NeoPets is a "Virtual Pets" site aimed mostly at children. Probably because my own 10 year old daughter plays there, I've grown a little protective of the population in general, particularly the younger ones. The site itself is a lot of fun, kids friendly, and teaches some valuable lessons on economics and responsibility.
Unfortunately, there are a surprising number of people, also mostly kids, who prey on the innocence of some of their fellow users. What am I talking about? I'm talking about scams. They are usually reported as "hackers" but the scammers on NeoPets don't deserve the dignity of the term.
What are the common scams? Well:
The two types of SCAM There are two main types of scam on NeoPets. The first type are intended to steal your whole account. Neositters, password harvesters, that sort of thing. They want your password so they can get full access. The second type is trying to steal "stuff" from you. These are the fake contests, over-priced shops, fake trades, what have you. They're annoying, but aren't as dangerous in the long run.
There are of course variations on both main 'families' of scam, but nearly all of them fall neatly into one of the two main slots. On the list below, I've broken the scams into their respective families to make it a little easier to follow.
Scam #1) Fake login pages: This is what's called a "Password Harvester. It's usually found in a shop, or someone's website (loan sites are a popular scam), and features either a copy of the NeoPets login page, or something that asks for your NeoPets ID and password. Don't fall for it!
The only real login is over on the left pane. The NeoPets site will only ask for your login the first time you come on if you didn't check the "remember password" box (Something you should leave unchecked if you want to be safe) and should never ask while you're playing. If you get it going into someone's shop, or their user or pet home page, chances are it's a password harvester. If you see it anywhere but NeoPets, guarenteed it is!
Scam #2) Social Engineering: This is a varient of the Password Harvester that usually involves someone sending you a neomail (sometimes email) or posting to a message board claiming they are either with NeoPets, or one of the many sponsors, with a special offer, or telling you there's a problem with accounts and they need your password. These are all scams. Neither NeoPets or the sponsors will ever ask for your password!
Social Engineering variations: In a common variant, someone pretends to be a member of the NeoPets staff or a sponsor, but doesn't ask for your password right away. What they are doing is trying to establish trust so they can set you up for later. The official User ID for the staff is "theneopetsteam" and any real Board Monitor will have that fact listed in their profile. (I was a volunteer board monitor for a time, until they canceled the program, and saw some interesting varients of this...)
Another variant of this is related to the "I've got a secret!" scam listed below. They will say they can give you some enormous amount of NeoPoints, or great items, or something, as long as you send them your password and user information. These scams are pretty easy to identify - since anyone asking for your password IS trying to scam you.
Yet another variant involves the message boards. There's a common scam where someone will post something like "Hey, did you know that if you type your password here, it'll replace it with ****? Pretty cool, huh!" NEVER DO THIS. What they are doing is manually entering a bunch of * (shift+8) characters so it looks like it's being blanked out. The people who go along with it are either alternate accounts, in on it, or just playing along for kicks. Simple rule: Never put your password anywhere but the login page.
Scam #3 Neositters: This is one of the most persistant scams around. In it, someone offers to sit for you (most common), or needs a sitter, but wants your password "to be safe." This is a almost always a scam to steal your account. Never give your password to anyone. Ever! If you're going away, use the NeoLodge. That's what it's there for.
NeoPets has been very clear about the Neositting practice: do it, lose your account. It's a simple rule, but people still get caught by it every day, and I see a couple ads for "sitters" (neo, baby, or just "sitter") every day. You'd think by now they'd have learned...
Scam #4) Change your email!: Ever have someone tell you to change your email so you won't get any more ads from NeoPets or the sponsors? Ever notice they tell you to NeoMail them when you do? That's because the "Forget your password?" function will send your password to the email address listed for your account. You change it, they get it. Don't do it!
This is another one of those "Let's prey on people's ignorance!" schemes. They are hopeing you don't know about the "forgotten password" function so you'll change your email for them. The fact is nearly all the sponsors have a way to stop getting the email ads they send. Changing your email address also keeps you from getting the legitimate information NeoPets sends you from time to time.
Scam #5) I can do HTML for your shop!: This one isn't always a scam. In fact, there are a lot of poeple out there who will write good HTML for you at reasonable prices (pet peeve - slow graphics iand MIDI music are NOT good things) but they do NOT need your password to do it! If they ask, they're probably a scammer. Another sign is them offering you thousands of NP as bait: a sure indication they're not interested in making your shop pretty.
I promise not to go into my personal feelings on web-site design. This one was written to be friendly to any browser (at least any I know of) but I don't hold people to my own design standards. What I will say is that there is NO HTML code that requires them to get into your account. Every website is essentially text (excluding things like php) and you can cut and paste any code you need into your site. Sometheing else to keep in mind. If someone sends you code, make sure you read and understand it before you put it in your shop!
Scam #6) Let's share accounts!: There are two flavors of this, neither taste especially good. The first, somoene offers to make an account for you, which is silly because you can do it yourself. What they do is take all the NP and items, and leave the email set to their own so they can get the password later. The second involves sharing an established account. While not quite as bad, it still involves sharing a password and using someone's email. The only cases where it's safe to share an account is where you actually know the person in question and trust them not to mess you over.
Scam #7) Fake account sales: "If something seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is!" This applies to folks "selling" accounts with incredible amounts of items and neopoints. Ask yourself something. If he has 789,328 neopoints, why does he need your rarest item? Worse. If he's leaving NeoPets, why does he need items at all? These are almost always a scam. Many of the low value accounts for sale are related to the Share Accounts scam.
