58 replies to this topic

[Boggart]

Unregistered E-mails: What are they?

As some of you may already know, inactive e-mail accounts are purged much like neopets accounts are. After 90 days, e-mail providers such as hotmail and yahoo will delete the associated e-mail accounts. People have found out that by creating these old purged e-mails that they can get access to neopets usernames and passwords.

How?

Through this new neopets feature:

Spoiler

It's as simple as that: people make user bots/manually check for e-mail accounts to see if they are associated with a neopets account, and if they are, they attempt to create the account, hoping the e-mail has been purged

Result?

As a result, THOUSANDS of new accounts, items, UC pets have been released onto the market. This is one of the reasons for the major deflation of the cheaters' NP prices. Neocodex does not condone the trading of accounts that don't belong to us. While most of these (I highlight "most" not "all") accounts are inactive, people could one day want to log back onto their account to find it frozen. Regardless, rules are rules, follow them.

Why are you telling us this:

This is the real warning: TNT is extremely aware of this going on, and have cracked down on these unregistered e-mail shells. At first everything seems fine, "25k for a 7 year shell?! FUKJA!" But then this occurs:

Spoiler

This is the trademark of an unregistered e-mail account. Every so often, TNT will find all of these accounts and ice them regardless if you use them or not. If they have been inactive for years, switch an entirely new IP, change passwords, start playing games, basically anything, they will get iced within the month. Even if you're just logging in to play legit to feed your pixels other pixels so they don't turn blue, eventually you will get iced.

So what's your point exactly?

My point is: unregistered e-mail accounts are dirty and if you buy them, whether if it's the e-mails themselves, or the accounts, you will most likely get iced relatively soon. I restate that the trading of unregistered e-mail accounts are not allowed on Neocodex. That being said, we can't control what you do offsite. But if you see a 3+ year shell going for a price that seems to good to be true, it probably is. How do you know if your new shell is from an unregistered e-mail account: Well, you don't, that's the problem. We have no proof. Even if the "trademark" warning is not enough proof that the account is from an unregisted e-mail; it's just heavily implied. Thus if you buy an account from here and you get that message, we will not be able to prove that that user is dealing with unregistered e-mail accounts. That being said, still report the incident so the mods have more reason to check up on the user.

How do you know all this exactly?

I admit: before I had any idea what unregistered e-mail accounts were, I bought a bunch of shells (I remember going to Georgie going "look how cheap they are! wtf?!"), all of which were iced with that error message about two weeks later. I cheated on about 3 of them, but the other 7 were untouched, but they all got that iced message above. All items, accounts, pets, etc. that come from these are "dirty" and can get people iced; the problem is how do you know if these things came from an unregistered e-mail? You don't! Even retired mains with 300+ avatars and high end UC pets can be from an unregistered e-mail. And just because a user says "it's my legit main" does NOT make it true. Would you want to spend upwards of hundreds of dollars just to have your account iced because it was from an unregistered e-mail? Of course not!

This is my final warning: it's against the rules to trade unregistered e-mail accounts, items, pets, or anything associated with them. If a new trader is selling bulk accounts for cheap, chances are they're from unregistered e-mails. If someone is "QS UC pets", they might be from unregistered e-mails. Using a middleman will NOT help the situation either.

So everyone, be careful, don't trade with users with offers that are too good to be true, and if you have any questions/comments/arguments, post below

Cheers,
Boggzorzzzzz

Final note: I know simply by inspection that there are people trading unregistered e-mail accounts on this site. We have no proof because maybe you just want to undersell yourself, but be warned... yeah, that.

Edited by Boggart, 14 May 2011 - 08:27 AM.

[huevoquilmes]

wow.. i didnt know this ^ ... i sometimes wonder when i see really old accs going for 150k.. even tho they are shells, its still pretty fishiy.... i think this should be stickied

[Chloee]

Thanks for this Boggart! It'll help loads of people, so they don't get ripped off, when they buy accounts!

[Waser Lave]

I'll pin this because it's a pretty important issue recently.

[Boggart]

Oh another note: if you're using an account with an e-mail that you haven't used in a while, make sure to either change it or re-create it. There are people literally running programs checking for things like this

Bob@hotmail.com, Bob1@hotmail.com, Bob2@hotmail.com Bob3@hotmail.com ... Bob(n)@hotmail.com
Bob@yahoo.ca. Bob@yahoo.com. Bob@yahoo.co.uk
Neopetslover@hotmail.com, Neopetslovers@hotmail.com ... Neopetslover(n)@hotmail.com

etc.

Be careful :3

[tak1968]

i have always wondered what those really were. ty for the awesome in-depth explination. +rep

[dratini]

I didn't even consider that this was possible. I remember people used to do this on Habbo, but I never thought of it as being applicable to Neopets. I probably have easily guessable (and expired) emails on some old accounts that I should check up on. I should also check up on where the shells I've been given to by friends came from. This is slightly concerning. Thanks for the heads-up.

Edited by Lieri, 14 May 2011 - 08:55 AM.

