Pink Poogle Toy Forum

A few weeks ago, there was a story in the local paper about a 11-year-old being harassed by a middle-aged man. At first they were having a nice conversation about Neopets, and then the man asked for his adress, and he gave it. It turns out they both lived near each other, and agreed to meet at the gas station, and they did. The man told the boy to go to his house sometime, and told him where to find it. After the conversation, the boy went home, and told his mom what had just happened. She called the police, and the boy described him, and within a couple hours, the police had found him. It turns out he had a record of childhood porography distribution, sexual harrassment, among other things. The boy's mom than went on the Neopets chatroom to see just what these people talk about, and recorded it, and was very disturbed at what she saw. I am sure I don't have to go into the detail of what she found, as many of us know what scum lurks in the chat rooms. She filed a lawsuit against Neopets, however there have been no updates about it yet. Has anybody here heard of a similar case?

no, I have never heard of that but I suppose that proves they need more staff to monitor the chat boards and delete any inappropriate posts (do they have people who do night shifts who cover the boards? just curious)

I thought you had to be 13 to use the chat boards.

I find that story immensely sad.

Hopefully this will make Neopets realize that they need to actually do something about the state of the message boards.

Yes, you do. And Leanne, yes, they do have monitors for overnight shifts. But not nearly enough. It's tough to watch all the scum at once, lol.

And if there were no neopets.com this could have easily happened at any other website the boy visits. Honestly, if he talked to someone and was thinking about going to meet them this means that the mother is responsible for letting the boy go unmonitored. Really, I know websites have a responsibilty to children but the ultimate responsiblity belongs to a parent. You can never be sure who your kids are talking to and what they are talking about unless you constantly watch them. And well, they'll hate it..but if they want to use the computer then I would constantly watch them. And well, neopets did get rid of "general" chat, but that has never stopped anyone from chatting about anything they want to chat about on any of the other boards. I know some boards say it is against the rules to chat about off topics, but I don't really know how much this is enforced. And there is always neomail, which I don't know how much they monitor that....

But still, it is impossible to monitor what every user is saying on every post and every neomail. These things are bound to slip through the cracks and it doesn't matter if it is on neopets or on any of the other millions of kids websites in the world. Ultimately, the parents have the brunt of the responsibility of monitoring their children. I am just glad in this case that the child told their mother what was happening.


Oh yes, I head that neopets was sued, supposedly for using the address http://www.chiapets.com which redirected anyone who went to this address back to neopets. But the makers of the chiapets, you know "the pottery that grows" sued neopets because they wanted this address or else they just didn't want neopets to have this address. I never found out what happened or even if this is true. But I just tried to go to chiapets.com and nothing pulled up, which makes me think that if they really sued neopets over this address that was pretty selfish of them, as they never made a website with this address. I mean, they weren't using it and they didn't want neopets to have it.

Well, if the kid was 11, doesn't that kind of throw that woman's case out the window? I mean, if he was under 13, he couldn't have been using the chat boards legitimately, could he?

I can't see why TNT don't hire more monitors... The chats are out of control. I would even mod voluntarily!




Parental Permission slip thing...

Don't you have to get like a sheet signed and faxed to Neopets or something? Or did they stop doing that?

Well, technically, no. But if you tell your kid not to play in someone elses yard, and he does it, then breaks his leg, you can still sue the owner.. I don't know if this theory applies to big corporations (that I'm sure would have strict rules absolving them of blame).

It's not equivilent to you telling YOUR kid. It's the equivilent of the Neighbor telling the kid to get off his property.

Sillier lawsuits have been won.

That's true, I was backwards. But you're right, sillier lawsuit have been won. Example; a man was crawling through the air vents at a K-Mart after hours, attempting to rob the place. He fell through the vent, and to the floor, breaking several bones and puncturing a lung. He later sued K-Mart, and won. Make sense of that one.

You could have an electric fence around your house, a big sign stating the fence is an electric fence, another sign saying 'NO TRESPASSING DO NO ENTER' and another sign saying "PRIVATE POOL NO SWIMMING" and if some child manages to get inside and drowns in your pool you'd probably loose the lawsuit and have to pay for funeral expences or whatever they want you to pay for.

