Neopets Cookie Grabbers: Protecting Your Account from a Malicious Attack

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of Neopets. Most of the time I blissfully click through shops looking for bargains, hitting the Half Price Day sale and playing Key Quest. Then there are times when I get slightly neurotic when the scammers start attacking the site and using cookie grabbers to steal accounts. That's one the main reasons why it isn't always a good idea to brag about what you have in your SDB, how many Neopoints you've got in the National Neopian Bank or screenies of things you have sniped.

What is a "cookie grabber"? Wow, I have to admit, I was pretty clueless about it until a few weeks ago when yet another wave of CG'ers attacked the site. A cookie grabber is something that spies on your browser to get you cookie information. In regards to Neopets it steals your log in information. When that happens you can basically kiss your account and everything in it goodbye unless you are willing to jump through hoops to get it back.

Why do people use cookie grabbers? They are greedy and lazy but some see it as a challenge. The people that use these codes also love to brag on message boards about the accounts they have stolen and what they have done with the contents of the persons Safety Deposit Box. I spent a few hours digging through posts about codes, Neopets and why people are so motivated to steal someone's account. More often than not it is someone that was banned from the site for scamming.

What can you do to protect your account? There are some really simple things you can do to protect your account. The first is to set a four digit PIN (personal identification number) and change it often. To get the most from this you need to have a PIN set for your SDB, shop, withdrawals from the Bank and to change your email address. That is one of the first things that a CG'er will do so you can't request that your password be sent to you. If you have a PIN set it can be a little frustrating to have to enter it when you move things or price things in your shop but it is an added layer of security.

To set your PIN, visit this Neopet page: www.neopets.com/pin_prefs.phtml

Some cookie grabbers will take your information from the Neopet webpage you are on; more than likely it will be a shop or lookup page that has been modified. TNT said that they fixed the problem but no doubt, the hackers will find a way around it. There are also outside links that people put in their shops, post on the Trading Post or send via NeoMail. Even though most of the ".com" addresses won't be able to be sent via NM, the hackers always find a way to trick someone in to going to another site. Once you leave the Neopet site to go to an advertised link you are pretty much doomed. Never believe a NeoMail that says you can get free NeoCash, NP or rare items by visiting another site.

Codestone sniping is one of the ways that CG'ers lure people in to their ruse. They post super cheap prices for them and when someone clicks on them in their shop it activates the grabber. I have never seen this in action so I am going on what people have told me and what I have read about the programs and codes. I am super paranoid so I rarely shop for the items that the CG's use as bait. The Trading Post is also a place to be cautious; if a sale looks too good to be true or it is a fairly new account it is better to be careful and cautious than to end up having your account emptied.