Sometimes, this isn't an effort to steal "stuff" but an actuall effort to steal your account. When I post the FAQ on the NeoPets site, I include this one under both headings since I've seen it used for both
Scam #8) Fake contests: These should just be called "Buy! Buy! Buy!" or maybe "Donate! Donate! Donate!" because they almost always involve a store that offers a prize to the person who buys the mystery item, or the most stuff, or whatever. Usually, the store is frighteningly over-priced, and the promissed prize never actually arrives.
There are a lot of varients of this scam. The Buy! Buy! Buy! is only the most common. Another one I've seen a lot of recently is people saying "Whoeve sends me the most stuff in the next 15 minutes wins a (insert cool prize here)!" There are some honest contests, and the way to spot them is reasonable rules, "normal" prizes, and no real hype. If someone's offering huge prizes though, do yourself a favor and give it a pass.
Scam #9) Fake trades: These are a lot like the fake account sales, only they offer a dozzen fairies or codestones or something, but the "seller" won't use the trading post to make the trade. Ever notice they always say "You send first!" That's because it's a scam...
Scam #10b) I've got a secret!: There's no knowledge in Neopia you can't gain on your own. Anyone offering to sell you "special tricks" is just trying to scam you out of your hard earned Neopoints or ultra-rare items. Knowledge has a price in the real world, but it's not measured in neopoints! A lot of g*ilds use a similar tactic, but that's usually just advertising and not an actual scam.
The most common version of this revolves around the "secret" to a game. Poogle Solitaire is the best example. You can play every day and win a bit from it, and the sequence isn't that ahrd to work out. Most scammers will sell the "secret" for about 2 days winnings. Doesn't sound too bad - until you realize that lots of people will give it to you free, or you can figure it out for yourself in short order.
There are several variants of this now, but they're all just as lame. The latest appears to be a "trick" at the shrine, and the location of the "Hidden tower." Neither of which are particularly exciting or hard to learn on your own. Another variation is the "pyramid scam" where they say you can earn (insert some huge number here) of NP, just neomail them. When you do, they ask for an item, then tell you do do what they just did - post the scam to the boards and hope you find someone silly enough to give you an item.
Scam #11) Cheap shop prices!: Hint -- World Class Wockies is NOT worth 30np! (Well, ok, it wasn't when I wrote this - before the books started to disappear!) This isn't really a scam perse, but people who advertise super cheap prices on the newbies board, when their prices are more than things cost in the shop is just preying on people's inexperience. If you're shopping for something, use the shop wizard and find the real bargains. (Another kind of ad that should be on its own board...)
The latest varient of this scam is the "Right Click" scam. In that one, the shop tells you to "Right click and press 'open in a new window' and you're go to the Hidden Tower!" or "It'll be free!" or "It'll give you 100000NP!" or something equally enticing. What it really does is bypass the "Are you sure you want to buy X for Y np?" popup, and forces you to buy the item at the frighteningly high price.
This is another common scam with a lot of varients. One of the more annoying ones is where people will advertise one price and then charge another - only you can't tell because they used black text on a dark background. Or another trick they use is one item priced cheap, but the next one set for 10 times the going rate in the hopes that you'll just buy a bunch of things without checking. In the real world, it's called Bait and Switch. On NeoPets, it's just another scam.
Scam #12b) I'm soooo poooor!: Ever see someone complaining they were poor, then check and see they're selling codestones for 5000 in a size 17 shop? There really are some needy people in Neopia, but people who beg when they're not really poor are probably the lowest scammers of all. Generosity is good! But don't fall for the greedy.
The most common varient of this is the "I was hacked!" scam. A lot of people do get scammed (almost never actually hacked) every day. The vast majority of them don't go begging for hand outs. Most of the ones that do are just trying to get people to feel sympathy for them, hoping for some free stuff from a generous player.
Scam #13) Marginal jobs: This isn't so much of a scam, as it is just a bad deal. In this one, someone offers to pay you to do their dirty work for them. Advertising (spam), Referring (spam again), Shopping (why should I let you sell the faeries?), or any of a number of others. Basically, the pay comes no where close to the work involved. And, if they ask for your password, well, you know what that means...
Scam #14) Join our gu!ld: This usually isn't a scam so much as it is someone begging people to join their gvild to make it look good in the rankings. The scams are the ones who promise prizes and don't deliver the goods. Some gvilds really are cool. Some are really lame. But if they need to offer you 10k to join, well, what's wrong with them? (Pet peeve. Theses ads don't belong on the Newbies board anyway!)
Scam #15) Off-site SPAM: This isn't a scam to steal points from you, or your password, but it is trying to rip you off. People advertising to pay you neopoints to sign up with some off-site referral program, or put a click-through ad in your shop, or one of several others, are just trying to earn points or real money for themselves. Spam is bad. And commercial ads don't belong here on NeoPets. Just say NO to off-site SPAM!
Spam in general is a bad thing. Commercial spam is worse. Commercial spam on a free/sponsored website is about as bad as it gets. There's already enough SPAM on the NeoPets site from mis-posted shop ads and guild ads, and fake contest scams, that this is just another nail in the message board's coffin
I'll be adding more as I track them down. There are some other good ones that elude me at the moment...