Neopets spreading viruses? THE RETURN!

[TelegramSam]

I've played for 5 years and I've never gotten a virus from neopets.

You might want to invest in a good antivirus software along the lines of Norton, etc, and a firewall is probably not a bad idea either.

[the_mongoose2020]

Well, I've been on Neopets for about a little over 4 years and a month and have never gotten ANY type of virus, plus for two years I was using IE! So I really doubt it was from Neopets.

[.:Requiem:.]

Well, I've been on Neopets for about a little over 4 years and a month and have never gotten ANY type of virus, plus for two years I was using IE! So I really doubt it was from Neopets.

I've used IE all (nearly) 6 years! So....hah. pwned. Umm..

[DracolordII]

Just to be absolutely sure, you didn't click any adds did you, some of have viruses in them, oh and does anybody remember the name of that add to download the purple monkey I want to report it but can't remember the name

[superscreamer1992]

Just to be absolutely sure, you didn't click any adds did you, some of have viruses in them, oh and does anybody remember the name of that add to download the purple monkey I want to report it but can't remember the name

no, i didnt ever click any ads.

[Moonlight Flower]

It could have been due to a pop-up or something from another site... my IE used to be so full of spyware and adware (when I got someone to clean it for me, there were over 100 'bad' programs) that whenever I would open it, it would instantly re-download several things that I'd.. rather not have on my desktop.

Also, it could have been due to a toolbar or something. Toolbars are one thing I tend to stay away from on IE, I just have a fear of them, even the safe ones. ^^";

[bigheapnoname]

just to add my 2 cents.. I started neo "may of 2000" whoever long that is.. and no viruses or popups or anything bad from neo.. My computer is actually my fathers and he is so super careful. in 5years we've only had 1 virus and we got it from a bad download of something that was actually supposed to fix viruses.. How ironic..

[B55B55]

Like everyone else has said, I suggest getting Firefox and Adblock. It is really a much nicer interface to browse with anyways, in my opinion. But I get less viruses since less people exploit Firefox and Mozilla's loopholes.

And I don't see why. With half the world using Firefox these days, wouldn't it be more, err, "productive" for evil people like virus and spyware makers to exploit Firefox?

Firefox (and parent program mozilla) combined only have about a 10% saturation rate. Overall, 85% of the world still uses IE.

And IE's popup blockers (since it's the popups that do the damage and install the spyware) are all add-in extensions that you, the user, must find and download. Mozilla/Firefox's, however, are already built in to the program and are easily configurable.

Additionaly exploites to IE can often do more damage than those to firefox or mozilla. This is because Internet Explorer is tightly integrated into the windows operating system and can access utilities that third party browsers cannot.

As for the spywear: I am fairly sure that neopets itself isn't giving you anything. However haven't there been complaints in the past about some of the ads on the site trying to download things to your computer or infect you wth spywear even if you didn't click on them. I know that neopets was fairly prompt about removing such ads and asked to be notified if any more appeared. Still many of the sites advertising on neo's banner ads seem extremly shady and I wouldn't be suprised if there were further problems with them.

[Butterflyhornet]

I asked my dad about this and he says yes, neopets can give viruses. He said this because he looked up a few virus scanner sites where they list sites known to have viruses.

But if you have the right combination of anti spyware, firewalls, and adblockers, you should be fine.

So far my computer has only cought one virus and my scanner locked it up until I deleted it.

[IcyBlue]

I asked my dad about this and he says yes, neopets can give viruses. He said this because he looked up a few virus scanner sites where they list sites known to have viruses.

Any site can post anything they want. It doesn't necessarily have to be fact.

As for catching viruses, it's mostly because people don't update their computers. The whole point of updates is to patch unsecure parts of programs, fix exploitable coding, and to fix anything else that is broken. New viruses are written everyday to exploit different holes.

And Neopets isn't giving anyone viruses. It's the advertisements. Neopets isn't intentionally giving you advertisements. They just have a crappy ad agency.

[Pixa]

I asked my dad about this and he says yes, neopets can give viruses. He said this because he looked up a few virus scanner sites where they list sites known to have viruses.

Any site can post anything they want. It doesn't necessarily have to be fact.

As for catching viruses, it's mostly because people don't update their computers. The whole point of updates is to patch unsecure parts of programs, fix exploitable coding, and to fix anything else that is broken. New viruses are written everyday to exploit different holes.

And Neopets isn't giving anyone viruses. It's the advertisements. Neopets isn't intentionally giving you advertisements. They just have a crappy ad agency.

Yes, it isn't Neopets, it is the advertisements, they give out spyware. To combat the problem very simply, use Adblock with Firefox, blocking anything malicious from my computer. Then, I ran Ad-Aware and Spybot to get rid of anything, along with hijackthis to check for other things, and I'm done.

I think Adblock is a better solution than Premium, for Adblock also blocks many other adverts from these agencies used all over the internet, just clicking Adblock, seeing the list, many are from the same company.

So in short, use Adblock on Firefox and run anti-virus software.

[Starfield_girl]

The name of the purple monkey (evil) is Bonzy Buddy.. He completly totaled my old laptop, so I will never forget his name lol. I had to by a new one, because there was no way to get that evil monkey to quit messing with my systym, and it made my hard-drive crash.

[Nani]

Although I no longer play Neopets regularly, I played for three or four years and never got anything worse than a tracking cookie.

[DM was on fire!]

Those poor 85%.

I've been on Neo for 3 years now. Roughly 1 and 1/2 was spent on Windows (the rest of my time has been on Linspire 4.5), and I haven't gotten a thing.

Bonzai Buddy is a walking piece of spyware. Don't download it. If you have...you're too late. Delete everything belonging to him on your hard drive, 'cause, according to Starfield, your computer will fall victim to him soon.

[DiscordantNote]

I've been playing Neopets for 51 months, my brother almost as long, and I've never gotten a virus from it. A bit of spyware from the ads, but no viruses. I used IE for a brief time, the rest of the time I use Netscape (which uses the Mozilla engine, all except for the most recent version which is some sort of Firefox/IE hybrid).

To prevent getting viruses and tons of spyware, don't click the ads. If you do, hit 'Back' quickly to avoid completely loading the page.