Hackers

[pjprek]

Hi ya'll, I just need to vent...I feel so bad for a dear friend of mine..she is 74 and neopets is her pastime, basically her life...morning noon and night. She has been playing for 4 years and stored up 27 million neopoints in her account, hundreds of items in her s/d and had a big shop. Saturday morning her account was hacked. Somehow her password was stolen and someone used her account all weekend and finally today it was frozen. They emptied out her s/d box and placed things in her shop dirt cheap to unload her stuff. Do these Hackers ever really get caught? I set her up with a new account and neopet, but her spirit is broken... It breaks my heart... I just don't know how people can be so heartless. I read where it happened to Lindseyacron, Has anyone else in the guild or friends you know been Hacked? I wish they could all be stopped...even in a world of make believe and fun crime happens...How sad is that?

[lindseycron0]

tanzi was also hacked... we both got our accounts back, mine was self-frozen when I got booted off because I was logged in when they took over....

TNT now has the pin feature... was she not using it?

and to set the record straight (though I hate to admit it) I wasn't hacked, I was scammed. They got my password fair and square because I was an idiot and wasn't paying attention.

I hate that this happened to her, but Neopets isn't so different than the real world. There are those that play by the rules and those that spend more time and effort trying to figure out how to break them

[fullbloom720]

I'm so sorry to hear that!! She must have put a lot of heart into her Neopets account if she's been playing for four years and accumulated so much!!

Scamming and hacking, unfortunately, is such a common thing. Things like that are inevitable in life.
I just hope people can be aware of the scamming part so they can lower their risk of losing all their earnings.

[lindseycron0]

one more thing I would like to add, because of something that i recently experienced: you need to pay close attention to the login screens for EVERYTHING... not just neopets

if i had been supposedly redirected from neopets to another page telling me to login again, i would have checked to make sure the link was right, however, it was for yahoo... i followed a link in my messenger which i'd gotten as an offline from someone that had me on their list (i had removed them, but i was still on his) either way, lots of times you click on a link for yahoo and it makes you log back in, i didn't think anything of it and logged back in, next thing i know, i was logged out of messenger because i'd been logged in on another computer.... someone had made a fake login page of yahoo to get people to log in thinking they were logged out and then they had our passwords and usernames, thankfully yahoo has a unique password that i don't use anywhere else... lisa wasn't so fortunate and i don't think tanzi was either, since they were both on my list and had instantly received the same thing sent to them from me while the scammer was logged into my messenger

the fact is, that they could do something like that in hopes that you use the same password for everything and they'd have your information

i highly suggest for your safety to use a unique password for neopets that you don't use for anything else.... keep all of your items safely put away

nothing from your sdb, gallery, or your shop can be removed or the prices changed if you've used a pin, you can't sell stocks either, so the only thing you'd need to worry about if someone got into your account was that they changed the email address or that they removed petpets, wiped out your shop till or moved any items in your inventory.... you'd still have some losses probably but they would be minimal at least

i have suggested to tnt to add the pin to your shop till as well as an extra precaution and to change your email address i do believe you have to go through some kind of security measures

it's at least something

[dlfreak]

You've scared my straight! I never wanted to use a PIN before but I have secured my account with one now!!

[fairy_tale_girl64]

lol yeah it was really weird i got a crazy im from lindsey one day telling me to go look at her new picture..because of lanuage block i can't say what type of picture it said..well it said my new s e- xy picture..and i thought that was odd but figured it was lindsey being goofy...it was a picture of beyonce and then it turned into a monster...then she logged off...then she logged back in and i imed her and said very funny...for a while there we were lost..then after i explained why i was saying that was funny...she quickly figured it out and told me to quickly go change all my passwords which i did...its crazy what people will do to hurt others work. i haven't been hacked but i do remember when lindsey was and it was her trying to actually catch a hacker....but yeahi put a pin on my withdrawls, safe , shop and gallery..but if they can hack that i can't see how they can't hack those numbers too..don't know but heck i feel better.

[dlfreak]

Yea I just went ahead and put the pin on everything. Makes me feel safer.

I was hacked a few years ago THANK GOD I was online as it was happening. I had like 100,000 NP on hand that I knew I didn't withdraw so I thought I won it in a random event but when I went to go deposit it my bank account there was like 150,000 NP in there that should have been about 3 million NP!!! This was a long time ago when 3 million NP was A LOT! (Heck you could buy a Faerie Paint Brush for 25,000 NP back then!)

Anyway, when I realized I was being hacked I changed my password and checked out my account, and thankfully they had "only" stolen about 2.5 million NP but all of my stocks, items, shop etc was still in tact. I probably would have quit Neopets (and not created this guild, I believe) if I would have been completely wiped clean. Of course, in a glitch a few years down the line I would lose EVERYTHING in my Safety Deposit Box due to a glitch and that was after just having boughten just about every single sponsor item on the site for a gallery I was going to create (I think it cost me about 3 million) plus my Baby Paint Brush that I was saving for a theme week, Slorg Flakes, and every little trinket and item that I'd saved since I started playing Neopets.

Ugh, this is making me deperessed, lol. I'm giong to stop typing!

[pjprek]

Thank you all for telling me your experiences, I will let her know what you have all done and suggested. I know for a fact she did not have pin numbers nor do I , but I am changing that today as well. I hope aa Hackers get their due ten fold someday...

