The other day out of sheer boredom I searched "Whyville" on YouTube and what I found was kind of disturbing. One video stands out in my mind, because it made me realize that sometimes Whyville's safety features can't help us.
This particular video was about how to hack into people's accounts. Surprisingly there are many videos with that sort of subject. Let us just take a moment here to remind ourselves that stealing isn't very right or fair, and you wouldn't want someone to steal your hard-earned clams or face parts, so why would you want to do that to another person? Remember, the golden rule.
So now anyway, this video was telling users to email the "Whyville Support Team" (also the name of the user who posted this video) with their name, their account name, and their account password. The email was a regular old free Internet hosted email, but I know that not everyone, especially the younger users, will know that Whyville doesn't use hotmail.
So let's go over some very important things to remember.
You never give anyone your password, no matter what. Even if you are on Whyville and a City Worker in a beanie comes up to you in chat and asks for it you DO NOT EVER give that information to them. Whyville workers ALWAYS wear a beanie and will NEVER ask for your password. Whyville workers already have access to that information for one, and for two they don't need to see or know your personal password.
Second, Whyville only uses email handles @whyville.net for us to contact them. The two you should be using are city-management@whyville.net and/or times@whyville.net. These emails are owned and checked only by City Workers.
Anyone on any other site posing as a City Worker or a staff group should be regarded as just that, a poser. Whyville will contact you if they need to through Whyville, or the Whyville emails. Nobody on any other site, be it MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, or a independently owned homepage asking for your personal information should be allowed access to that information.
Passwords are secret. It is very important that you remember this, because by giving out one password one time, you can lose everything. This also goes for not just Whyville accounts. It is far more serious than that in many cases and the destruction of your identity or the depletion of your bank account in real life could begin with one simple mistake of giving out your password.
So remember, never give your password to anyone asking for it on the Internet. There is no magical email that will grant you access into other people's accounts. There is no way that typing "whyville-pass-help.24/html" into the "Username" line of the "forgot your password?" form will grant you access. Do not try and hack each other people, and do not try and scam one another, on or off Whyville. Remember, the golden rule and the Whyville Way!
That is all from me. Keep safe out there and have fun.
<3,
BP
