PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post the good things and the bad things that have happened to you on Neopets here.
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Ailiel
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PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post by Ailiel »

Hi everyone, it's been awhile. Even if you're not playing Neopets anymore, a lot of accounts have been accessed lately. It seems lists of usernames and passwords have been distributed more than just the one breach. If it's been awhile, please be sure to change your passwords and your PINs on all of your Neopets accounts, and make sure you have the birthdays and access to the email accounts. The advice going around is to set up a Gmail account specifically for Neopets, and not use it for anything else and don't tell anyone the name. Set up two step authentication on it. And remember Facebook connect is a point of vulnerability too, so also change your FB passwords and you can also set up two step authentication there as well (where they send you a text if someone tries to log in from an unknown IP address).

My accounts are super old and I just was able this last week to secure everything. TNT never responded to my open tickets from APRIL about my side account PINs, which I'd forgotten and the reset emails weren't coming through. I submitted my tickets as a bug report last week and they were resolved within 48 hours.

Other than that, I mostly hang out on a Neopets Facebook group for my chats these days. Hope everyone is well!
Madge
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Re: PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post by Madge »

Yeah. Mine got taken, but I think it's because my gmail account specifically for neopets got accessed as it was all my accounts, not just one or two of them :( - more tellingly I can't log into that gmail account.

A bunch of my pets got taken and I'm just like.... should I bother? I was on the verge of quitting now, and I really don't want to go through all the support rigmarole when I'm guessing the customer service standard might not be up to snuff?
Ailiel
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Re: PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post by Ailiel »

Oh man Madge, that really sucks. :( It makes me so sad to see the accounts from here fall to thieves, I have so many memories of the pets of the members here. I can't really tell you whether to follow up or not, I will say that I had very little luck submitting my tickets under "account access", they sat around from April untouched to now. I had access to the accounts but not the PINs, and still they wouldn't help me. It's all resolved now.

It does take persistence to get TNT to respond, as it always has. The site is a lot smaller in user base so it can be a bit easier sometimes once you get the ear of someone on the staff. I personally am enjoying the site more than ever on it's smaller scale, but of course your mileage will vary on that.
Madge
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Re: PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post by Madge »

Yeah. I just felt so violated to see my accounts all... strewn around. Some of my pets were still there, some weren't, I was only able to log in through facebook.

I'm not sure if I want to go through the process, I think I'd rather admit defeat than get frustrated with TNT. You know? Ugh. It was awful.
Jazzy
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Re: PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post by Jazzy »

That sucks, Madge. I've had really variable success getting account access back, but mine haven't been accessed, just had the password glitch and no password reset emails. I can understand not wanting to bother at this point, but it feels like a bad way for things to end.

Ailiel - did you have success via the same ticket form, but just calling it a bug report instead?
Ailiel
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Re: PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post by Ailiel »

Yes, that's exactly what I did, filed the tickets about the password reset emails not coming through as "Bug Report". And to save time, include all your information you have to prove the account was yours-- birthday on the account, email address used to create the account, any emails you have ever had attached to the account, Neocash transactions, and neofriends. I have always had no problems accessing the account with the birthday, email used to create, and my Neocash transactions that I keep safe for these kinds of things. I also have the Neocash card numbers too (saved them all) but it's never come to that, thank goodness. Worst was I was locked out of a few of my side accounts for about six months because my email server was rejecting the password resets. They manually reset the passwords for me so I was able to get back in last April, but then the PINs were still attached and I forgot those too. Finally have complete access and have secured the accounts to an email address with two step-authentication, that actually can receive Neopets emails, so hopefully this is the end of my saga of bugging support.
Fjorab_Teke
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Re: PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post by Fjorab_Teke »

I wonder if that's what happened with mine (main account saying bad password and being disabled), and maybe they're so busy with all this damage that mine's relatively low-priority or just lost in the chaos.

My side accounts all seem intact pet-wise, although they're logged out with the descriptions wiped except one - which I can still look around and check things from. Odd. Hmm.
Jazzy
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Re: PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post by Jazzy »

My main account's description got wiped - I wonder if they wiped a lot of descriptions, maybe for security reasons (say userlookups had been a source of a vulnerability).
AngharadTy
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Re: PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post by AngharadTy »

I don't have a single account I can log in with, and every email I've tried for a new account has not received the required confirmation email. Every few weeks I tell Neo to send me a password reset email, just for shits and giggles, I suppose. No way to contact the team without an account. Except if I bug them on facebook or something, which is unpleasant. And honestly, these accounts are so old I no longer remember so many, many things (like whether I still have X paint brush in my safety deposit box or which of my dozens of emails I originally signed up with). I don't even know my neofriends because I remember the people and not the usernames.
Neopets wrote:Thanks! An email has been sent to the address associated with your account.
Haha... riiiiiight.
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Jazzy
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Re: PSA: Secure your accounts!

Post by Jazzy »

I've sent in my bug report, so I'm crossing my fingers. My main is fine but both of my sides are somehow inaccessible, and I can't use my quest fortune cookie until I've got a side account to check the wiz from!
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