The "Save the Faerie Totems Campaign" is an initiative from the Trantor Project to fight a specific scam menacing Faerie Totems from disapearing in Neopia.     More generally, it tries to promote protection from NeoPets scammers by using the most powerful weapon to fight them : Information     This campaign is a collective action from the Trantor Project in partnership with Gemele.com, AntiScammer, and The Newbie Guardians, united in the fight against scammers.     It is kindly hosted by Multimania

A long time ago, they came to Neopia and helped you open the way to Faerieland... Today, they need your help to be saved from anihilation Page 1 About the Campaign Join the Campaign Beyond the Campaign Page 2 Sign the Campaign's Register View the Campaign's Register Campaign's Survey Beyond the Campaign

    1) Yes, it's a scam. Here is why :

    Of course, the "hint" above doesn't work at all. If you buy a Faerie Totem, carry it with you, and go visit the Water Faerie at the healing springs, she will heal you exactly the same way as she usualy would. Meaning she can heal your pet several hit points, give you a random potion for free, or, if you are lucky, completely heal your pet and even feed it. The Faerie Totem doesn't increase your chances of getting one effect rather than another.
    The scam pretends you have to carry the totem with you "all the time", which is how some people will try to explain you why it didn't work the first time you tried, right after you bought your Totem. It is vague enough on purpose, to make it credible and abuse you as long as possible. How long do you have to constantly carry it with you to switch from "just bought it" to "all the time" ? 24 hours ? 1 week ? Several months ? I will come back to this part of the scam in a bit, but for right now, all you need to know is that NeoPets has more than enough workload on their servers like that, and therefore doesn't track the "at all times" status for any item.


    2) The propagation so far

    I wouldn't have cared so much about this scam if it hadn't become so popular. It was already neomailed to me a couple times, I saw it posted on a few boards, and even Pink Poogle Toy, which is a popular and rather good resource site has it in its tips. (Now don't go bash on these guys please, they do a nice work, but they mainly rely on visitors for their guides & tips, and unfortunately don't seem to verify all the info they bring online. Because they were tricked into displaying the scam by unscrupulous visitors doesn't mean their site supports scaming or is a bad resource site. I personaly happen to like this site and was surprised to see the scam over there). The only reason why it is mentioned here is to illustrate how much this scam has already propagated, since Pink Poogle Toy represents a daily average of over 2000 unique visitors -and potential victims-.

    Remember that all scams are intented to abuse you. Either by getting your password, or by selling you an item for an outrageously high price, pretending the item has properties it doesn't actually have. The faerie totem is however widely available, and at a quite decent price if you check the shop wizard. Since the scam doesn't specifically say "buy it from so-and-so", it looks pretty innocent and credible. Also, it the fact it promises a very plausible effect (instead of large amount of neopoints, or the classic "you will always win at the wheel of excitement", etc), shows this specific scam was thought out much better than the average, and the priority was given on being credible rather than attractive. Those two facts and the consequent high credibility are the key to this scam's propagation, and the reason it become so popular. So why did some people come up with this scam, and why is it much more harmful than a classic item-scam ? Here is the complete explanation :


    3) Why it endangers Faerie Totems : the complete details of a planned extermination.

    Some people more than likely stocked up an impressive amount of Faerie Totems in their shop or safety deposit box. From there, they had to come up with something to get everyone to buy Faerie Totems and raise their value. They invented those super healing properties, but of course, it could never have worked "as is", because as soon as someone would have tried it, they would have noticed it has no influence on the water faerie's healing spell. So they added the vague «at all times» part to this ingenious scam.

    Now let's take a second and think about it. If you carry a Faerie Totem -or any other item- with you «all the time»... what is the only thing that can possibly happen ? That's right. Soon or late, the Pant Devil, Starski or the Grundo Leader will steal it from you... that is, if Dr. Sloth's ray doesn't first turn it into a pile of sludge. So, if you really believe in this scam, and wish to persist trying it out, you will have to buy a new Totem, until it is lost again, and so on.
    But remember... the Faerie Totem is a retired item (i.e. it is no longer given as random event, and it can't be aquired in any way shape or form other than through trading with players who still have one). Each Faerie Totem lost to the Pant Devil, Starski, the Grundo Leader, or Dr. Sloth's ray will lower their number forever. This means that all the players falling for this scam will not only waste a lot of NPs on buying totems they don't need, but will also unvolontary help those scammers eradicate Faerie Totems, slowly making them an extremely rare, and uncommon item. Which is more than likely when the scammers will finally sell all the Totems they stocked up, and make loads of Neopoints. Yes, of course, they will have ripped people off their neopoints with false promises about a classic everyday normal item... Yes, of course, they will have decimated Faerie Totems in the process... but who cares ? Anything for a couple Neopoints, right ?

