Here's what I think: There are two kinds of cheating. One kind hurts other people; the other kind doesn't. And the line between them can get very, very fuzzy.
So let's start out with an ethical standard that most people agree on: An ethical action is the one that helps people and doesn't hurt them. Which means that cheating at a game--especially one like Neopets, which let's face it is not a serious game--can, by some definitions, be ethical.
There are some things that you could do on Neopets that would obviously not be ethical. Stealing people's accounts (assuming the account is not permanently abandoned) definitely hurts people. That fourteen-year-old kid will lose their cute pet and NP and be really bummed out about it. Not exactly a nice thing to do.
And some things, by the above definition, are completely acceptable. You play something like Snow Wars with an autoplayer to get the trophy--you could just as easily do it manually. You're not gaining an unfair advantage over anyone else; your getting the trophy doesn't prevent anyone else from getting it.
Then there are the fuzzy gray areas. At the lightest shade of gray, you could send scores for flash games or autoplay games that win you NP, which increases the total amount of NP in the economy and contributes to inflation, causing other people's NP to decrease in value ever-so-slightly; but you could have played those games manually. The only difference is that you're saving yourself some carpal-tunnel from not obsessively playing the games yourself. But inflation from people using score-senders and similar doesn't cause distress to anyone else; it doesn't ruin anyone else's fun. So there's no direct harm here, either.
A little more problematic is the practice of sending scores to beat other people to trophies or using autobuyers to get very desirable items from shops. In these cases you are getting an obvious advantage and denying something to someone else. Once again, you aren't causing direct harm, but you could be a small part of someone else's frustration at not getting a trophy they wanted. Because these methods don't involve one person directly attacking another, they don't cause a whole lot of harm, but the fact remains that you're taking something that someone else will not be able to get. In my opinion, if your goal is not to hurt anyone else, the best you can do is to use an autobuyer to do only what you yourself are capable of doing, and to send only the scores you yourself are capable of legitimately obtaining. In that way, you are saving yourself extra clicking, but not taking something you could not have gotten without a program to help you.
Let me make this clear: I started this topic to talk about an interesting philosophical idea, not to sling accusations and say we're all horrible people and should feel horrible--I cheat, too, after all. Neopets is not a serious game, and cheating at it is about as serious as peeking when you're supposed to be counting for hide-and-seek. If you get angry about somebody doing that, then either you're five years old, or you have a very unreasonable temper.
Where do you draw that fuzzy line? Do you think cheating can be ethical, or do you think that it's unethical but just not important enough to worry about?
