Slashdot Mirror
Scammers Target Neopets Users
An anonymous reader writes "If you have children that play on the popular virtual world game Neopets, you might want to warn them of a social engineering scam gleefully targeting 12-year-old kids. Neopets users looking for rare items are sent private messages from the scammers, who direct them to sites hosting keyloggers & trojans. They then use the infected PC as a means to get to data the parents might have stored there, be it credit card details, Paypal accounts or online banking. Seeing the screenshots of some of these people talking about putting these children into botnets is just unbelievable — if ever you wanted proof that people up to no good online will go to any lengths to get their hands on some money (or even just feel good about outsmarting a 12-year-old), here it is."
My daughter spent an entire road trip (two days in the car each way) unlocking her NeoPet. The beeping was enough to make you drive with your elbows so you had both hands free to pull your ears off. Now I can simply say, "honey, if you play with your NeoPet character online, bad people will take all Daddy's money away and we'll have to live under a bridge." Aaaahhh, another aggravation averted. Thanks, scammers!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.