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My account got stolen. Any idea how to get it back ?


____annabelle____

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Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering if any of you have ever been in the situation I am in now. I created a Neopet account more than 4 years ago and managed to collect all the kind of things we can dream to collect on Neopets. I stopped playing to Neopets for a year and was really surprised to notice when I came back that somebody else was using my account. My password wasn't working anymore, I tried to have it emailing back to me but the person had changed the email address too. On the user lookup, there were a different name and country than mine but apart from that everything was still looking exactly the same. I don't get how it happened because I never gave my password to anyone and it was not an easy password to find (with both letters and numbers).

 

I neomailed the thief but of course she never replied back to me. I sent a message to the Neopets staffs but no reply from them either. I'm not sure what more I can do. I created a new account but it doesn't feel the same at all. Any idea ?

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I'm sorry to hear! It's always sad when this happens to someone, especially yourself, but the important thing is to stay calm and just try and contact TNT again using their ticket system. I believe the URL is this but I'm not totally sure. But they do have a ticket system that you should use and contact them.

 

My theory is, and I'm 95% sure it's right, that TNT has different people managing each different Help Ticket category so answers are better and stuff like that. If my theory is true, then they probably have different numbers of people working on each category. Seeing as I'm sure there are LOADS of account-theft problems, I would think that there might be a good number of staffers trying to tackle those large numbers of messages. IF my theory is incorrect, then it might take a while to hear back. Just be patient and try making a new account just in case =) Of course with a different email/pass/user

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Thank you very much for your messages. :) I contacted TNT once using a ticket but they never replied to me. While writting to them, I realised I could just sound like somebody trying to steal somebody else's account as things are hard to prove when the person changed all your details. I only remember what they used to be when it was my account but TNT probably wouldn't bother checking that. I have the feeling messaging them does nothing so I'm feeling like giving up.

 

I can't help finding it a bit scary because I am the proof that even when doing everything right, being very careful not giving any clue to anyone about your password, you can still get hacked. Maybe to be safe we all should have very plain neopets and don't collect any trophy, stamp or card not to make anyone wants to hack us... It doesn't sound much fun.

 

I think the most frustrating part was to discover that some Secret Laboratory map pieces were very hard to get now. As more and more people joined Neopets their rarity seems to have increased a lot. I miss zapping my pet ! ;)

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TNT is sometimes very slow to answer tickets. If you chose "Scammed?" as your reason for sending in a ticket, and you answered the questions to the best of your ability, you should have a decent chance of getting your account back. Don't give up hope yet, but be prepared to be waiting for a while.

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Ive had this problem too. While I wasnt scammed, I had stopped playing neopets for about 3 years and when I came back I wasnt able to log in again. I had decent items as well. My account details are all the same.

Good luck with getting your account back!

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Wow that's really strange. You never tried to have it back ?

I wondered when I saw somebody was using my account if TNT didn't give the accounts to other people after a certain time of inactivity. We would probably know about it if it was the case but as the same thing happened to you, it's maybe something worth investigating.

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TNT actually does purge inactive accounts from the system regularly, and one of these purges did occur recently, but if I recall correctly an account has to have been inactive for at least 18 months (and meet some other unknown criteria) in order to be purged, which probably rules out your account. :)

 

Edit: I just looked at your old UL, and considering the number of trophies, etc. on there, it seems pretty much impossible that this was a purged account.

 

I can't help finding it a bit scary because I am the proof that even when doing everything right, being very careful not giving any clue to anyone about your password, you can still get hacked. Maybe to be safe we all should have very plain neopets and don't collect any trophy, stamp or card not to make anyone wants to hack us... It doesn't sound much fun.

Ruling out the (very small) possibility that your account was purged rather than compromised, it's likely that the simple fact that your password wasn't changed for so long was what allowed it to be stolen (especially if it was only an alphanumeric password, with no symbols). If you're interested, this page has more information on the times taken for simple brute force password attacks.

