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.
Sure they will…
None of that is true! Neopets does nothing of the sort! I have been on Neopets for 14 months and I have never recieved anything like that… and I’m guessing your daughter just comes up and tells you these things? I don’t mean to be rude but this is what a scam is. Neopets doesn’t allow those things! It won’t let you use bad language or tell other people your passwords, not to mention your email is not required.
You’re not being rude, just naive! And, no, she doesn’t have to tell me anything; I monitor everything my kids do on the Internet — I read all their incoming and outgoing emails, read all their instant messages, and assign them special email addresses to be used on different websites. Neopets is good at stopping abuses, scams, and bad language, and seems to provide great protection for those under 12. However, you can’t sign up for Neopets WITHOUT an email address. - RDL
I have never recieve anything form a third party from neopets. I know sometimes hotmail or yahoo or myownemail or what ever you use will just start getting stuff for no reason… also if your un-happy with neopets then you should check out powerpets.com I love neopets but power pets is cool too. any way, I hope if works out for ya
ur the naive one none of this ever happens im signed on as 23 and i still get nothing. wat your daugther experianced is normal i get spam on email always beforeand after neopets listen its just not gonna stop oand do you give your kids any privacy i mean do you watch them in the bathroom
Now, that’s just a stupid comment, one that needs more punctuation and a pass through a spellchecker. - RDL
i have been bombarded with spam ever since my sign up. another good site is chizzy.co.uk
How could you say that? I have been on Neopets for two years and seen nothing of the sort! Your daughter may just be recieving spam that has nothing to do with Neopets! I trust Neopets entirely and know they would not do such a thing. If you really want to find out who is sending the email look under ’sender’, rather that just assuming it’s from Neopets. Neopets will always say, ‘Neopets Staff’ or something of the sort.
First, looking in the “sender” field of junk mail is about as informative as looking at a public statement from a politician. In my mailbox just today I’ve recieved junkmail from smartin@buy-and-save.com (Am I spamming messages to myself now?) ymfvwfwzwxffpp@speedyvalues.com (From someone with a Welsh or Eskimo name, maybe?) and DC9syEBHhek@sbase23.com (Sure, this looks like someone’s real address.). Second, Richard is a highly knowledgable computer professional as should be apparent from his orignal comments. He knows how to parse the headers of email and track a message back to its source. Third, he never said the spam was from neopets. His complaint is that neopets has given ($old) his daughter’s email address to OTHER companies. Personally, if I had to choose, I’d rather have an idiot filter than a spam filter. Then I could screen out all the postings from people who don’t think or don’t know what they are talking about.
Which is why spam is also known as UCE, or unsolicited commercial email. I (and everyone else with a pulse) can easily distinguish between email sent from NeoPets staff and email from a company giving out free vitamins. The life lesson you have clearly not learned is not to trust any company entirely. - RDL