I remember I used to be subscribed to a mailing list for a programming language. A friend of the lead developer set the mailing list up for them at his university, and then went off and did his own thing. It was completely unmoderated. Some kid sent a "neat little proggy" his friend Dieter wrote. If the extent of my Internet usage wasn't limited to free email through Juno, my entire hard drive probably would have gotten deleted that day lol

[–] ValiantDust@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There used to be this thing going around on pre-smartphone phones (via Bluetooth, I assume) that showed a pocket watch closing and when it was fully closed, the phone shut down. We all thought it was hilarious to send it to as many people as possible and watch them panic. I don't even know what format it was to look like a normal gif or video and do that. I certainly didn't even care back then.

[–] NoisyFlake@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

My guess is it was an actual gif that exploited some flaw in how the OS handled gifs and thus was able to execute code.

[–] capt_wolf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Remembering the good old days of eSheep.exe and my dad freaking out that "It's a virus!" because he saw "a black sheep come running up to the other one and hit it! It started bleeding!"

Dad, that's a ram... The other sheep's not bleeding. It's blushing!

[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Embarrassingly recently a load of people were i worked (including me) downloaded from some sketchy website and installed a snow effect and christmas tree generator on our work PCs just added christmassy overlay over what you're doing.

I shudder to think of it now