    You can help saving the Faerie Totems by warning your friends about this scam. If you do not wish to go through the whole explanations yourself, you can send them to the first page of this campaign. The proper url is http://wilwarin.multimania.com/trantor
    Please do not start chain letters though. Chain letters are scams, they are against the terms of service, and put a heavy strain on the NeoPets mailing servers. If you are caught propagating one, your account will be frozen. There will be no reward for sending the address of this campaign to 5 or 10 of your friends, and even the most advanced mailing servers on the market have no way or feature to track this kind of information anyway.

    If you like this campaign and wish to take a step further, you can do so by placing one of the following logos into your shop, pet page, or NeoPets fan site. There are 17 milions pet owners -and potential victims for this scam- in Neopia. Your very own banner might save hundreds of Faerie Totems. Simply copy and paste the code into your shop description, or onto your NeoPets site, pet page, etc.

If you like you shop to load fast, and consequently don't like banners, there is an alternative relying on some html code, a little bit of text, and a table. A long time ago, they came to Neopia and helped you open the way to Faerieland... Today, they need your help to be saved from anihilation Save the Faerie Totems Campaign <br><center><table border=0 bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><tr> <td><img src="http://images.neopets.com/items/faerie_totem.gif"></td> <td align="center" valign="middle">A long time ago, they came to Neopia and helped you open the way to Faerieland... <br><b>Today, they need your help to be saved from anihilation<br> <br><a href="http://wilwarin.multimania.com/trantor" style="font: 13pt; font-weight: bold;">Save the Faerie Totems Campaign</b></a></td></tr></table></center><br>     And if you want to keep it real short and real fast, there is the good old solution of a plain text hyperlink. Save the Faerie Totems Campaign <a href="http://wilwarin.multimania.com/trantor" style="font: 12pt; font-weight: bold;"><b>Save the Faerie Totems Campaign</b></a>

    Some people seem to think I make good websites, which is very pleasing. However, everyone agrees I don't have an ounce of talent at drawing graphics, and I'm afraid they are right =) If you would like to support this campaign by donating a graphic you made for it, please contact me.
    The best logos will be included in the table above, with their proper linking code. The other logos will be displayed on a seperate page, for visitors wishing to browse through them and eventually use them. All the logos submitted will be displayed with credits to their original creator.

Beyond the Campaign
    The Faerie Totem scam is unfortunately not the only one out there. The NeoPets abuse team is constantly working on removing scammers from NeoPets, but they can only fight the problem once it's there and already started to harm. Your best protection is prevention and information.
The partners of this campaign have been chosen for the high quality of their guides on avoiding scammers and/or for their strong involvement in the anti-scammer fight.

Guides "Avoid Getting Scammed" By Sunyee and Gemelle http://www.gemele.com/scams "AntiScammer : The Guide" By My_hero and R_66Y http://j1.webhop.net/Antiscam/Index.shtml Action Note : The Newbie Guardians are not a guild, but an independant group gathering members of several guilds. If you feel like joining their action, you can do so without leaving your current guild. «The Newbie Guardians are a very select group of people who spend literally hours on the Newbie Chat Boards. Sadly, most of our activities seem to focus on warning newbies about scammers/hackers, but that has never been our main goal. In a perfect Neopia, we would simply offer advice and tips, as well as answer questions. Since Neopia is NOT perfect, we also spend that time warning about scammers/hackers and how to protect yourself against them. This puts our accounts at risk, because we then become targets for those scammers/hackers that we report. We want newbies to know that they can always turn to us for help and advice. THAT is what we really stand for. Newbie Guardians are selected by invitation only. All requests to be listed as a Newbie Guardian will be ignored. If you are on the Newbie Boards enough, we will notice you and invite you to join. If we invite you and you chose not to join, that is fine, too. We harbor no ill will to anyone. We simply want the newbies to learn to play safe and have fun.» Naomi Tran