Yeah, Puke, I remember those days. I ran VBBS myself, rather than WWIV, but it was all the same. I ran a BBS for about three years before the web really took off, and I had a personal internet account back when there were still no ads on the web. Of course, there wasn't all that much ELSE on the web back in those days, either
I agree that it was not technically correct for whoever to have sent him the EXE, but I'm also pretty convinced that Ubik is legit.