NOTE – Scamming has been prevalent over Neopets since its beginning, and one of the first to emerge, and no doubt one of the best methods of scamming has always employed the use of fake login pages in some form or another. xxonlyhope from the PPT Forum recently went out to do some research on how effective they were and the results were surprising. Many people fell for the login pages, even after all the extensive warnings on Neopets to always check the browser address at every login page. Without further ado, a report of the research and test is as follows.
None of this was done to scam people, but to alert them of what could’ve happened. For the past couple of weeks, I have been eavesdropping on hacker/scammer forums to see if they actually get away with what they do or are usually frozen and do it just for fun. I learned that many scammers actually have an ounce of intelligence, and have discovered how to actually use fake login pages and not get frozen. I was pretty sceptical, so I decided to test it out on a fake account, with no intention of actually scamming anyone of course.
So I set up the login page in my shop, and put in some cheap, common Dice-a-roo items for one neopoint, which I was told how scammers lure people unfamiliar with fake login pages (as opposed to codestones or faeries that experienced players buy and resell constantly).
In case you don’t know how fake login pages work, I’ll explain. You set up the page on a free website that doesn’t have any ads the login page, and when people submit their account information, it is automatically forwarded to the e-mail address you specify. When you put the fake items in your shop, the real items do not show up, however people extremely familiar with html can get around this and rip off your items. When the unsuspecting person clicks the item, they’re sent to the, “Oops! You cannot view this page because you’re not logged in, or perhaps you haven’t created an account yet!” login page, where they submit the information that leads to the doom of their account and hard work.
I set up the login page, and was expecting to be frozen as soon as I clicked the Update Shop button. I priced the items all at one neopoint, and patiently waited to be frozen. Ten minutes went by, and the account was still active. I took down the page because if you leave it up too long, you will be frozen most definitely.
I checked my e-mail expecting to find nothing, and found forty-two e-mails. Only nine of these were pretty rude and harsh submissions from people who know about fake login pages (I use the word harsh because one said this: “Username: Ihopethatyou Password:yourdogandparents / continued in another e-mail / Username:dieand Password: rotinhell”). After I separated the real account information from the fake, I neomailed each user explaining to them what could’ve happened. Only because I was curious, I went to each account to learn how many Neopoints they had and how long they had been playing. I tallied the results here, and they shocked me.
4 accounts were newbies
2 were only three days old
3 was one month old
6 were two months old
7 were five months old
4 were six months old
3 were eleven months old
2 were one year old
1 was two years old
1 was thirty-two months old
Of these accounts, only a handful had less than 50,000 NP. Two of them had over a million. Most had a range of 50,000 NP and above.
Oh, and one week later, my extra account still isn’t frozen. I wish it were frozen because that would mean scammers didn’t get away with this. I’m not going to explain how the scammers transfer the money without getting caught because I don’t want anyone to get an idea and actually do this with the intent of stealing from people, but they DO have a way of transferring without using the Trading Post at all or going back and forth from their account to the stolen one.
So, much to my surprise, it’s not only newbies who fall for fake login pages. And what infuriates me the most is that the people who do this get away with it.
PLEASE keep in mind that I did NOT scam any of these people. I alerted them of what could’ve happened if I was actually a scammer.
I wanted to share this with everyone because I think that is kind of interesting, yet also very, very disturbing.