Linked up computing looked very different in the mid-1980s to how we know it today in a world with constant access to the internet. This report from 1984 about computer fraud wouldn’t have sounded the same alarm bells as several decades later due to the improbable set up at home required to have any sort of computer banking at all. We are shown the living room of Ian Kyle, a computer enthusiast, who has a Sinclair Spectrum computer hooked up to a wood framed television displaying chunky Ceefax-like graphics. As an historical note, the Spectrum was an early home computer popular with teenage gamers which had rubber keys on its keyboard and what seemed like a large memory at the time of 48k.

Ian explains how an anonymous source had warned him that account information including passwords had been hacked by moles working within ICL and British Telecom – something denied by the companies. The piece is interesting for portraying the first footsteps into computer banking at home – a part of life we now take for granted on our mobile devices.