 

And one final point - account thieves are not hackers. Hackers don't steal Neopets accounts. *points to link in signature* ;)

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As long as you have a good password, changing it once every few months should be sufficient to keep it virtually impossible to guess. :yes:

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Thank you for all the explanation and tips, AA. That link you gave was really interesting. It made me realise that no matter the password if somebody really wants to crack it, he will. I wonder how easy it is to get hold of one of those password cracking program. Can you imagine how much trouble it would create if some were suddenly easy to get ?

 

It would actually be very possible my account got purged though. I know I stopped playing for more than 18 months. But when an account is purged, shouldn't everything disappear ? I don't see how somebody else could suddenly be able to use the account.

 

You're right about hackers. They usually are some genious with amazing IT skills and who probably have other ambitions than stealing Neopets accounts. My English vocabulary range is not really spread in that area so I used the only word I knew. But I definitely get your point and will be careful next time.

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Yes, looking at your account and the fact that a lot of the stuff you had is still there, I can only presume that it has, unfortunately, been stolen. :( At least that means you have a good chance of getting it back if you manage to convince TNT that you're the original owner.

 

The kind of attack described on the page is known as a 'brute force' attack, which basically means 'try every single possible combination'. They're generally quite easy to come up with, but rarely that useful against tougher passwords (change your password regularly and they're back to square one). Generally crackers will try brute force attacks aimed at the weaker passwords, and give up if they can't get in after a few hours of trying. The trick is to make your password tough enough to make it impractical for a cracker to target your account. Someone could still get in if they really wanted to, but it's unlikely that somebody would be that obsessed with a Neopets account. ;)

 

Good luck getting your account back!

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Oh no. I'm sorry about that.

 

Yeah. Like everyone else has said, your best bet will be submitting a ticket to TNT. But since there's no way of telling how long the other person has had control of your account, you don't know how much of the personal information they have changed. So it might be pretty difficult to get your account back, but definetly not impossible. You just have to be able to prove that it is YOU.

 

Good Luck!

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Have you submitted a ticket to TNT? If you haven't, you should.

 

It might take them awhile to get back to you as well.

Wouldn't it take weeks or months to hear back from them?

 

It would actually be very possible my account got purged though. I know I stopped playing for more than 18 months. But when an account is purged, shouldn't everything disappear ? I don't see how somebody else could suddenly be able to use the account.

 

You're right about hackers. They usually are some genious with amazing IT skills and who probably have other ambitions than stealing Neopets accounts. My English vocabulary range is not really spread in that area so I used the only word I knew. But I definitely get your point and will be careful next time.

I don't believe Neopets has ever deleted accounts. They freeze accounts, but that's it.

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Wouldn't it take weeks or months to hear back from them?

 

 

I don't believe Neopets has ever deleted accounts. They freeze accounts, but that's it.

 

It depends. I've had several tickets where I've heard back from them the same day. (Even though it was a Sunday.) Though it was a very simple issue. I've heard mixed results on how long it takes.

 

As for deleting accounts, they do purge them when the account has been inactive for a long amount of time. They'll send out an email, letting the person know, and giving them a chance to log in and save their account from being purged.

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It depends. I've had several tickets where I've heard back from them the same day. (Even though it was a Sunday.) Though it was a very simple issue. I've heard mixed results on how long it takes.

 

As for deleting accounts, they do purge them when the account has been inactive for a long amount of time. They'll send out an email, letting the person know, and giving them a chance to log in and save their account from being purged.

Do you know how long it is before they purge them?

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I don't think they've said, but I believe it's around a couple years. (And they also look at the effort put into the accounts. If there's lots of games played, items, pets, etc, they tend to leave them. I know at one point, I was inactive for probably over 3 years, but my account wasn't touched. I had tons of played games, tons of items, painted pets, a shop, guild, and over 1 million in my bank account.)

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