A Message About NeoPets.com
This is a cautionary note to parents whose children use NeoPets.com and other online gaming services. While NeoPets has an effective privacy policy towards children under the age of 13, once the system knows that the child has reached 13 or over, the child’s information is provided to third parties, resulting in a bombardment of inappropriate spam.
My daughter, at the age of 12, after she forgot her password of her first NeoPets accounts, used the wrong signup to create a new account and entered her age incorrectly. NeoPets then thought she was 14 years old. No parental consent was necessary to join, and their privacy policy only protects children 12 or under. Then they provided her email address to a myriad of third parties.
Before using the email address on NeoPets she had never received any spam. However, just in the last twelve hours, she has received 18 spam email messages — two for diet pills, two for satellite TV systems, two for online dating services, two offering gambling, one for Viagra, one for other medication, one offering her the opportunity to refinance her mortgage, two for multi-level marketing schemes, two selling miscellaneous kitchen products, one to earn her degree online, one for a psychic hotline, and one that was blank because their ISP had shut them down for spamming which made the images of whatever they were trying to sell not show up. All inappropriate for her age; all intended for adults. Fortunately, I intercept every email message sent to her before she reads it.
My suggestion if your child MUST sign up with NeoPets (and other similar services) is to use a temporary, throw-away email address and sign them up as age six. Today, I emailed them to request that she be removed from their lists that they provide to third parties. Hopefully, they will do the right thing.
ADDENDUM: Since so many neoteens are having difficulty comprehending the problem, I’ll spell the problem out slowly: What you people who have been using NeoPets for a long time do not understand is that NeoPets has stated that they will use whatever privacy policy is in place when you sign up. The privacy policy in place when you signed up is probably different than today’s. I opened up an account on NeoPets at the beginning of February 2003, telling it that I was 13 years old (just as a typical teen would) and using a never-before-used email address, one especially created for the test. So, now, daily, I receive spam sent to the “mapsoen” (”neospam” spelled backwards) user on one of the domains I own. Only NeoPets was sent this email address. And, yes, I opted out of participating with their third-party partners when I signed up. Try it yourself.
I love how polar (or “bipolar”) blog commenters can be, this post having often received vastly conflicting parenting advice:
Either way, thank you all for your comments on this post. It’s been almost six years since the original posting (my daughter is now 18 and I no longer monitor her online activity) so there’s not as much relevancy to whatever sign-up procedures or spam policies are now in effect on neopets.com. It’s therefore time to shut off the ability to add new comments on this page.
My underlying and unwavering point is this: be cautious when registering on any website, and assume the worst-case scenario when it comes to any personal information you provide to them.