I wasn't on the same newsgroups, other than rec.games.rouguelike.nethack, but I did spend much of me teens on usenet and bad geocities pages, and I too think it's unfortunate that pseudonymity is no longer the norm. I don't think think the perception of that kind of usage has changed as much as she does though. People used to think that anyone who spent a lot of time on the Internet must be a scary hacker or looking for porn.
This is fantastic. I was the last age group that had to wait until you had an .edu account to sign up for facebook. I remember my senior year of high school and finally getting access to it because I have my college email address finally. Then like the year after that they opened it up to basically everyone. So glad that I don't have anything from my high school years associated with my current online presence.