[Boggart]

Oh and for anyone wondering if you can do this (like manually check with the method I just offered) it's almost 99.99% no. bots have been running for months now and any of the realistic names are long gone.

srry

[Shunkan]

If you're planning to use some because you found some of your own (or obtained them elsewhere), if you get those "non-unique" ones such as the ones Boggart posted before (bob1, bob2, bob3 ... etc), you'll usually end up with a shell. If you get unique ones like (bob, foxy_sly, imonaboat... etc), you'll tend to end up with better accounts, but there's no guarantee.

[jungle]

very helpful thanks, glad im not winded up with these types of accounts.

[Salamanda]

I didn't know it was so short as 90 days. D:

Also, if we've recovered an account that was originally ours this way, we should notify the buyer, right?
I have a couple that I recovered months ago that are still unfrozen, but tbh I've just logged in once or twice and left em to be sold as shells eventually.

[Sammiantha]

Thank you for posting this, I did wonder why the cost of some items had depreciated and this explains it. I'll definitely trade with more caution than usual.

[Oxytor]

What are the odds of an icing if it truly is your account? You said if the IP and password changes after years of not being used it's likely. I recently reclaimed an old email that I had forgotten about and discovered that I had 2 shells registered to it, I then changed the passwords and started using them as sides. In 6 years my computer situation has changed a fair bit so the IP isn't the same either. Should I be concerned?

[Muffin]

Thanks for the info, just logged onto the e-mail acccounts of my ageing shells and found that one of them had been purged, should i get rid of the associated neopets account?

[ilovepolkadots]

this was nice Boggy :3
i am so proud of you

[Boggart]

Salamanda, on 14 May 2011 - 09:35 AM, said:

I didn't know it was so short as 90 days. D:

Also, if we've recovered an account that was originally ours this way, we should notify the buyer, right?
I have a couple that I recovered months ago that are still unfrozen, but tbh I've just logged in once or twice and left em to be sold as shells eventually.

I have also recovered an account (technically my sister's) and we have switched IP's since then. Neither of them are iced, although I am 100% legit on them.

Oxytor, on 14 May 2011 - 09:41 AM, said:

What are the odds of an icing if it truly is your account? You said if the IP and password changes after years of not being used it's likely. I recently reclaimed an old email that I had forgotten about and discovered that I had 2 shells registered to it, I then changed the passwords and started using them as sides. In 6 years my computer situation has changed a fair bit so the IP isn't the same either. Should I be concerned?

Changing passwords is always a risky thing to do, it's almost a red flag for them; especially if they haven't been accessed in a while. However, you should be okay as long as you don't start AB'ing with them

Muffin, on 14 May 2011 - 10:03 AM, said:

Thanks for the info, just logged onto the e-mail acccounts of my ageing shells and found that one of them had been purged, should i get rid of the associated neopets account?

Yup, same advice as above. If it truly is your account, you can somehow prove it's yours No need to get rid of it, but just don't be super AB'ing on them all the time. It's more so suspicious activity that can get people iced, but somehow TNT knows that you're not the original owner... it's more so that if you DO get an account back this way to just make sure you raise no red flags. Don't trade with anyone including yourself, and try to look normal.

ilovepolkadots, on 14 May 2011 - 10:14 AM, said:

this was nice Boggy :3
i am so proud of you

<3

To everyone: honestly I have no idea how TNT always tracks down unregistered e-mail accounts. I have dabbled more into this subject more than I have stated (through personal testing; longer members know that I like doing really stupid things to see if I can get away with them and report back here if I can. the 4 legit accounts i've gotten back this way (2 mine, 2 my sister's) are fine even though they share the same IP with the unregistered ones. Guess what? I have 0 unregistered accounts left, but all 4 of the ones that belonged to me and none of them have any interaction with each other. I didn't want to say more than I knew, but yeah, I don't know how TNT does it and thus far I haven't been able to get away with unregistered accounts; even the ones I let sit.

This was like...two months ago and I've given up on that mission since I need a new mission when inspiration strikes.

[Snowneo]

Thank you very much for this information, It does make you a little nervous on what you are truly buying, it's impossible to know if you got a dirty account until it is too late.

[qweable]

Thanks for the heads up! Ill keep this in mind when I go searching for a shell.

[Boggart]

Glad to help; if people have more questions that they don't want to ask in public, feel free to PM me.

[Skrillex]

Thanks boggart, I'd completely forgotten about this. Good to know!

[Mystery]

Dont people look on JN (for eg) to try and find this emails?

[Boggart]

I...I... wut?

Generally people look for inactive e-mails of people who had epic mains who stopped playing Neopets. Generally they don't go on JN and other active sites; that's more for hashing, which is just 100% stupid.

[giraffe]

Wow. I had no idea about this. This is probably why some of my older accounts disappeared. Crazy! Thanks Boggart!

[Oxytor]

It sounds to me like TNT is monitoring these so closely that it would be impossible to retrieve even your own accounts.

[Seven]

Wow, thanks for the heads up, didn't know that email providers actually do this and make it this easy to not only access Neo accounts, but pretty much anything under the sun. It's actually kind of scary once you realize that this whole "forgot your username/password" thing extends outside the scope of Neo and onto other sites the email could have been registered with.