PART ONE: HOW IT BEGAN
I had been playing on neopets for some months, and had good pets (not great, though) and I was doing ok in NP. I fed them and cared for them. All the normal stuff. One day at school, the same friend who referred me to neopets told me about his cousin, who had a way to get peoples’ accounts using fake login pages. At that moment, I wondered. Could I pull something off like that? Of course not. I didn’t even know what HTML was at the time, much less about the creation of the scam…
School was out. I had created other accounts in the past months, one of which that I was very proud of. I had only one pet, seeing as how I had trouble with my other pets, not enough to keep on feeding them and training them. I had created a guild as well. There weren’t many members, yet I was happy. Then…one of those days, I was frozen. Why? For repeating what someone else had said. Of course, it was stupid, yet a simple warning would have been fair. I was annoyed by it for a while. And during that while, I remembered about the scam. Could I pull something off like that? Maybe… I had learned basic HTML thanks to neopets, and I learned how the scam worked thanks to another site that (foolishly) went into detail how the scam worked. And that’s when I began scamming.
PART TWO: TRIAL TESTING
By then, I had found a host for my page, and I had used the HTML from the official neopets login page and modified it into a login page showing you had won a prize, and you had to login to receive the prize correctly. I was amused by my own skills. I only knew basic HTML, yet the page looked authentic to me. I even exaggerated with the little smiley faces, and the British spellings of some words found on official neopets pages. I created an account and prepared it. The bait for the scam was in the shop. Low priced common items were offered, and when a customer/victim came on by, they would see one of those “Something has happened” events luring them to my page.
I was nervous. Would it work? Would I get caught? I had about five screens on my desktop, myself anxious, looking at all of them.
Nothing. Not one.
I tested the page myself. It worked. Then I saw a flaw in the plan. After ‘logging in’, the victim was directed to a page that displayed their info, but also an advertisement, proving it was a scam. I felt like a fool. What was I thinking? I shouldn’t be doing this…
“YOU HAVE 1 NEW MESSAGE” popped up on my screen. I checked it. It worked. I had an account. That didn’t belong to me. I had their stuff. All of it. Mine.
By that time, I had another message. Another account. And another. The ‘flaw’ didn’t matter. I had their account, that’s all that was important. I hurriedly checked the accounts. Newbies. So gullible. I changed their passwords. They really weren’t a big catch. However, I didn’t know much about the “Horrible World of Scamming” … Hey, I was doing pretty good for myself!
PART THREE: OVERCONFIDENCE
Days later, I was still active. I fixed the flaw in the scam. I used the first accounts I stole as ‘drones’; clearing out all the good stuff, and then using them to scam. I created other accounts, legitimate in a way, but used them to stash what I stole. Then, when the heat died down, I transferred the items and NP back to my main accounts. Accounts that weren’t used as drones, I kept. If they were useless accounts, of felt pity for them, I gave them back, changing the password to the original. I had files containing all my stolen accounts. I even cut in my cousins to some of the riches earned. It was all good…
Weeks had passed, and I was still active. None of my drone accounts were frozen, not even my first scamming account. I planned my strikes. I put research into it. Afternoon vs. Evening, types of items for bait, all kinds of stuff. I timed how long a strike would take. I took in consideration the time for an user to report me, and the time for neopets to respond. I evaded them with success. I captured one account that had been a year old. She had quite a bit of NP. However, I thought about it. She’d been on for a year, saving up her NP. Probably even buy some baby paintbrushes for all her pets. They had just come out… Oh well. Her fault. She’d been on for a year, she should’ve known better. I took all her NP except for about 300, to give her a ‘good’ start rebuilding.
As I took more accounts, I gained more experience and my skills increased. I still wasn’t caught. I was getting bored, so I started having fun. I would occasionally go into some accounts and snoop around what they had. I checked their neomails, neofriends, and their pet pages. Some accounts were interesting, one in which I had checked her neofriends. Her neofriends had the same name as her, meaning she had some backup accounts. I thought of trying to get into them with the password I had gotten from the main account. Nah.. That’s stupid. I tried it. It worked. 3 new accounts. Worthless, but might be used later on. In another interesting account, I had gotten a neomail from the owner on another account. There were two using the account, shared by two friends. I messed with them, but decided to give the account back (after taking all the good stuff, of course), by neomailing them that I had changed the password to the original and thanking them for their stupidity. I was getting overconfident. I wanted to get caught. What took Neopets so long? I needed a challenge. I would neomail people with the URL for my page (back when it was still possible), one which was a “stupid-scammer hater”. She warned others to watch their backs. I sent her a neomail with the scam URL in it. She fell for it. Idiot. Her password? Puppy. Idiot times 2. It was all too easy.
PART FOUR: DEFEAT
Then one of those days, about a month and a half from when I started (I even got bored of scamming for a while), it turned out that my login page was deleted. Most of my stolen accounts frozen. I was finally caught. I was angry, yet I came in touch with reality. What had I been doing? I was stealing from kids just like me, some of them even younger, who had had the joy of raising and caring for their neopets. Wasn’t that what I had been doing in the beginning? I thought…what if all my stuff had been taken? Well, it was. That first time I got frozen. However, it was a dumb way for revenge. Neopets took my account for something I was guilty of in the beginning, and I get revenge by taking innocent peoples’ accounts filled with hard work and patience? Oh well. I’m not going to beat myself up for it. It was their fault for falling for it, right?
I had a good rush. It was over.
PART FIVE: REALITY
In the end, all my main accounts are still active, and my loot storage accounts as well. Even some of my drone and stolen accounts are still active. However, what had I gained? I felt empty. I’ve stopped scamming. I still can’t get over how easy it was to do. I still feel guilty, but I take in defense the “balancing out the universe” saying, which isn’t right to begin with, but.. Oh well…
One thing that has bothered me is the characterization of a scammer.
“some stupid little kid trying to take your stuff”
“an intensely immoral person with serious problems with their conscience”
“a pathetic person”
” a poo head”
..and so on.
Why did I begin scamming? Revenge? Not entirely. I was just your average neopian, looking for something “new and exciting” to do.