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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."
Is extreme, but assuming they can be found, I think a revival of "indentured servitude" might be useful. At least until they can pay back all the money that they stole. And not to the government, either, to the victims.
BTW - feel free to disagree with this. I don't mind. Do __try__ to be polite. Name calling is not usually very helpful and generally only reflects poorly on the poster. Not that such care.
Setup whitelist of sites your children can go to.
One way of doing this is via your router (Newer D-Links have this feature).
You can also use opendns.com, set it to filter everything desired, then make exceptions if needed.
This prevents them from going to domains without you first checking them out. I suggest you ask them to write a sites they frequent or check their browser history to get a base whitelist.
Probably already is one of these, but can we get a plugin for Firefox that dumbs down the browser for them.
I think one of the toy company's had a toy/software setup where kids could visit a limited amount of sites using a special controller. Something to keep them out of trouble.
I want to give my kid a login with just a link to firefox and this plugin on the desktop. They click it an are presented with a list of safe sites. Any attempt to go outside of the domain is blocked and the sound card goes crazy with ("hey mom and dad get your ass in here and watch your kid")....hell have it text me. If the domain is safe I simply type a password and it gets added.
Sure just surfing in Firefox will prevent some of this, but I don't want any chance of any sort of firefox bug getting exposed. Remember that even firefox can fall victim to some sort of buffer overflow.
A little offtopic, but I think a Live CD of Ubuntu that accomplishes this would be great. Just give my kid an older computer with no harddrive and the CD and let them go...
We could just get our kids real pets...
My 28-yo girlfriend plays it, and so do many of her 20-30-something friends... there are plenty of adults on Neopets...
You may get your wish. In the 1920's and 30's when Eugenics was popular the Supreme Court ruled it was perfectly legal for states to sterilize people, take their kids and sterilize them.
This will probably be proposed as a way to cut costs for the penal and health care system.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Giving kids their own computer is not a solution. You have to instruct them what is, and what it not, acceptable online.
I'll give you an example. I visited my nephew was he around ten, and he showed me some of the online games he liked to play. A window popped up advertising some kind of contest, and asking for information. I warned him to avoid it, but he said, "Oh, I enter these things all the time. It's okay, I use my dad's email address and social security number."
I had a talk with his father, and from then on I believe his internet use was heavily monitored. As it should be.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
hell no, use an entirely different computer for important (financial) stuff. This other computer is then hands off.
The webkinz world is one in which children can have a limited interaction with other children (and not a few adults) while playing games and taking care of a cute virtual pet. My kids love it, they all have quite a few "friends" on Webkinz. They don't know the name, address or even gender of these friends, as the software doesn't even offer a way to ask. It is not designed for social networking or communication, it is simply a way for kids to go online and play, in a safe manner. Very little chatting goes on, the kids can play games against each other, and the chat options tend to be things like "nice move" and such. They can also send eachother virtual gifts, and include a greeting of sorts (here is a gift for your special day) but it is not a chat room.
How exactly do you protect against your child clicking on a link, downloading a program, and executing it?
I can think of several ways, all of which should be practiced.
1. Don't let your kids log in with an admin account. Heck, don't let ANYONE log in with an admin account, including yourself.
2. Only let your kids run certain apps (at least on a Mac, this is as easy as clicking the Parental Controls option and choosing which apps to allow; dunno on Windows, but if nothing else there are 3rd party utilities for this).
3. Tell your kids not to open e-mail from strangers.
4. Tell your kids not to give out their e-mail address to anyone without asking you first (or have them use your account and only let them see it when you log in).
5. Tell your kids never to open an application they are unfamiliar with. Sheeze, you would think a 12 year old could understand the value of this.
You're 'startled' mostly because parents spend a great deal of time compromising their [parenting] ethics away. It's hard to raise kids the way you think you will when you don't have - and 99% of all parents give up trying, while convincing themselves they aren't. (And loudly bleat "you don't have kids, you can't possibly know" to drown out their conscience.)
And then the rest of us pay for your self delusions as yet another generation of Dr. Spock derived badly raised children reach adulthood.
They are more than welcome to search any of my devices for child porn and malware, with a proper warrant.
And they will do so at their facility downtown, and take 18 months to do it.
Yes, you are innocent until proven guilty. But the initial investigation would start with you and your home network.
And, after the case is dropped, the local newspaper might print a retraction, saying that Mr. PitaBred is not guilty of distributing child porn. Of course, after the initial flurry of press coverage, you've lost your job, your kid is taken away for a time by DSS, and your front window has been broken 3 times by angry vigilantes.