Is your Neopets Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) not working? Don’t worry, it’s likely not your fault.
As of recently Neopets users who have security in mind have been experiencing trouble with the Two-Factor Authentication on Neopets.com. No worries though, it’s unlikely someone broke into your account. In this article I’ll briefly explain what is going on and what you can do to sign into your account without issues. Will be updated when fixed.
Last update: May 9th, 2023
Status: Not fixed
In typical Neopian fashion something is broken again at the Neopets headquarters. It’s not really a security risk but it could definitely spook a user into thinking their account is hacked. Users who try to login while having Two Factor Authentication enabled for Neopets get the following message:
Oops! Invalid code, please try again!
Neopets.com when you try to login with 2FA
Which would make you think something is wrong with your account but that’s 99.99% of the time not the case.
So why doesn’t my 2FA code work on Neopets?
What is actually happening is that the Neopets servers clock isn’t synced with those of your authentication app, the Neopets servers have a delay of about 30 seconds to 1 minute.
So if you use Google’s Authenticator and copy paste the fresh code you just generated on to Neopets the Neopets servers will still expect you to use the code that was generated before that fresh new code you just got.
If you try this a couple of times in a row and fail you get timed out and have to wait 1 minute and thirty seconds before you can try again. Which is rather annoying and worrying if you don’t know what is going on.
What can I do to fix the 2FA issue?
We’ll have to wait for Neopets to fix the synchronisation issue but in the meanwhile you can still login onto Neopets just fine by doing the following:
- Copy your code from your authenticator app.
- Once a new code is generated wait for about 30 seconds till you paste in the EXPIRED code you previously generated.
- You should now be able to login just fine.
Alternatively you could fill in your emergency backup code but that takes quite a lot of work.
Since when has this been going on?
Neopets added Two-Factor Authentication a couple of months ago after there turned out to be a massive data breach going on at the site. They hired a security firm to investigate the issue and thus added 2FA to ensure user security more. Despite the recent issues with 2FA it is genuinely a good idea to secure your account with 2FA. You don’t want your pets and hard earned neopoints to end in the hands of a stranger, right?
Anyway, as of yesterday the /r Neopets subreddit started getting populated with posts about people not being able to login with their Two-Factor Authentication. Luckily controversial Reddit user Neo_Truths pointed out this problem in a reply.
So far there has been no official reply from The Neopets Team. We will update this page as soon as they reply.
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