishing industry. probably some tropical island beach somewhere in australia. definitely not in smelly old east cambridge.

anyway, i thought this (anti-)phishing presentation was a fun read, especially its (appropriate) usability skew.