[tanzilynn]

yeah i remember when i got an offline from linsey saying to check out her new pics. luckily i was on dialup at the time and when i clicked on the link, before it came up i had time to look at the other offline messages that she had sent me and there was one following the one with the link that said go change your password right now and don't click on the link! well i closed it right away and changed my password. when my account was hacked, i wasn't online for about a while when my husband i split up for a while and didn't even know it had happend until many months later when i was able to get back online, my whole sdb had been emptied, my bank account which had almost a million np had been emptied, they took everything except my petpets.so I just had to start over, but that was also before you could put a pin number on everything.

[thebestpianist]

Back when I was still new to neopets, I fell for quite a few of those fake login pages. Now those really aren't much of a problem anymore. Also, someone hacked my e-mail, and and sent a request to neopets for my pw. I had stupidly signed up with the same screen names in both my e-mail and neopets. I guess my pws back then were probably easier to guess than they are now, so that might have also been a problem. Back then however, I only succeeded in making around 100k at a time, I was new and I was still getting to know neopets, and because this was happening I would quit for a few months in between hackings because I would get so frustrated and feel almost violated. So, I really didn't get the hang of this game until a few years ago. I think now I feel pretty safe, I use a pin, and I make sure my pws are complicated and separate from my neo pw.

I also had a friend whose account was frozen for some random reason, tnt never explained very well why and she never got it back. It's been about 2-3 years since then and now she has the adam avvie! So, it is definately possible to bounce back.

[BunnyRabt]

I put pins on everything as soon as they were available, just in case. So far so good.

I'm extremely cautious online anywhere...not just Neopets. I use Ebay and paypal a LOT..plus I shop online all the time. I've gotten numerous fake emails from Ebay lookalikes, and paypal lookalikes, but Ive recoginized them each time. I always take the time to report it as a spoof and give them the header info on the email so they can get the creeps that are doing it. I'm always very careful to make sure I'm on the actual site I think I am on, and I never give my passwords to anyone. My friend's son wasn't so fortunate and gave his debit card info to a spoof paypal email. Luckily the card was from the bank she works at (the one I used to) so she was able to get it stopped immediately. But there were two different people here in Crawfordsville who were scammed out of 6000 and 3600 respectively by so-called employers who wanted them to deposit a check and wire money as part of their new jobs. So in this day and age, although it is a sad thing, you really have to be somewhat suspicious of everything, and thoroughly check everything out. I'm really glad Neopets has the pin option now. I think that should at least stop some of the hackers.

Hey, pj.....As an afterthought, have you invited your friend to our guild? We have all ages and would be glad to have her. Maybe it would cheer her up to meet some new people.

[boy_crazier2]

I was hacked on my really old account neoqueensarah when there weren't any pin numbers and I don't remember why it happened but someone logged into my account, bought really expensive furniture and put it in my shop for like 1 - 100 neopoints. Thankfully, back then there wasn't the limit of things purchased of 1000 neopoints or over for the Sales History. There were about two accounts that bought items. i think one was Kit_kat_kitties, but i'm not entirely sure. I bounced back and had 400k, but then I forgot my password, but I created new accounts and now this one is much better than that one was.

[Stargem83]

Wow, I'm thankful to say that I have yet to experience something like that. I've been on for 2 1/2 years or so I guess, I've lost track how long I've been on, but I have well over 5 mil in items in my gallery and SDB and as soon as they came out with the pin feature for just the premium users I had signed up immediately, the only pin I'm not currently using is for my stocks which I'm going to go do right now because I have almost 200 K just invested in my stocks!!!

I'm sorry everyone has had so much trouble, but I'm really glad that everyone has gotten past that and created another account that turned out to be better than before

[BunnyRabt]

I've got so much time and effort involved in my Brabt account that if it got hacked, I don't think I would do it again. I'd just start another account and still be involved with the guild and all the theme weeks and all that, but I wouldn't try to amass the gallery items again. I don't think I would get past the disappointment enough to start a huge gallery over again. I'd still play, but I would turn my attention toward other things rather than try to build up my account. Too much frustration!

[lindseycron0]

Well, after I was hacked I completely gave up on my plushie gallery. I sold all the baby plushies that I had left to trish and just basically quit playing on that account at all except to use the ray whenever I thought about it or to use the shop wiz if I got a quest

[gaudianprincess]

i got hacked along time ago and didn't have that much back then but i was still really upset...lol
i was going to leave but then i got my account back because i remembered all the items i had and the people on my neofriend list...so I stuck around and not too long after that i found this guild...i am glad i decided to stay on neopets after i got hacked

[krisconcepcion19]

Wow I am so sorry for her, that would really really upset me.

[gaudianprincess]

I just noticed something...you can use the pin option on your shop, SDB and gallery but I don't see that option for your neohome unless I have missed that option somewhere, I know I have spent a major amount in my neohome and would be way upset if someone would take all my items in my neohome

[BunnyRabt]

I haven't spent very much on mine, but I know a lot of people have. It would seem prudent for Neopets to put a pin on neohomes too. Maybe you should send them an email about it, Jazzmyn. I don't think it would have much weight coming from me with my paltry little neohome. lol But yours is a different story. You have a lot to protect there.

[pjprek]

My sweet friend Miss Roses was so appreciative this morning when I showed her the responses from all of you today. She could not get over everyone helping out with ideas and sharing what happened to them as well. I have invited her several times to join our guild, however at 74, learning new things really scares her. She only uses the pc for her neopets. I will never say never however...she did surprise me at age 70 when she said she was ready to buy a p/c. I about fell over. She thought ,she would never get the concept of playing neopets in the beginning either and now 4 years later she had a whopping 27 million when the Hackers got her account. I am so proud of her spirit ...she is starting all over again. Last week was a rough week for her. This week she has her drive back again.