Tizzy wrote:
Next time just check the URL and make sure it's Neopets.
Actually, that doesn't always work.
In Firefox, for example (along with, most certainly, Opera and Safari... don't know for sure if IE is vulnerable to it, but I'd assume it is), URLs can be spoofed disturbingly easily. There's an exploit that uses alternate character codes to force a false URL to display. You can also make it look very similar to the correct letters, which is enough to fool a casual glance.
Read more about that here:
http://www.shmoo.com/idn/homograph_old.txt and especially noteworthy is the suggestion they have for how to check a URL:
Quote:
There are a few methods to detect that you are under a spoof attack. One easy method is to cut & paste the url you are accessing into notepad or some other tool (under OSX, paste into a terminal window) which will allow you to view what character set/pagecode the string is in. You can also view the details of the SSL cert, to see if it's using a punycode wrapped version of the domain (starting with the string 'xn-'.
(see also
http://www.shmoo.com/idn/ , which has a working example of a spoofed url so you can see if you're currently vulnerable).
Alternately, Firefox and Internet Explorer users can install the Spoof Stick extension, which will display the real url of the site you're on in giant letters of the color of your choice in the toolbar. I highly recommend it. You can download that here:
http://www.corestreet.com/spoofstick/