/ Mark Frauenfelder / 12:55 pm Fri May 20, 2011

Targeting Neopets.com users for credit cards

Neopets.com won't tell Beverly Blair Harzog how her daughter's user's name for the site ended up on credit card solicitations.
It was in November 1999 that Neopets.com hit the scene. Kids loved it. I mean, really, really loved it. The computer game allowed them to create and take care of virtual pets in Neopia, a virtual world, and interact with each other on boards. Kids had to register, which involved giving personal information. Like other kids, Ashley, my then-10-year-old daughter, wanted to sign up and participate.

My lectures about not giving personal information on the Internet apparently did have an impact on her. Ashley now says, "I remember at the time thinking I shouldn't give my real name. So I made up a last name."

So although she gave her actual address to somebody connected to the site when she signed up (it's unclear whether it was Neopets or one of its advertisers; it was too long ago to remember), Ashley used the name "Ashley Ainttellnu," as in, I ain't tellin' you my last name. Hey, when you're 10 years old, this approach makes darn good sense. And she did (sort of) listen to her mom. Unfortunately, she used her address--a big no.

Flash forward about 10 years. Ever since Ashley started college in 2009, she's been receiving offers for student credit cards. Last week, Ashley received two credit card offers on the same day. They were both for a Discover student card.

One was addressed to Ashley Harzog and one was addressed to--are you ready?--Ashley Ainttellnu. The card issuer, Discover, knows how old Ashley Ainttellnu is and that she's now in college. What Discover doesn't know is that Ashley Ainttellnu doesn't exist and that she most certainly doesn't need a credit card.

They should make a Neopets branded credit card!

Is Your Kid Being Targeted for a Credit Card?

15

  1. This is very surprising, back in 1999 when I signed up (I’m just about the same age as the girl in the story) I remember using my real address and name, I wish I were still living in the same house just to see if this is widespread. For the last couple years Neopets really sold out as a cash cow with their real-money clothing and item store and the heavy advertisements, but back then they were much more clean cut and passionate.

  2. So evidently the Neopets user database was either sold or stolen.

    I guess I’m mostly surprised that these places are trying to send snail mail to the Digital Native generation. Shouldn’t they be texting the offers, or sending them to their LinkedIn and Facebook inboxes?

  3. I had the exact same thing happen to me, except it was that 10-CDs-for-a-penny company, BMG Music.

    The fake name? Pat McRotch.

    Except it was Bank of America that started contacting me. And they didn’t send me an offer. They sent me a pre-approved credit card. I used it. It worked. I bought a really expensive bong and some booze before panicking and throwing the card away.

    When debt collectors started calling and asking for a “Mr. Pat McRotch,” it got pretty surreal.

  4. Heh, old news. I played Neopets and probably stopped playing in 2003 or 2004ish, under a fake name, and still get solicitors using my Neopets name. I occasionally get emails from “Neopets Staff” to my personal email, which I did not use back then. I still don’t know how this information got out, since I specifically remember being very careful about what I told about myself, since my dad threatened to “turn the internet off” if “bad things happened.”

  5. What probably happened is that Neopets sold their mailing list to a database marketing company such as Acxiom. The agreement that she agreed to during the account creation process probably gave them this right. After that the database marketing company simply added Ashley Aintellnu to their very long list of people (hundreds of millions of names), segmented into categories such as new mothers, college students, gun owners, etc.

    When a credit card company is doing marketing, they work with these companies to select and contact prospective customers. I worked for a credit card company, and we dealt with both Acxiom as well as Epsilon (the company that recently had a problem with a significant data breach). A good year would see more than 1B (yes, billion) offers being sent out. The credit card company sets the selection criteria, but the database marketing company does the actual contact (the credit card company needs to keep an arms length away due to regulatory and legal requirements).

  6. I seem to recall a story similar to this about a couple kids who made up a person so they could get free birthday sundaes from Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor, except that instead of their made up person getting credit card offers they got a reminder on their 18th birthday that they were expected to register for Selective Service.

    Ah yes: http://www.snopes.com/military/icecream.asp

  7. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Neopets or even Viacom at all, honestly. As a long time player (yes, I’ll still admit that I am playing Neopets even as a 24-year-old who just got their masters degree), some of the early “sponsor” events on site used to ask for addresses, names, phone numbers…the like. I remember distinctly there was one event when I was a sophomore in high school – around 2002 – that got us site premiums if we registered with a handful of sponsor offers.

    Fast-forward a few years. My family used to receive a decent of credit card offers addressed to “Gojira Gojirou” (my attempt at having a funny name on the internet when I was 12) and I never remember having to enter my address on site, well, ever.

    1. This is exactly what I think happened. They ran a promotion that would enable you to get special colors if you signed up for like, insurance quotes and “points” based discount sites. Everything said you needed to be 18 years old, and at that time most of the Neopets user-base was. However, I know many, many underage kids who have been lying about their ages to do things online for years, and I know I was one of the kids who, after being told never to use my real name or age online, signed up for plenty of things as Asuuko Chiba, 18 years old.

  8. My father signed me up for a subscription to the New Yorker a few years back. Somehow the address got screwed up and my street address was listed as 1 Prospect St., which doesn’t exist in our city, or certainly isn’t where I was. Since my main address was a university box, it didn’t make a difference and the thing kept coming.

    It wasn’t many months before I started getting a lot of ads and unsolicited catalogs all addressed to 1 Prospect St.

  9. I am experiencing cognitive dissonance…

    I think this is an outrageous invasion of privacy, especially considering the people giving out information were all minors at the time.

    But I really want a Neo-Pets credit card.

  10. This is not new; I’ve written about it before.

    McDonald’s gave away neopets in Kids Meals at one point. My son got one, and I helped him enter a fictitious name at the Neopets site.

    At first it was “legit” spam, just credit card offers and canadian medicine, but eventually it worked up to penis enlargers and similar items that provided interesting teaching opportunities to the parent.

    I wrote McDonalds and Neopets and received absolutely no replies from either.

    This was at least five years ago, I think. We closed out the email account; I was running my own email server at the time so it was not a major hardship, but still annoying. We continue to get bounces on that account every day from spammers, which has caused my (incompetent) ISP to several times assume I was sending spam because of the double-bouncing and send me threatening letters.

  11. I’d be more worried about that Neopets being run by Scientology than I would about your kid getting offered credit cards. These “free points for offers” sites are always scummy with selling personal information, even minors.

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