Kids Website being used by Identity Thiefs

Neopets is a website for kids where they can adopt these "cyber-pets" which I guess is a cool thing if you are a kid. You take care of it and it grows and does stuff. Most of the kids are between 8 and 12 years old, but some are as young as 6. There are over 25 million users on this site!

Media giant Viacom (MTV) owns the site where hackers have taken advantage of kids to steal identities. They send the kids an an email or message telling them there is a secret site where they can get a magic paint brush to change their pet and not cost them points.

The kids go to the secret site and never get the magic paintbrush. The scam site works by getting mom and dads important information off the computer.

This is a good (or bad) example of Malware. This is the stuff I have mentioned in many of my blogs and on KGAL's Tech Talk. This bad stuff gets loaded on the computer when the kids go to the infected "secret" web site.

For more on this, read here

This is another great example where parents have to be vigilant in watching what their kids do on the Internet. It is also a great case for having up to date Internet Security/Anti Virus software and making sure it is constantly being updated with the latest definitions.

You know if a huge money making company like Viacom and MTV are doing something free for kids, you can be assured that there is some marketing ploy behind the whole thing anyway.

As an old Sergeant used to say on Hill Street Blues, "Hey, let's be careful out there!"

Hotmail Password Scam much Worse than Originally Reported, Yahoo, Gmail others

Recent reports of a phishing scam where users are asked to put in their passwords were tricked, and the passwords were put up on the Internet for everyone to see.

This was originally thought it was only Microsoft's Hotmail, but it seems to have stretched to Yahoo mail, Google Mail, Comcast, Earthlink and others.

The hackers tricked users into putting passwords into a bogus site, and stole the passwords, then published them on a website.

Here is the full article

If you think you have been scammed, I highly suggest you go in and change your passwords, especially if they are the same for other things that someone might be able to hack into.