That Dutch hackers were afraid of security services around the world and made the internet in the Netherlands accessible to everyone? The book 'The hackers who changed the Netherlands' by Maarten Reijnders is about the latter group. The subtitle is “The Exciting History of XS4ALL,” but the book goes far beyond the origin of the legendary Internet Service Provider, founded by a couple of young adventurers who took on the big companies. Unlikely but really trueIn the mid-1980s, the Netherlands: one computer system after another is hacked by a group of idealistic young people who are connected to each other via small networks. The police can't do anything about it: there is no law prohibiting computer break-ins yet. If one day one of them is caught cracking the university network, he is banned from accessing the system. What follows is the biggest flaw: they start their own internet provider, xs4all.

Did you know, for example, that Bluetooth, which works with all your wireless devices, was invented by a Dutchman? And Wi-Fi has also been developed in the Netherlands? That the Netherlands was the first country outside the US to be connected to the internet? That the idea of digital money originated here? And that Dutch hackers were afraid of security services around the world and made the Internet in the Netherlands accessible to everyone?
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