At first, people weren't worried about security. It was just a bunch of us nerds on there. You interacted with real people that didn't seem like they were trying to swindle you. The world still used paper checks for anything big, and credit/debit cards were there, but not like today. It wasn't that uncommon to write a check and ask the shop owner to cash it next week, at least in my poor household.

There wasn't "online banking" or "online identities" to steal, so it didn't seem all that important. The worst thing that would happen is you would lose access to a chat handle.