Kids under age 13 can't access the chat boards unless the parent has given permission or unless they lied and said they were over 13 when they created the account. If this particular kid is only 11 and was on the chat boards, he had to lie on his Neopets account. Because of that, I doubt that the lawsuit will have a chance. Also, unless the child was harmed in some way, I don't see what charges could be filed against Neopets.

After seeing porn on a person's guild page sit for over an hour before the guild was disabled, I could understand a parent's outrage. Neopets is definitely slacking off in its monitoring of the site since I started playing.

However, I think the parents should also share most of the blame here. Parents need to keep a close check on their kids--not just turn them loose on the computer without ever monitoring what the kids are doing. When my preteen daughter first wanted to play Neopets, my husband checked it out thoroughly before letting her play it. And, we sat her down and gave her our rules and, more importantly, explained why she should never give out her name, age, school, address, or other personal information and what to do if someone did ask her for any of those. I also explained that people could and would pretend to be kids and why these people did these sort of things. She has seen enough on the news to know that Mr. Stranger Danger does exist and does bad things to kids.

She also got a healthy dose of internet does and don't in her school system. And, we set up our computers so that my computer and her computer are in the same room--I generally play when she plays--so I can see what she's up to. She will never have a computer in her bedroom and never have a web cam. If I even got a whiff that she was up to no good, I'd take the computer cord that connects her computer to the wall outlet and toss it away.

I also know that I have to trust my daughter because I can't be by her side 24/7. She will get peer pressure to do all sorts of things eventually and she will have to be able to figure out why she shouldn't cave in. By giving her trust, she knows that she can come to me and tell me anything and I will try to understand. She is a smart little cookie. She has seen the chat boards and hates the junk that is written on them. I don't invade her privacy, read her diary, or read her emails--but she knows that if I ever thought something was going on, I have the absolute right to do so and I would do so in a heartbeat!

Obviously these particular parents didn't do a very good job of raising this kid. A kid who is 11 should know enough not to give out his address to a stranger and definitely know enough to not to agree to meet anyone that he/she hasn't seen before. Why weren't the parents paying closer attention to what the kid was doing? Where were the parents when this kid was going out to meet this man?

I make it a habit to personally meet all of the parents of my daughter's friends. Before letting her go to a new friend's house, I call or meet the parents first. At this age, my daughter isn't allowed to go anywhere alone--she has to either be accompanied by me, her dad, a babysitter, a friend, or a friend's mother. I do let her go alone to rollerblade around the block, go to her friend's house across the alley, and go to the park that is two blocks away, but only if she tells me first, takes a cell phone and checks in with me from time to time. And if she is going to a friend's house that is farther than two blocks away, I drive her there. Call me a protective mother, but, unfortunately, in this day and age of predators, that is what you have to be.

If you are looking for lawsuits filed against Neopets, you could find them by checking out the courthouse of the County in which Neopets, Inc. is located. You put a search into their computer system and it will spit out a list of case numbers. You would then have look each of those case numbers up to see the details of the lawsuit. I don't know if you can do this online, however. You might have to go to the courthouse itself to do so--depends on the County as to how it does things.

I agree with what everyone has said, and would also like to point out that by signing the parental concent form, the woman will really hurt her case, as she's given the child permission to use the site to it's full extent, but it does not say anywhere in the statement that they will be exposed to sick hairy old men, so that's also a factor.

Personally, if she's not envolved enough with her kid's life to know he's meeting someone at a gas station, then I think she's responsible for this one. Yes there are things that need to be fixed on neopets, but neopets should not be responsible for parenting our youth. They have some of the best filters I've seen on any website and they do spend a nice chunk on monitors, but you can't possibly do everything, even with enough money. Unless, of course, you want neopets paying someone to sit in a dark room watching a single section of the chat boards 24/7, in which case they'd probably just get in trouble for being mean to their employees. An 11 year old child should not be on the internet with out guidance or trust. Every parent should have a discussion with their kids before letting them online about what's out there, what's ok and what's not ok. Neopets should not be at fault for lazy parenting. There's no excuse for an 11 year old being allowed to have permission to interact with the website who's not mature enough to know they shouldn't be meeting strange old men at gas stations.