Funny Prank

One of the funniest pranks I ever pulled was when I was treasurer of the Dade Atari User’s Group (DAUG).

Those were the days when Compute magazine had home-grown programs that were featured in the magazine that you could download. There was one named Astro-Panic that was pretty nice and well commented.

Now let me set the stage. There was someone in the user group who most everyone disliked. So, I thought I would take the opportunity to distribute his phone number. I altered the Astro-Panic program (and I won’t mention what I renamed it to). I plastered the phone number all over the program.

With the alterations complete, now I had to distribute. I ran a BBS, but uploading it to my own BBS would point at me. So, I looked through my user log for someone who always used the same password, and found “Dude”. These were the days of open-text passwords. Today you would not be able to know someone’s password.

Suspecting that this person used the same password on all websites, I logged onto a very popular site with this person’s credentials. Then I uploaded the new game.

The next morning was Saturday, and the user group offers met. At one point the person who ran the site I uploaded to joined the meeting. He told of the newly-altered program and said he called the purported uploader who denied any involvement. Meanwhile I was doing my best not to laugh. I found it uncontrollably hilarious.