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While these are the more common scamming techniques, they do not cover every possible scam available. More scams can be found under the Neopets.com website at Wall of Shame, or by clicking on the image above.

Keep these basics in mind and it will make your neopets a safer and more enjoyable experience:

A	Do NOT trust anyone and consider everyone a liar!
B	Ignore neomails unless it is someone you are familiar with or trust
C	NEVER give away your password or change your eMail address on your account (unless you get a new personal eMail address).
D	You should never have to give away REAL money because Neopets is completely free
E	Read with deep caution any material that is not part of the Neopets.com site, like a Person's Profile, userlookup, etc. Most scams come from reading Chat, Neomail, Profile, and etc. Anything read that's outside of Neopet.com should be IGNORED as well.

Common Scams

1. Selling Accounts (mainly trading post)

This one is most often found on the trading post, but may take other forms also:

"I'm selling my account. The person who bids the most will win my account of 256,791np.
I will send you the password to my account before I accept your offer. Hurry!"

Yeah right, there are a couple of things wrong with this. If somebody is leaving Neopets, why would it matter how much you bid? This is just a greedy attempt at taking your hard earned possessions. Don't be fooled when they say they will send the password to their account before they accept. They won't, there's no safeguard. Once you make the bid they can accept straight away and you've lost your items and/or np.

This scam may also be used to sell Neopets themselves. Don't attempt to buy a Neopet. It's unlikely the person selling it to you will really put it up for adoption, and even if they do there's no guarantee you'll be the one to adopt it.

2. Item Scams (mainly trading post)

This one is also most often found on the trading post in many different forms. Basically the scammer will tell you that an item does things that it doesn't, just to make you pay a higher price than what it's really worth. Here are some common ones around right now:

Starberry. This does not paint your pet starry. It's just a regular food, don't be tricked into pay thousands and thousands for it.
Rainbowberry. Same as above, this fruit does not paint your pet rainbow as scammers will claim. It's just another food.
Plushies. If a plushie does not contain "Magical" in its name it will not change your pet's species when you play with it. Any item in any shop has a "tooltip" when you position your mouse pointer over it. Plushies that change your pet's species will clearly say so. For example "Magical Red Chomby Plushie" will change your pet into a red chomby, the regular "Red Chomby Plushie" will not and is worthless.
Lucky Dice. Scammers will claim that this will help you win dice-a-roo. This is nonsense, don't waste your neopoints on it because it won't do a thing.

The moral here is to never, ever buy an item before checking it's value on the Shop Wizard. It's near impossible to get scammed like this if you always check it's correct value, and check the tooltips to make sure the item does what the person says.

3. Fake Contests (mainly in shops)

Let me just start by saying that contests are officially banned by Neopets, and by running or participating in them you are risking getting your account permanently frozen/disabled which means you will lose everything you own in Neopia.

Often the scammer will have items in his/her store which are way overpriced. 2000np for a Bacon and Broccoli Omelette for example. The following (or similar) will be written in their shop:

"The person who buys the most Bacon and Broccoli
Omelettes will receive a Faerie Paint Brush! This isn't a scam I promise!"

This is almost always a scam. Do not buy overpriced items, especially if the person is asking you to and promising things in return. Legitimate shop and guild owners will not run contests like this because they know that they could lose everything for it whether it was a scam or not.

4. Fake Log-ins (mainly in shops but can be found anywhere)

A fake log-in is set up by a scammer as a way of getting you to type in your username and password. It looks exactly like the Neopets log-in, only the details you type in are sent to the scammers email. Fake log-ins can be easily identified by the fact that the web address (url) will be something aside from http://www.neopets.com/loginpage.phtml. Always, always check this before you type in your details.

5. Promising Cheats and/or NP and Items (mainly trading post and Neomails)

1. Ever received a Neomail similar to the following?:

"I have discovered this great new Neopets cheat that will allow you to
get up to 1,000,000np per day! All you have to do is reply to this Neomail
with your username and password."

"Congratulations! You're the lucky winner of our grand prize giveaway.
You win a Rod of Dark Nova! To have your prize delivered to your account,
please reply to this neomail with your username and password asap."

