The story of how a 9-year-old got 'drunk on power' during Neopets' heyday

every few years i email neopets support asking if they can help me log into my childhood account and (unsurprisingly, tiny team, millions of old accounts) i've never heard back

my childhood neopets account recovery was on an email address i haven't had in decades, which was linked to my father's long-defunct aol account. i also used some fake birthday to access the age-limited forums (which you have to provide) so i figured i was locked out for good

but today, when i was writing my biannual email to neopets support, i was like .... wait .......... i bet there has been a neopets hack. they still use http to log in for christsakes! surely there has been a neopets hack

and sure enough, there was a MASSIVE leak in 2013. checked that old email address against the requisite websites, yep, included. it was a bad one. passwords, emails, DOB, IP address - all in plaintext. perfect

a 2013 leak of old neopets accounts is not actually a particularly in-demand document and it took hours of clicking around sketchy forums with my eyes half closed. but eventually i found the download! 5 gb of neopets credentials

found my account somewhere around npdump_200.txt. had the fake DOB and everything (and the incredibly insecure password). went to log in... and obviously somebody had been there before me and changed my password because the hack has been online for 7 years, i mean come on

but it reminded me of why i stopped playing neopets in the first place, which is that neopets took down my organized crime ring based on this exact same circumstance ??

as a preteen precriminal, i made a tidy little neopoints profit on "adopting out" painted pets, for slightly cheaper than a neopets paintbrush would run you (which was very expensive). honestly a bit of a puppy farm situation but we all make do

eventually this operation grew out of the scale one small child could provide after elementary school in the library. so i decided to start a guild

you shall be provided with a lab map. you shall actively be zapping a pet for the guild at all times. i will handle the "adoption". i will pay you a percentage of each adoption fee, after the lab map is paid back.

this goes on for a while, we grow in power, we are small but influential, we are well regarded. i am filthy rich

eventually, though, my avarice grows. i am tired of simply managing others for a portion of profit. i need more accounts

at first, i ask my friends at school. "are you still playing neopets? would you mind if i took over your account? i'll pay you!" then, i'd offer to babysit forum friend's accounts - as long as i could have an empty slot for my experiments

finally, even this is not enough. i start going through the user search and find an account that hasn't logged on in a year or two. i go to log in. i type in their name. i pause at the password. i type password. nope. i type passw0rd. no. i type d0ggy. and i'm in

i was careful. i sat on the account for a week, doing nothing. waiting to see if anyone would notice. tempting them to log back on, to tell me it was not abandoned

at first i just fed the pets. it was practically charity! i played some of the once-a-day games and did well. then, i thought to myself, well they'd notice if their account balance went UP, wouldn't they? i quickly transferred the excess to myself

then i transferred the rest to myself. then i gave the account a lab map. and then, i realized that i would have to cross the unthinkable bridge- this account had 4 pets, the limit at the time. there wasn't an extra slot. for my scheme, i'd have to zap... one of their pets

over the course of 6 months, my guild /transformed/. we had a process. we had a hit list of accounts. we collated thousands of probable passwords. we made enemies, and we took them out. we grew exponentially. i turned 10

this went on for some time, and i actually grew a bit bored of it all- lonely at the top, plagued by text files of account names and passwords, my real life friends no longer playing neopets- i handed over day-to-day management of ~Painted Pets Adoption~ to my second in command

until 2002. when paypal happened

up until this point i had not considered that neopoints were good for anything other than virtual bragging rights, and god i'd been rich for so long that what did it even matter anymore. but i was idly trawling the neopets forums, bored and grown up at 11, when -

an offer. someone offering to exchange their neopoints for.. well.... us dollars. it worked much the same way as our own scheme. get on AIM, sell an overpriced item in the shop, send a paypal transfer, shake hands

i was .... immediately fascinated. i floated it with the guild. they were horrified! we had a perfect racket! what was i thinking, i'd get us shut down for sure

i didn't care. i started flipping the guild over, redesigning our friendly "painted pets adoption :-)" page to be something much more sinister. but i misestimated how much power i still held -

i'd been half absent for almost a year, and had given my second in command administrative powers, who had then promoted her own cronies. they kicked me out! of my own guild! but it was too late. i had plenty of power on my own

i set up my first transfer using my personal shop, and it went - flawlessly. some small portion of all my accumulated neopets empire turned into $10 USD in my unverified paypal account. i was /living/.

within a few weeks, i'd repeated the transfer dozens of times with different neopians. i'd never seen so much money in my life. i didn't even know what to do with it! i had some grand vision of ordering a gameboy color on ebay with pokemon yellow AND zelda

i should have stopped there. i could have gotten out. but ... i had a bone to pick with my backstabbing second in command. and i had her login information

i set up an AIM date. i had them set up the shop. i logged into her account. i made the deal. i left her with nothing

and thats when she took 2 and half years of internal conversations, forum posts, text documents, and AIM chats to neopets support and got them to freeze every single account i had ever touched, including my paypal account which i never successfully recovered (being eleven)

every account, that is, but one. it wasn't my main account, but i rather liked it. it had a good username. i played games on it! i had pets on it that were mine

and its that account that i email neopets support about every couple of years, hoping maybe they've forgotten my crimes.

and its that account that i found today in the 5 gb of neopets passwords. and, in some horrible, final twist of justice, that account which has had its password changed

the end

this story went in so many directions but that denouement would put shakespeare to shamehttps://twitter.com/everestpipkin/status/1297485937384001537 …

Thank you for this story. One of my few life regrets is not RL monetizing party hats on runescape. I could have been retired! When whips came out I was top 100 people to get 85 slayer. Someone offered me a purple party hat+CASH for a whip and i said NAH SELL THE HAT LOOOOOOOL

Neopets brings back so many memories. I used to have the strongest pet in Canada (based on hrobi's Top 50 list) I made my nps on the shop wizard. 2 browsers, 2 different accounts. Searching for transmogrification potions, paint brushes, etc and buying them with my main account

Omg I literally did this yesterday for the third time this year I can see my little baby "Puffie", left all alone. With his baby paint brush. Really want to check my stocks too! I was a millionaire on there

Damn I feel your pain. I ran my own racket on one account with 2 others using a browser with 3 mini windows that auto-refreshed (real slick for Windows 98) shops and we made a fortune by grabbing the rare items faster than everyone else. Had a top 100 pet before we got banned.

Omg yes. I was obsessed with it. I used to hone my blackjack skills by playing Scarab 21! Hahahah also I never forgot to get my neopet an omelette every time I logged in!

This thread is incredible. My best friend and I used to hang out at the public library a lot when we were in elementary school and she would go on all the computers and see if anyone left their accounts logged in on neopets and totally clean them out if they did

Make this into a movie with the social network cast and crewhttps://twitter.com/everestpipkin/status/1297485937384001537 …