I have used Internet since 1989. Of course not at home, because that didn't exist.
In the early days every Internet user was implicitly trust-worthy. They all worked at universities or the like and meeting a scammer was highly unlikely, basically unheard of. I have visited several of them on another continent, just introduced by email. We helped each other buying goods that you could not buy in your country of residence before Amazon existed. We exchanged collectibles like paper money. It just worked, the check was in the mail a week or 2 later.
The first thing we had to learn is that aol.com addresses could not be trusted. That was still kind of easy, but since then it's only been downhill.
Well I was on BBSes before that, and I've hung out with random people IRL via message boards who turned out to be very nice. But - I've also seen some of that, more recently on discord, and on IRC a few years back. I think that that aspect (trust) is an emergent phenomenon from interacting with a smaller group.
I have used Internet since 1989. Of course not at home, because that didn't exist.
In the early days every Internet user was implicitly trust-worthy. They all worked at universities or the like and meeting a scammer was highly unlikely, basically unheard of. I have visited several of them on another continent, just introduced by email. We helped each other buying goods that you could not buy in your country of residence before Amazon existed. We exchanged collectibles like paper money. It just worked, the check was in the mail a week or 2 later.
The first thing we had to learn is that aol.com addresses could not be trusted. That was still kind of easy, but since then it's only been downhill.