Yes, a funny anecdote, obviously there was no central registry of names so sometimes there would be multiple BBS of the same cool name in the same LATA, so when I was about 12, operating on a tip from a schoolmate at 1200 baud I log into one of the several pirates cove bbs, or whatever the name was, and try to send the sysop a mail asking for private access to the files because I know XYZ from school and sysops cousin is XYZ (XYZ and I are still IT-type people 30 years later) and the sysop breaks into the session (which they could do in those days) and reads me the riot act about how he has no warez and he works real hard and spends a lot of money to make a BBS and what would decades later boil down to darn kids get off my lawn type lecture and never set foot here again and I'm deleting your brand new account and at 1200 baud it took awhile. And being a little kid I'm like "ok sorry about that" because what else am I supposed to say to mr angry wall of text? Then I go to school the next day and talk to my friend and "you idiot, call the pirates cove in suburb ABC not the one in suburb XYZ" or whatever. So that's what passed for a good time in the 80s. Sysops would sit there and spy on you, while you tried to work the social game to get access to the good stuff.
Several of the boards I was on with access to the special stuff were basically BBS embedded secretly inside a normal looking BBS so that made it fun. One of the special boards as a requirement to make it look good, required us to participate in the political debate forum if we wanted to keep access. Oh that board, thats just teens trying to debate federal tax policy. When actually it was full of software trading, hiding under dumb debates. On the modern internet of course instead of trading software we just skip right to the dumb debates, LOL.
Another "only 12 year old boy in the 80s could believe it" is back then we were pretty paranoid with people getting busted left and right and stories on TV so before XYZ gives me his tip he asks me between classes if I'm a fed and I told him no and I asked him if he was a fed and he said no, and that was it, we believed each other as if that proved anything (and neither of us were a fed, but I've known this kid since we went to kindergarten together and we're asking each other if we're a fed... well its just what you did in those paranoid days). I do not think modern stuff like GPG key signatures are quite as paranoid on a personal level as we used to be back in the old days.