You can easily get gold trophies with Score Sending, I've done that before and trust me, with the correct times is 100% safe.
Just make sure you check Joe's List for scores too.
I've never tried AoB... so idk about that.
AoB is certainly the easiest for the simple reason that timing is much less of an issue and it is much harder for TNT to spot(or at least, that's what experience tells us is the case).
However, AoB are only available for a limited number of games. SSing can fill in the gaps, though that's much risker, particularly if you don't know what you're doing with Mods etc. I guess the safest way would be for you to get someone in your acc on a proxy to play the games for you. Though that takes more time and expense.
Also if you AoB, in some games you can go considerably faster than normal. One I can think of is snowmuncher you can burn through levels very fast in which normally you can't as fast. So if you feel you are going way too fast wait for one of those pause screens and let it sit for a bit, this can be beneficial for you as you can take a break or do something else non neopets related, and it shows tnt that you took a break in the game (in overall time) so then you have less of a chance of getting caught.
Just some helpful tips, if I think of anything else I will let you know xD
I hear with AoB you can worry less about having and illegit score, however you still need to worry about scary low times, so just wait a while before you send score x____o