Neopets Site-Wide Blocks and Captchas

[Milly]

UPDATE SEPT 10TH: It seems that TNT has disabled the "gateway" pages from showing up on Neopets.com. We still see remnants of the change that TNT added, but it does not seem to be actively attempting to block you from viewing pages on Neopets for now.

What was that? From what we can tell, TNT decided to install some new "firewall" software from a third party. The way this works is that whenever you visit a neopets.com URL, instead of going to a Neopets web server, you would instead be sent to the third party service to have your computer/device and browser fingerprinted and passed through a proprietary system to determine whether or not you are a "real" user. The intent was to block bots and automated traffic. You would need to be authenticated as a "real" user every few pages that you visit on neopets.com.

Unfortunately, this service is not compatible with the way that Neopets is set up to be played, which is the reason for all of the errors we saw on Sunday and Monday of this week.

For example, submitting your Flash game scores would "break" every so often if you took too long to play the game. Since you need to be re-authenticated every few minutes, if you attempted to send your game score without re-authenticating by loading a page on neopets.com, your score would just be denied since the score sending system isn't set up to do that. The same thing happens with the Super Shop Wizard: since you don't need to refresh the page with the Super Shop Wizard, you eventually lose your authentication and the SSW is not set up to authenticate you.

We are unsure if TNT plans to turn this system back on. From what we can tell, the "gateway" authenticating has been turned off, but all requests to neopets.com are still being routed through the third party system, so it could in theory be turned back on at any time.

From Jellyneo, this sounds positive. I still wont be botting until admin gives us the thumbs up

[kiara]

I'm worried about how this is going to impact the future of Clraik, I don't want this amazing community to end.

[♥ PrettySarcastic ♥]

For example, submitting your Flash game scores would "break" every so often if you took too long to play the game. Since you need to be re-authenticated every few minutes, if you attempted to send your game score without re-authenticating by loading a page on neopets.com, your score would just be denied since the score sending system isn't set up to do that. The same thing happens with the Super Shop Wizard: since you don't need to refresh the page with the Super Shop Wizard, you eventually lose your authentication and the SSW is not set up to authenticate you.

This sounds like the kind of brilliance I expect from this version of TNT.

It's kind of like when the VP of a company makes some financial decision for his bottom line, having zero understanding of how it will impact people several tiers below him trying to do their jobs. Just thoughtless.

I guess we'll see how / if they adjust the system to compensate for their game not being set up to work the way this re-authentication service they purchased into to combat bots functions.

[j03]

I'm worried about how this is going to impact the future of Clraik, I don't want this amazing community to end.

*facepalm*

[ZeroTwo]

I'm worried about how this is going to impact the future of Clraik, I don't want this amazing community to end.

this will never end

[Serpent Rider]

I'm worried about how this is going to impact the future of Clraik, I don't want this amazing community to end.

We always tend to find a way, I wouldn't worry about it too much. There's only so much a website can do before cheaters figure how to out-manoeuvre it.

[borotalco]

The games are working now, I could send score even after staring at the screen for long.

[kiara]

*facepalm*

this will never end

We always tend to find a way, I wouldn't worry about it too much. There's only so much a website can do before cheaters figure how to out-manoeuvre it.

Well it's nice to know it's not that serious. Yeah you're right, we'll find a way.

[Bat]

We have concluded our tests for changes to the Neopets site. Our programs have been reactivated, and any scripts you were previously using will not require updates. Thanks for bearing with us on this!

Always remember to cheat carefully, everyone!

[Bat]

I'm reopening this due to additional shenanigans. The Neopets team has begun rolling out captcha verification for the entire site, as well as measures to altogether block access to the site from certain IP addresses. We are not yet aware of the extent of these changes, however any interruption to your Neopets experience will also affect the use of programs and scripts. Please be careful to limit your use of any bots until further notice.