And anything to do with the telephone network was "phreakers."

And "cypherpunks" wasn't always about encryption. It was about passwords.

Before the internet, and on the internet before the web, it was common for hackers and casual sysops to create an account on a system with the username "cypherpunk" and the password "cypherpunk" to let anyone in to explore. This was very useful once data started getting siloed into pay services. If you think paying $2/week for nytimes.com is bad, before the internet, you might pay $60-$100 an hour in today's dollars to read a newspaper online.

There's a watered-down version of it happening right now with store checkout systems where you enter a phone number to collect "points." I ran into it a couple of years ago, and I'm surprised how many stores it works in. There's no way I'm going to spill the beans on HN, because I enjoy collecting my gas discounts through the collective help of this anonymous community.