Neopets spreading viruses? THE RETURN!

Sat Sep 17, 2005 5:30 am

Geepers... just because Neopets might be a site you go to a lot, it doesn't mean that it's the one giving you viruses. In fact, it's the sites that you don't go to very often that you have to be careful of... like those funny little geocities and yahoo sites with heaps of popups (not to give those website hosters a bad name, those were the two that came to mind).

Also, do you have a virus scanner for your email program? That's a very common way for viruses to get in...

Sat Sep 17, 2005 6:22 am

In all my (almost 3) years of going to Neopets, I have never had not one little virus found in my system. O.o;

Maybe I"m just lucky though.

Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:38 am

Edit - just thought of something ... you all didn't d/l any toolbars, kazaa or anything like that did you? Many of those are loaded with spyware and who knows what else.

nah, no toolbars for us....

I have been scanning alot lately because of something my roomie did (maraqua ... I told her not to go there ).

MARAQUA.NET?! THAT PLACE HAS VIRUSES?!! *freaks out*

Sat Sep 17, 2005 12:56 pm

Neopets, PPT, Indept battledome and neoquest, Neodaq.com, neoitems.net and the sites listed under "affiliates" on the main page (http://www.pinkpt.com/ It's on the right side half way down), are the only Neopets sites I'd trust. The others *shrug* who knows.

As for non-neopet sites, as a rule of thumb you shouldn't go to any website that the owner's not paying for themselves. Geocities and yahoo being two of them. Since they're not paying for their site, they have nothing happen to them if the host shut down their site due to complaints. These sites are often full of popups and spyware, and sometimes viruses, like Mazil said. Unless you know the owner of this unpaid site, don't go there if you don't have to.

Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:06 pm

I have gotten warnings from my virus program, and every time it was on somebody's lookup. When I looked at where it came from, the one time the URL sounded like an image on that persons lookup. (there was an animation on the persons lookup of a wolf, and the virus said "greywolf" or something weird like that. The other time, I think it was an ad. I just cleaned them out and so far my computers running fine.

Sorry to hear about your computer, though, a year or two ago we got a virus and it totally crashed ours, too.

Sat Sep 17, 2005 3:57 pm

I don't think you got a virus directly from NeoPets. I've gotten warnings from my anti-virus program or whatever it's called too... And it's always been when I accidentally clicked on one of those horrible advertisements at the top of the screen. Perhaps that's when something happened?

Sat Sep 17, 2005 4:12 pm

In my 31 months of playing no viruses. I have gotten a virus from runescape, if you play that, got one from it twice till my dad figured out how to fix it so I couldn't get the virus from rs any more

Sat Sep 17, 2005 10:40 pm

we have concluded that this DID NOT come from neo, but i will keep fighting it!

Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:40 pm

Pixa wrote:
winter wrote:
Butterflyhornet wrote:I asked my dad about this and he says yes, neopets can give viruses. He said this because he looked up a few virus scanner sites where they list sites known to have viruses.

Any site can post anything they want. It doesn't necessarily have to be fact.

As for catching viruses, it's mostly because people don't update their computers. The whole point of updates is to patch unsecure parts of programs, fix exploitable coding, and to fix anything else that is broken. New viruses are written everyday to exploit different holes.

And Neopets isn't giving anyone viruses. It's the advertisements. Neopets isn't intentionally giving you advertisements. They just have a crappy ad agency.

Yes, it isn't Neopets, it is the advertisements, they give out spyware. To combat the problem very simply, use Adblock with Firefox, blocking anything malicious from my computer. Then, I ran Ad-Aware and Spybot to get rid of anything, along with hijackthis to check for other things, and I'm done.

I think Adblock is a better solution than Premium, for Adblock also blocks many other adverts from these agencies used all over the internet, just clicking Adblock, seeing the list, many are from the same company.

So in short, use Adblock on Firefox and run anti-virus software.

Precisely what I was thinking.

I second this. Every word of it has been true in my experience.

As for the software, that's exactly how I protect my computer. Firefox/Adblock, Spybot, Ad-Aware, and an up-to-date anti-virus program are all you need.

Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:12 am

how do i get adblock? is it something i have to pay for?

Mon Sep 19, 2005 5:30 am

Adblock is available for the mozilla browser, at mozilla.org. Just do a search for it, you'll get a link

Mon Sep 19, 2005 5:59 pm

Just adding my bit of safety advice. I already saw people referring to adaware, spybot and some more of those programs.

A VERY useful program is Hitman Pro. It installs and runs for you such programs as adaware and spybot, keeps them up to date, configures them to maximum efficiency, and because it runs several of these programs it has the highest find and destroy rate of them all, apart from a beta version of a new microsoft scanner which is no longer available.