Introduction: Lending avatar items? Making a black market trade / purchase / sale? Don't know who to trust? Someone going on your account to get you avs / trophies? Well this guide here teaches you how to stay safe, buy safe, play safe =) Although this guide is pretty straight forward and we are already aware of half the things on here, it's still nice to read over. This is all written by me. Give credits when they are due! I don't mind you using it else where. Updates: I know this guide's not perfect, probably because I am writing this while waiting for something else i'm supposed to do. I will come back to revise this whenever, and suggestions and comments are welcomed. I don't take criticism well so please don't be rude about anything even if I am a little inaccurate. it wasn't mandatory for made this guide; But better safe than sorry, even if it's complete common sense and what not. There are still people out there who needs to know and learn. Content: 1. For people selling / buying 2. For people who is letting people onto their accounts 3. For people who are lending avatar items 4. The middle man {For buying / sell} Section 1.1 - Buying I think the opportunity on NF is the black market that allow you to buy and sell. It is a great advantage to neopets players. But there will always be people who ruin it all for us by scamming, deceiving, running away with your posessions. Buying: If you are buying neopoints / items from someone, you cannot always buy from whomever. Make sure you check their trade points. Make sure you don't look at the amount of points they have, but also the comments given by the users to the person you are buying from. You need to do a little research or it's totally your fault for trusting a scammer. Neopoints can be legit or unlegit. But ofcourse that can always be a lie. Just because you received those neopoints, it doesn't mean you won't be frozened for how the seller attained them. It's a lose - lose situation if you are not aware. Also don't judge sellers by the level of user they are. Sometimes newbies might end up being more trust worthy than a level 1 or 2. It all depends on the person. But that's not my point. The point is, people with little or 0 rep points are usually not people you might consider buying from {Ofcourse circumstances varies}. Those people who give no contribution and what so ever and mainly wanted to use the BM isn't people too eager about the community. There's usually something fishy when people are trying to get rid of their items/neopoints at a quick pace as well. Unlegit NPs from flash games can get whoever receive them frozened, while unlegit NP from an AB have a slimmer chance. Section 1.2 - Selling Sellers; I guess I would be repeating myself from what's already above. Make sure you do research. I must emphasize. Maybe look at their rep points for their contributions. The reason why I don't want to recommend only looking at trade points is because people whose never bought or sell anything will obviously have no points. Also try to find some of their posts and see how materialistic they are. If they are one or two word posts or something to just boost posts, you can obviously tell that they are bumping their posts to gain access to the BM, or perhaps just get cash. Also, beware of paypal transfers. Make sure you have two paypal accounts. One that acts as your main, and the other is for users to send you their money. This is to prevent back charge {I am not sure if this method works but it's a suggestion and I will test it out soon} After they paid, send your money onto your "main" paypal account. Don't keep it on there. Or if you would like the hassle, just attach your bank card onto your paypal, and put your money on your bank card and then remove that bank account from your paypal. Section 2.1 - Protecting your account when letting someone on Often times we ask ourselves how we can trust people on our account. Pretty much it's not whether we can trust them, it's whether we can protect ourselves properly so even if a "thief" {for better or for wose} is on your account, you still won't lose anything to them. Here are some obvious things to do. PIN ON YOUR ACCOUNT. Make sure you make one up and CHOOSE which areas are pin required in order to make changes. The few important places are obviously to, adopt / abandon pets, bank, SDB, change email {An email wont be sent to YOU if you change emails to your account. It goes to the NEW email}. If you have a pin then your account is pretty much unhackable I suppose you can say. Section 2.1 - How not to get caught with multiple activities on your account When someone is going on your account, it is best to not be on when the person is. If someone is getting trophies and something for you that might require more than one day, i'd advise you to keep in contact through out those few days. But with time zone differences, it's hard to do so. Some people might not use MSN/AIM and any other means of instant messaging. So here I would like to suggest a "code system". Some credits given to Commy for this idea :yup: This code system, is pretty simple. You put certain items into your inventory when you are on, when the person is on, and when the account is free and nobody is on, etc. For example, when I am on my account, I would pull out a jelly of some sort and keep it in my inventory. If the person getting you trophies/avs is on your account, they would pull out an omelet and keep it in the inventory. So when you log on and see an omelet in your inventory, you should LOG off. If neither of you are on the account, the inventory should be BLANK, or have none of the two items you used in there. Make sure you're not running ANY programs over night or when you're not there if you do not know when this person will come on your account. Boohoo you lose some profit for a day or two. Big deal, live with it. Section 3.1 - Avatar items / general item lenders Once again this is based on trust issues really. I would really suggest you to look at some threads people made to lend their items, and check the feedback of the people who wanted to be lent their items. Also do NOT lend on neoboards for free, however nice you are. This is common sense. 9/10 people who acts nice on the neoboards when you lend for free / little collat. are usually the ones who end up scamming. <- Straight forward common sense. Just look for the above in section 1 for more hints and tips. I'm almost repeating myself Section 4 - A Middle Man What is a middle man you say? A middle man is someone on the forums, trusted, who will help you with your transaction between the two people. Both individuals will send the items / NP to a middle man, most often times these are mods are highly trusted users of NFnet. Once both criteria of exchange is in the middle man's hands, he will then send over the NP / item to the opposite person. Conclusion Sometimes it's a lot to work to look into a user and whether they are trust worthy, and I know it shouldn't be a priority to go through such hassle. But I am just simply here to give you a suggestion. If you lost anything, I would have said "told you so" like no other. :yup: Happy Trusting, guys! <3
Pretty great, pretty great. But I know from experience that some new members are really nice people, just new. But overall, great guide.
Had a very quick read and i noticed no mention of a middleman? maybe add a few lines on that if members can't trust each other
Hhaaha ak47. Some smart noobs do SoC - I made a brief section Still don't have time to completely revise and edit due to studies..but either way it's there now :yup:
Nice guide also, if you give the middle man your item, but the other person doesn't, what happens then?
Then you go contact the person you're trading with for an explanation. If the person decided to bail out on you, then you just ask the middleman to return your item and all will be good.
Great guide! It should help some people who are worried about the safety of their account(obviously :maha: ).