Monday, March 31, 2008

Hacked Off

Way back when, like 6 years ago, when Em was into it, i had an account on Neopets.

I had a little virtual pet Aisha named Alavans. I liked to feed Alavans and buy books for her to read so she would be smart. I would feel badly when Alavans got hungry even though i knew it was only some bits and bytes fer cryin' out loud. Such is the power of guilt motherhood.

One day i was doing something or other on Neopets when i was asked to sign in in the middle of the activity. It asked me to sign in twice, which i did.

Then all the neocash in my neoaccount disappeared. I had been hacked! My husband and child both helpfully pointed out that i shouldn't have done that. I was so annoyed that i put Alavans up for adoption and closed my account.

Yesterday i tried to leave a comment for
Gordo. I was signed into Google as me, but after i clicked to submit the comment, it wanted me to sign into my Google account again.

Sorry Gordo, the memory of Alavans haunts me still.

27 comments:

thailandchani said...

Oh, geez! I wonder what that was all about. I've had blogger do that with me, too. I reboot the browser.

Princess in Galoshes said...

I had a Neopet, too! The Funasaurus signed me up for one, when I was trying to get Sugar, but she kept getting delayed. He knew how badly I wanted a kitty, so he got me one that looked like a cat. I was obsessed with it. Once I got Sugar, though, I just let it wither away, and it probably died a sad little virtual death. Reason #692 I am not ready for motherhood.

egan said...

Yeah, that kind of sucks. Every time I log into our Hotmail email account using our Mac, it asks for the password twice. I think it's an evil trick Bill Gates part.

Lynnea said...

This happened to me only it was on ebay. My husband told me to go fix it quick because I too did what I shouldn't have done. Turns out the f*ckers had locked me out of my own account of course - I got hold of ebay customer service and they fixed it for me within an hour of it happening. Thank god. That was scary. It is still difficult for me to believe how malicious and underhanded people can be.

Anonymous said...

I haven't been hacked, but tat doesn't mean they stop trying ... ;-)

My eldest was in to Neopets in a huge way last fall and up to a couple of months ago. He's moved on to a D&D-type game, now. Oh, and a guy that I used to work with is a programmer on the site. Sounds like a cool place to work.

No idea what the login problem was, but I sure don't blame you for bailing, meno.

Anonymous said...

I hate it when bad things happen to good people. My kids each got "robbed" in Runescape; it was a sad but cheap lesson in life...

Anonymous said...

yikes.

(fiona got a Webkinz for her b-day. She's already not taking care of it, and it's hard for me not to stop in and feed it, since I'm on the computer every day.)

jaded said...

As my cat sitter so astutely pointed out, I don't remember to water my house plants, how can I possibly maintain any sort of virtual reality.

Dianne said...

that happens a lot, all over the place. first time it happened to me I got hacked and had to change passwords and re-do a layout (not here) and all sorts of nonsense.

Now I always reboot and go back to the site the long way.

Sorry it happened to you.

peevish said...

That sucks!! Sorry they got to you, but I think you are right to be wary now. Lesson learned.

100 Thoughts of Love said...

really, i thought i was doing good to get a child and a dog fed......

QT said...

What the hell? Is nothing sacred??

Tink said...

That's so weird. Four years ago, back when my brothers were into Neopets, I opened an account too. I thought it was cute. Something fun and kiddish to do. Then my account got hacked and I stopped going. This weekend, out of pure boredom, I decided to check on it. Within five minutes some ghost or something stole money from me. I was like, "Yeah, screw this."

furiousBall said...

Alavan sounds like something a magician would say to make me appear.

meno said...

chani, i'll remember that.

princess, the sad thing is they never die, they just stay there starving to death.

egan, that bill gets around!

maggie, think i'll stay away from ebay too. I'm just not saavy enough for this stuff.

gordo, i didn't bail on reading, i just couldn't leave my brilliant comment. is that some neew thing you have?

half-past, how sad. That someone hacks into a game meant for kids.

de, i know. Em got one of those Tomagachi pets and i actually took the damned thing to work to take care of it while she was at school.

patches, no neopets for you!

dianne, now i know, but i was younger and dumber back then.

peevish, fuckers!

pat, you are doing VERY well to accomplish that.

qt, i know! It's a site for KIDS for god's sake!

tink, exactly, it's just another way to get annoyed. Screw that indeed.

furious, or disappear! :)

sari said...

Egan -

I have the same problem with my msn account now that I have a mac.

I just got gmail instead, I never have that problem now, though sometimes if I'm logged into gmail it makes me log out and back in again to use blogger. But that's better than a stupid bill gates bug, right?

Lynnea said...

apparently I'm not either. My husband says I'm too trusting but he thinks its a good thing. Personally I would hate to lose my faith in humanity, but it sure wanes from time to time. :)

Unknown said...

Oh it gets worse - I was at work looking some things up on the internet when a window popped up saying that I had gotten a virus and I needed to click on this button so that our anti-viral protection would work. Yeah, of COURSE it was bogus but I clicked it anyway and ended up infecting our entire network.
Some of us are just smooth like that :)

TTQ said...

What next geocatching? I had a Mopy Fish Screen Saver for awhile but alas an evil brown nosing IT person got pissed I knew how to install shit without their permission and he took it off. I replaced it with something else inappropriate for work I'm sure. Work hard, Play harder. I'm surprised our turtle still lives..

Liv said...

i need my meno. needs a hug!

Candy said...

Neopets was the bomb. I had a shop and everything. I used to make all the neopoints, and then give them to my kids so they could buy what they wanted for their pets.

Sort of like life. Only different.

Dick said...

I think things like that experience you had could in the long run turn a lot of people off on using the Web. That would be a bad thing.

luckyzmom said...

I am so wary of clicking on anything unusual and may send good stuff to the junk pile. Better safe than sorry is my moto.

egan said...

Sari - hmm, a Gmail account could be a nice fix. We've had that MSN account for years since it's linked to our landline. Damn Bill!

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the brave new virtual world, dear. *s* I hadn't used my eBay account in months and months, got a suspension note from eBay. Seems I was now living in Taiwan, selling fashion ripoff purses.

Go figure!

sari said...

Egan, mine is as well, I just told everyone about the new email and put a forward on my MSN mail. So I technically still have MSN but I don't really use it.

:-) Take that, Bill.

Say It said...

Ya know, that happened to my son on webkinz. I felt bad for him. I had no idea someone would or could be so desperate for points. I mean, it seems a waste of time to figure out how to screw a kid over instead of just playing the games and winning your own points. Some people are just vicious.

So, when gmail says it's logged me out and requests I sign back in, it might just be a trick?? Damn technology!