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A comment on What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers. Parent comment

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by notadev on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @10:25AM (#31003171)
To expand on this a bit, when you mailed an attachment on AOL, it would upload and be hosted on their servers. So when you forwarded that email to someone, the download was just a pointer to the original location on their servers. Warez groups would recruit people for positions likw uploaders with strong connections who would just send tons of mail with attachments (to themselves I think). Then the progz/bots, called Mass Mailers (MMers) would sit in a private chat and wait for commands.

Sending the `/list` command in chat would result in one or more emails with lists of software, usually split up to reduce file size. If I were looking for PhotoShop, I might see something like:

[400] PhotoShop 4.0 (cracked by Foo) 1/4

[401] PhotoShop 4.0 (cracked by Foo) 2/4

[402] PhotoShop 4.0 (cracked by Foo) 3/4

[403] PhotoShop 4.0 (cracked by Foo) 4/4

I'd then send `/send 400-403` in the chat and in a few minutes I'd have four forwarded emails containing a portion of an archive. You'd do this for a bunch of stuff and then when going to bed, let AOL's download manager download everything overnight. AOL did more for the WaReZ scene than anyone else in the mid-to-late 90s.

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Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by bdr on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @12:19PM (#31004698)
Instead of /list, I remember the bots advertising with ASCII decorations like this:

_,-^-,_,-^-,_,-^ Enter 33 for /\/\ /\/\ ^-,_,-^-,_,-^-,_,-^-,_

(You'd type "33" in the chat to get a Mass Mail in your inbox.)

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Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by bdr on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @05:02PM (#31008190)
Fixed formatting

  _,-*^*-,_,-*^*-,_,-*^ Enter 33 for /\/\ /\/\ ^*-,_,-*^*-,_,-*^*-,_,-*^*-,_
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Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by notadev on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @03:36PM (#31007296)
The MMers allowed you to specify chat commands, but the default was usually /list or /listme
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Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by jabroni_salad on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @11:15AM (#31003794)
This workflow is actually still in use in certain corners of the IRC world. It's kinda neat to see what other people are requesting in realtime.
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Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by pxlpshr on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @08:47PM (#31009961)
This is exactly right. I use to build these bots in Visual Basic back in the 90s which is what led me down this path.
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Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by the42thdoctor on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @03:24PM (#31007168)
And then what, you had to combine the four files yourself ?
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Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by notadev on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @03:37PM (#31007311)
They were usually RAR files, so you would use WinRAR to reassemble them into one archive.
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