What possible reason would I have to lie about it? You think I'm worried about investigators raiding my VPN service so they can track down and charge a grown-ass man in juvenile court for something that happened 15 years ago? You think I'm worried about my reputation on this throwaway account with a grand total of five previous comments? What's the point in believing that this whole escapade happened at all if you're going to randomly doubt a particular element of it?

I was a kid, I was stupid, but I wasn't an asshole. I didn't go peeking and violating people's privacy because that would have been a dick move. Just like tons of people on Hacker News today have access to personal data on SaaS systems we maintain and don't go peeking. Just like tons of people are perfectly capable of picking their neighbor's locks but don't walk into their house for no reason. It's not even tempting. I don't care what's in my neighbor's house, and I don't care what's in random other students' homework documents or email or whatever. The only interesting part was breaking the security.