90s were a different time for the internet, even till right after dot com bubble being online was relatively safe, many companies would not even have had dedicated InfoSec teams, no audits and compliance processes were covering firewalls etc

I maybe biased, I grew up in the 90's so I dont' really know how it was before, I do hear people reminisce about days before eternal September and bb groups and the good old 80's so perhaps it is always been a downward gradient as more and more people came online.