alt Hacker NewsNonsense. Before the advent of those first “you’re the 1000th visitor” banners or relatively harmless “worms” spready by literal .exe files sent by email in the early 2000s… most of the internet could be trusted by default.
And at that point the blast radius was so hilariously small, some rando compromising your computer was a nuisance versus a threat to your financial wellbeing.
Viruses were common on FTP sites and BBSs. They weren't all benign. DOS in particular had zero protections against damaging code. Bot armies hadn't been developed yet so malicious destruction was just as likely an outcome.