We'd like to begin by saying the safety of our users' information is a top priority for us. As some of you may be aware, this weekend our team was notified of a claim about potential ways for outsiders to gain access to user information or data on Neopets. After looking into the claim, we’ve verified that all personal user information remains securely protected, and no current data was exposed.  

For more details, please see below:  

1. No credit card information has been accessed by any outside parties.   

- Neopets does not store this information on our servers – it’s stored on separate payment platforms and is completely secure. 

2. User account password information was and remains inaccessible by any outside parties. 

- User passwords are not stored in plain text. 

- No current or active accounts were exposed (all Neopets passwords were force reset in 2016).

3. We do not store user data in our code. 

- After some investigation, our team found that some information that was publicized was from an old monitoring server with some folders of web page code exposed. This code only contained old internal testing data, including fake email and street addresses for internal testing purposes, which are no longer in use. 

- All personal user information is securely stored behind a firewall with a layered security system. We did find that an Industry Standard Server Status Page containing very limited current connectivity information was able to be accessed in specific instances. All of these have now been secured and are no longer able to be accessed. 

4. The team cleaned up some areas that were found with old data and reviewed all touchpoints involved.  

- User data and the security of our site is extremely important to us. As we continue to make sure all data is completely secure, we’d like to reassure the community that no user or account information was accessed.   

As usual, we recommend frequently updating your password to further safeguard your account. Visit Settings here and get started.

In addition, our privacy policy can be found here.

- TNT 

And for a second special announcement....

Hey Neopians!

We wanted to give you a heads up about some changes coming soon to the filters on the Neoboards. As many of you are aware, certain discussions that extend to real-life topics are not permitted on the boards, in order to ensure the safety and privacy of our users.

However, Neopets should always be a safe place to express yourself, regardless of your identity or orientation, and many of the filters we had in place in the past did not allow for that expression. Above all else, it’s important to us on TNT that Neopia and the Neoboards are a safe and welcoming place for everyone, including Neopians in the LGBTQIA+ community. We've realized that some of the filters or restrictions placed on the Neoboards did not always account for that, so we’ll be making changes to filters surrounding LGBTQIA+ filters and topics on the Neoboards.

It's always been a priority for TNT to support our userbase in expressing themselves openly and safely, and we are excited to roll out these long overdue changes! In doing so, we'd like to be very clear about what we can and cannot allow to keep Neopia safe, supportive and inclusive for all our users. Please look over our new rules below, which will be added to the Chat Rules page as well.

1. Do not post about anyone else’s sexual orientation or gender identity. This includes outing someone, pushing an identity or belief onto someone else, or recruiting others to join an off-site group or organization.

2. Neopets has a wide userbase with many different personal beliefs and opinions. The Neoboards can be a place to express those beliefs, but not to discuss or debate them. In the event of an argument, we will have to flag all users involved, even if you believe you are in the right. If you are being harassed or discriminated against for your identity by another user on the boards, we ask that you not interact with them, and to report the issue to a moderator who will handle the situation.

3. As a reminder, aligning yourself with a hate group is not an acceptable form of personal expression. Anyone who labels themselves as such or expresses hateful beliefs will be frozen.

4. Coming out is absolutely fine! You’ll have a warm and accepting family of Neopians to welcome you! But please do not attempt to out someone else.

5. You are free to use terminology such as “gay”, “straight”, “bi”, “queer”, “cisgender”, “trans”, “questioning”, “lesbian”, and others to describe yourself. All we ask is that you use these terms in a positive way and not about another person.

6. As with any form of harassment, we will not permit anyone to use these terms in an insulting way. If this does occur, the user in question will risk being warned and/or silenced.

7. Relationship discussions are not permitted. Casually mentioning “My partner and I went out to see a film…” is not a problem at all! Going into even borderline/graphic sexual discussions is not allowed.

8.Pride flag colours in your signatures are perfectly fine!

We’re looking forward to having a more inclusive experience for everyone on the site! The moderation team has 21 years’ worth of filtered terms to sift through, so you can expect to see most LGBTQIA+ related filters lifted throughout the next few days. After that point, if you come across an LGBTQIA+ related term that you believe should be included, please submit an abuse report and the team will look into it.

We’ll see you on the Neoboards!

-TNT

How do I get back to classic from beta? I would like to be able to play some games. ~~hannahbanana_43
Hi, to switch back to Classic mode click on your Pets Portrait in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, and you'll get a drop-down menu. The second from the bottom option will say "View Classic Site". To switch back to Beta, there will be a link at the upper right-hand corner of the page which says Switch to Beta.

