In one of the even more absurd cases: According to an AP report (cited in Slashdot), Intentia International has filed criminal charges against Reuters PLC, alleging that the news service illegally obtained an earnings report that the company had not yet released, by guessing the URL at which it had been posted on Intentia’s public web site. Intentia claims that the report was “not available through normal channels,” according to AP. (Also see Financial Times and CNET News.com reports.) DES

48 points

Internet security in 2002 was an unpublished URL!

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10 points

Security through obscurity.

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2 points

Employee complaining about an unnecessary meeting back then: This could have been an unpublished url!

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39 points
*

I was once accused of hacking at a former job. I used File Explorer to log into a remote system and look at files of a program we were troubleshooting, while they were logged into the desktop remotely. In those days, Windows only allowed 1 connection (plus console, but that’s another story), so when I started describing the file structure, they got all quiet. Then they asked how I could see that, which I explained I just used File Explorer. They didn’t know how I could use Explorer (they didn’t know the difference between File and Internet Explorer) to access the server, so obviously I must be hacking. I explained how I was just looking at the files, and if that’s really relevent as the software was currently broken and we were trying to fix it for them. They insisted that I stop hacking their servers. So I had to spend the rest of the session asking them to describe the file structure over the phone so I could troubleshoot their software.

You’d think this was at some podunk little company…but no, this was a multi-billion dollar oil company in Texas. Never overestimate the abilities of someone just because they work for a large company.

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13 points

Peter principle. Everyone rises up to the exact level of their incompetence. The vast majority of people have no fucking clue of what they’re doing, and at best they’re taking educated guesses.

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6 points

This not true. I have risen much farther than my level of incompetence!

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2 points
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So you’re being competent at being incompetent, thus you will be promoted until you are incompetent at being incompetent.

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31 points

I was accused some years ago (like… 2012?) of “hacking” an alpha of an online game because I changed some urls to get items or move them between players… I actually documented all of this and sent them plenty of bug reports. It was an alpha, after all and we were specifically asked to report bugs.
They then literally sent me an email and told them that they can see my provider from my IP and will contact them to sue me for hacking…

The game never left their alpha state and soon after closed down completely over some drama where a mod got access to important keys and locked everyone out.

Fun fact: the programmer of that pile of shit then announced that they started working for a huge online game company.

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5 points

Is it Zynga? I bet it’s Zynga.

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3 points

I’m not sure, but let’s be honest, it was probably Zynga.

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20 points

Remember in the early days when a teacher would write a super long url on the chalkboard and then you had to write it down with a pencil on paper, and then later type it all into a computer

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11 points

And the teacher’s 1, l, I, and | all look the same.

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10 points
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Deleted by creator
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7 points
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Follow us online, hch, tee tee pee, collon slash slash Double-yew Double-yew Double-yew dot…

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1 point

two w’s?

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3 points
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Hey, you never know: it might’ve been a Gopher page instead! \s

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5 points

I’m going to practice free handing QR codes just to spite you

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16 points

Is it 2002, or the early days of the internet?

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2 points

Sorry, it was in 2002 which I think is the early days of internet being popular.

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4 points

Nah, the 90s were the early days of the internet being popular, with AOL launching their internet service in 1991 and even The Today Show talking about the internet in 1994. While 2002-internet isn’t the same as today’s internet, it was far from the early days by that point.

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2 points

Jesus, AOL launched in 1991?? Guess I didn’t do enough research. What will you quantify 2002 as?

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2 points

Tell me OP was a teen in 2002 without telling me OP was a teen in 2002.

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2 points

Nah man I wasn’t born yet.

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