Scammers Target Neopets Users 122
An anonymous reader writes "If you have children that play on the popular virtual world game Neopets, you might want to warn them of a social engineering scam gleefully targeting 12-year-old kids. Neopets users looking for rare items are sent private messages from the scammers, who direct them to sites hosting keyloggers & trojans. They then use the infected PC as a means to get to data the parents might have stored there, be it credit card details, Paypal accounts or online banking. Seeing the screenshots of some of these people talking about putting these children into botnets is just unbelievable — if ever you wanted proof that people up to no good online will go to any lengths to get their hands on some money (or even just feel good about outsmarting a 12-year-old), here it is."
Amputation. (Score:4, Informative)
Amputation. At the hip. Preferably sterilization. And THEN let them do public service for the rest of their lives.
Ok, ok, a wee bit drastic. Or is it? It's the only way I can think of (the sterilization thing, anyway) which gives humanity a chance somewhere in the future, if not now.
Re:And the parents? (Score:2, Informative)
Which is why my first two suggestions make so much sense (and are pretty much sysadmin 101). Don't let kids be admins and don't let kids execute anything but allowed apps.
As for whether or not people could actually be expected to follow these simple rules... well, you got me there. Plenty of sysadmins aren't even clever enough to deny admin privileges to their users.