[Broken_Hippo]

Sure, but phishing mails are nothing new: Pre internet, you got actual letters mailed to random people. Same sort of thing, just slower and more costly.

And neither is misinformation: Government and/or religion could alter your entire worldview, and unless you were lucky enough to travel, you never knew. For example: The spanish flu was really called that because Spain didn't have the wartime controls on its press like, say, the US did. It is likely the US troops really did a job spreading the pandemic, but we (Americans) couldn't really report on the virus at the time.