This is not exactly what it will say, but some way or another it will ask for your password. Often the Neomail will be long and involved with bogus information just to make it look legitimate. There are no real Neopets cheats, these people are just trying to scam your password from you. Delete the Neomail right away.

2. Here's another sinister Neomail that doesn't directly ask for your password, but doing what the scammer asks will give it to them anyway:

"Would you like to be eligible to win great Neopets items such as Fish Neggs?
All you have to do is change your email address to [email protected] then
send me a neomail back when you've done it."

Never change your email address to one you don't control. Following the directions in the Neomail above would give the scammer access to your account. Why? Neopets has a feature that sends your password to your email should you forget it. The email it is sent to is the one you specify on your Preferences page (http://www.neopets.com/userinfo.phtml). If you change this email to one the scammer controls, they can have your password sent there and gain access to your account.

6. Impersonating Neopets staff (mainly Neomails and chat boards)

Often somebody will Neomail you saying that they're a member of the Neopets staff and they need your password to do something with your account. Following is an example of a neomail you may receive:

"Hi, I am a member of the Neopets staff and we are currently having
database problems. We need you to reply to this Neomail with your password.
This is the only way we can save your account so hurry!"

This is completely bogus, the Neopets staff will NEVER ask you for your password. Following that, the only account that will be used by the Neopets team to deliver information to you is theneopetsteam. Anything else is a scam and should just be deleted.

7. I was hacked (mainly guilds, chat board and Neomail)

Being hacked is a terrible thing, and some scammers will play on people's sympathy by saying they were hacked/scammed when they weren't and asking for expensive items. Use your common sense here, helping people is nice, but do you really trust them?

How to Keep your Account Safe

1. The Golden Neopets Rules.

If you follow all these rules then you are taking the best care of your account that you can.

1.	If you're ever presented with a log-in page make sure the address is http://www.neopets.com/loginpage.phtml. Anything else is a scam and you should not enter your username and password.
2.	When buying items from other users' shops always check three things. Position your mouse pointer over the item you want to buy and wait at least 2 seconds. A little message should pop up telling you about the item, check that is does. Also check that the address in the bottom-left of your browser starts with http://www.neopets.com/. Once last thing to to read the pop-up message carefully after you've clicked on an item. Make sure it correctly reads the item you want to buy, and the price you expected to pay for it.
3.	Don't buy anything from a shop, the trading post, or the auctions without checking its value on the Shop Wizard first or you could be ripped off.
4.	Don't trade outside the Neopets Trading Post. If the Trading Post is down for maintenance, don't be tempted into trading. Wait for it to return.
5.	If you're putting an item into auction, always set the initial price to the least you'd accept for the item. This way you can't be cheated in any way.
6.	Don't change the email address you use with Neopets to one you don't control. You probably should never have to change it at all.
7.	Change your password regularly, at least once every couple of weeks. Do not make your password a regular word such as "sunshine" or "dog" and use combinations of letters and numbers.
8.	Don't give out your Neopets password to anybody. NEVER no matter what.

2. Keep your email address as secure as your Neopets account.

There's no point creating an ultra-secure Neopets account if the email you have it connected with is easily hackable. Guard your email account as you would your Neopets account because if a hacker gains access to your email, he/she can get your Neopets password automatically sent there and can steal your account. I would suggest you keep the email you use with Neopets a secret, because if nobody knows it, they can't try to hack it.

Who To Tell If You Spot A Scam (or were a victim of one)/font?

The "magic" email address for reporting scams is [email protected]. This is where you send any scams you spot on the Neopets website, or relating to the Neopets website.

If you think that you were just scammed, the first thing to do is to go straight to http://www.neopets.com/userinfo.phtml and change your password immediately. Also check that the email address on that page is the same one you put in. Providing the scammer hadn't yet logged into your account, everything will be fine once you've successfully changed the password.

Remember that Neopets should just be a fun game, and it will be provided you take a few measures to take care of yourself, and always use common sense.

Portions of this page provided by Make A Wish Guild Website