MySpace Founder Tom Anderson was a Serial Hacker in the 80s!
MySpace Founder Tom Anderson was a Serial Hacker in the 80s!
This famous image of Tom at MySpace isn’t correct since Tom Anderson is now 37 but regardless of the fact that Tom on MySpace isn’t real, Tom Anderson is a real hacker from the 80s and have history of hacking Chase Manhattan Bank to cause one of the biggest FBI raids in history.
Now we’ve learned a much more colorful part of Anderson’s history: In 1985, when he was fourteen and in high school in Escondido, California, Anderson was subject to one of the largest FBI raids in California history after hacking into a Chase Manhattan Bank computer system and subsequently showing his friends how to do it. He was never arrested because he was a minor, but the FBI confiscated all of his computer equipment and some newspaper accounts of the incident stated incorrectly (see image below from a 1986 LA Times story) that he was “convicted in federal court of computer hacking and placed on probation” (the statements were corrected in subsequent articles). Anderson used the hacker name “Lord Flathead.”
via techcrunch
Tags: 80s, bank computer, california history, chase manhattan bank, computer equipment, computer hacking, computer system, escondido california, fbi, fbi raids, hacker name, la times, Myspace, probation, serial hacker, tom anderson
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:33 am
May be the FBI advised him how to be succeeded in real business. Sometimes we have to make a false step to get the right step. Good for Tom.