I know we're not allowed to submit pictures of Neopets cosplaying as non-Neopets characters for the Beauty Contest or Art Gallery, but is it okay to post it in pet pages or pet lookups? Is posting Neopets fan art on social media or art-centered websites allowed? Would it have to follow the same rules as on the Neopets website, or could I bend the rules a bit? Nothing inappropriate, of course, but would I get in trouble on Neopets for posting my pets dressed as anime characters on social media? It feels silly to ask, but I don't want to end up frozen over a picture. ~~spittingcobra1
Hi, you are right those cannot be used for contests on-site unless you use our customizations for the images. On your petpages and lookups that would be fine. We would not be able to feature any of your art ourselves so you still would not be able to submit it to contests on social media but as for posting on your social media you would want to check with their rules to make sure you are not violating theirs but we wouldn't have rules about that. No, you wouldn't get in trouble on Neopets for dressing your pets on social media. :) It's not silly to ask either, you are keeping your account safe.

Help! I accidentally mispriced my steam jacket at the auction. Is there any way to reverse the bid? I try mailing the user but they did not respond :( Please remove my username. ~~Anonymous
Sorry once an auction is started there isn't a way to cancel it or change it in any way.

My cybunny can't wear her queen of the forest fantasy antlers with her elegant holiday tree dress! How sad! She's just doing her best. Can you help her out?~~ heyaurora
Oh dear that’s not okay she needs her perfect outfit! Donny made a few snips to the dress and it should be all good now!

Hello TNT! I just watched your video on Youtube. Thanks for all the info! You don't talk about what will happen about the languages and their forums, though and we don't have the button to switch language when in beta... Now I know foreign languages haven't been supported in years and switching language is full of bugs anyway, so I understand you might not have plans to convert that feature. However I would really like to be able to have a place for my French-speaking friends and me to go to chat, where we don't get drowned in the English-speaking majority. Do you have plans for the other languages? If not, may I suggest that you add boards for other languages? Like, we could all use the English version of the site, but in the list of boards, you could add one board for each foreign language? Just so we have at least one place we can all gather? It would be great! Thanks again. ~~petitehirondelline
Hi! I know languages haven't been a priority for a while now and it's something I personally want to make sure we tackle as soon as we can. Neopets has always been a worldwide game that should be able to be enjoyed by everyone, in any language. We don't have any concrete plans right now because conversion has taken over our world that last few years, but it isn't something we have abandoned permanently. Especially as we continue to grow Neopets as not only the site, but also a brand, we want to make sure we can reach everyone who wants to be reached. :) Wish I had a more concrete answer for you in terms of timing, but wanted to let you know that at the very least we're talking about it! ~~gutterfoot

Customization in beta won't even load for me on my main here! If it does load then I can't see my items and if I click ANYTHING the whole page breaks and goes white. Will the customization page get converted too even though its broke??? Or will it be left optional since not everyone can use it??? I need to know that way I can dress my pets with my fav outfits before then so that way they're stuck look great lol ~~_sissiy_sis_369
We've heard about this issue from a lot of users and are hoping to get it fixed early 2021. Because of the bugs within the new version of customisation, I did talk with the team about keeping the existing customisation page similarly to how we are planning to do with the old games room, where we'll just move it to a new URL that users can still access. Again, we hope to fix this ASAP! ~~gutterfoot

Hi TNT, thank you for all the hard work that has gone into the site for the conversion in the past year. I was wondering if when concert hall gets an upgrade, can we also get some new bands? my Neopets love the usual line up, but my they also think its time for some fresh talent. :) ~~meaty_pies
I love this idea as much as I love your username. Yes, I think it would awesome to add new bands. Can't think of a single reason why not! ~~gutterfoot

Now that flash deadline is over shortly, will we be focusing on other things like a much needed purge and reimplementation of pound_release? When pound_release is turned back on do you still plan on speeding up the releases? Thank you! ~~ xxkittyphyrexx
Although the flash deadline is over, we're still far from completing our general flash goals. There's a lot of work that still needs to be done, but luckily the updated Pound is something that's coming soon. As we work on converting that, I'll have the team take another look at pound_release. ~~gutterfoot

So I like using beta because it doesn't lag as much because of ads trying to load every five seconds (no google, i don't want to buy a car -no tags here-:C) but I noticed that the non-existent "Jelly World" hasn't been converted like the other worlds, which makes sense because it doesn't exist, but if it isn't too time consuming, could you put it on your list of things to convert? I mean it doesn't exist so it would be hard to convert, but still. I think you know what I mean :P ~~mnvt9_
Jelly World doesn't exist. But yes, we'll be converting the Jelly World pages as well. We've already converted Giant Jelly, and the map as well as the remaining pages will be converted as well. We won't be losing it! But then again, we can't lose it if it doesn't exist... ~~gutterfoot

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