Early Phishing
Koceilah Rekouche krekouche@pushstart.info
The history of phishing traces back in important ways to the mid-1990s when hacking
software facilitated the mass targeting of people in password stealing scams on America
Online (AOL). The first of these software programs was mine, called AOHell, and it was
where the word phishing was coined. The software provided an automated password
and credit card-stealing mechanism starting in January 1995. Though the practice of
tricking users in order to steal passwords or information possibly goes back to the
earliest days of computer networking, AOHell’s phishing system was the first automated
tool made publicly available for this purpose. 1 The program influenced the creation of
many other automated phishing systems that were made over a number of years. These
tools were available to amateurs who used them to engage in a countless number of
phishing attacks. By the later part of the decade, the activity moved from AOL to other
networks and eventually grew to involve professional criminals on the internet. What
began as a scheme by rebellious teenagers to steal passwords evolved into one of the
top computer security threats affecting people, corporations, and governments.
The Internet In 1996

In 1996, the Internet Archive began archiving the web for a service called the Wayback Machine. They’ve now archived 55 billion web pages. That’s enough web pages that if you were to print them all out using your roommate’s printer while he was at class and tape them end-to-end, you could reach the moon and back 28 trillion times.
I decided to peruse the Wayback Machine’s earliest archives to see what the internet looked like in 1996, when I was 14 and evidently had much less free time than I do now. Much to my chagrin, few websites from these early years have been successfully archived, and many of the best preserved ones were created by fast food and soft drink corporations because they were some of the earliest adapters of the internet. They viewed the medium as a chance for inexpensive advertising and invested dozens upon dozens of dollars into it. The results are tremendously humiliating.
Kids Only Channel Policies [Doc]
The following is a summary of AOL’s “Kids Only Channel Policies.” The AAC is obligated to follow these policies at all times. (from “Document Version 2.32”). All items are direct quotes, commentary is in brackets. The original document is 16 pages long. Grammar and spelling are as found in the original document. This document was prepared bu AAC Coord based on policies in effect in July, 1998.
Introduction
AOL developed The the Kids Only Channel Policies (“Policies”) to ensure a uniform consistent set of standards and practices throughout all programming and advertising areas (Rainman or web-based) targeted to kids children 12 and under on America Online, and particularly including through the Kids Only channel. AOL reserves the right to modify these Policies as necessary. Additionally, AOL expects all Partners to abide by the Children’s Advertising Review Board Unit (“CARU”) guidelines for Interactive Electronic Media (see also http://www.bbb.org/advertising/caruguid.html)
Policy PrincipleObjectivesGoals
~Provide a safe, age appropriate environment for kids in a manner appealing to both kids and parents, addressing primary industry and consumer concerns:
~Providing age appropriate content
~Protecting youth privacy, including protection from online predators
~Creating an age-appropriate marketing environment.
~Create a viable programming and business model for youth-targeted areas and partners on AOL.
~Provide a safe, age appropriate environment for kids in a manner appealing to both kids and parents;
~Create a viable programming and business model for youth targeted channels and partners on AOL.
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