However, a recent decision to ban a user account has reminded us all we don’t technically own the games bought through the service. If your account is banned, you can’t login and play your games.
All that money you spent on tens, or even hundreds of titles doesn’t count for anything. The example that proves this is the story of a Russian gamer who goes by the name of gimperial. He has a Steam account with over 250 games stored on it that he paid for legitimately, spending over $1,500 purchasing them. However, Steam decided to ban his account for a terms of service violation. The problem is, they wouldn’t tell him what rule had been broken, and Steam’s support service refused to respond to his tickets after initially confirming the ban.
Steam’s general rule is not to tell gamers why their account has been banned. So, as Steam does not have phone support, if you can’t get responses to emails and forum posts, there is nothing you can do other than hire a lawyer. In this case gimperial managed to get his account reinstated, but only after Rock, Paper Shotgun highlighted his case and made waves. And gimperial still doesn’t know what he did wrong. The only rule he broke was gifting games for cash, but Steam didn’t know he was doing that and confirmed to him that wasn’t the reason for the ban. This example highlights two things: Steam’s customer service team is less than great, and we don’t really own anything bought through the service. But that’s part of a wider issue: anything that is controlled through an online account and needs a login to play is governed by the company providing that login.
If they ban you, or they cease to function as a service for whatever reason, your paid-for digital content may no longer be accessible. Users know exactly. Online services of all forms can counteract this by offering exports for your data. However, while that may work for cloud based email, online storage and backups, or even applications, at the moment it isn’t an option for digital games.
Your purchases remain tied to the service unless, like in the case of the and, you get to download the games outright without DRM attached and without a login required to play them. It’s good to see this being discussed. Steam is a game store, a direct competitor to Game Stop. The problem comes with them pretending that they are renting you games when they are clearly selling them to you (you can’t rent something with a one time fee). They refuse to take back games that they are legally obliged to take back (disagree with TOS or product not as advertised) and when you complain, well, there is literally no one to complain to. Even their giant tub of lard CEO ignored multiple snail mail letters I sent to him. Contesting the charges and chalking it up to a learning experience is all I could do.
I hope this article keeps others from repeating my mistake. If you get it in your head to buy something from Steam, DON’T. If you still feel you must, accept that there will come a day that Steam will rob you. One day very soon a competitor will come along (and no, Origin is not a competitor, it’s an EA Boutique store) and they will compete by HAVING A FRIGGIN’ CUSTOMER SUPPORT LINE. If you take people’s money YOU MUST HAVE A MEANS FOR THEM TO ADDRESS PROBLEMS WITH THEIR PURCHASES.
If I ran my business this way I’d be bankrupt in a week but Steam does it and they have their mentally damaged fan boys running around the web flaming anyone who has a complaint about this filthy, consumer unfriendly, criminal band of thugs.
About a month ago, a Steam user with a total of $1,794.52 worth of games legally purchased on his account decided to try to sell it via. “I’m looking at money of course, not full price considering I bought most of them on sale, but maybe we can come to some sort of dealOf course if someone actually takes me up I’ll be removing my credit card information from the account, along with my friends list,” he wrote. Selling your Steam account is a huge violation of Steam’s Subscriber Agreement, which says that “you may not sell or charge others for the right to use your account, or otherwise transfer your account.” Worse, someone from Valve was reading. Down came the ban hammer freezing the Reddit user out of his Steam account, and taking from his the right to play any of his $1800 worth of games.
The problem with so many lawyers, is that those multi-page long EULA’s we all sign are so full of ‘legal’ gibberish – I really have little idea what I’m signing. And the fact is, you probably don’t either. Like practically everyone else, I’m not about to hire a lawyer (at $200+/hr) to translate the contract on my $49 game, so I understand what I legally can, and cannot do. It would be nice, if there were a SHORT, and simple bullet-point form stating what we had agreed to. 1) Thou shalt not sell or rent this subscription based account 2) Thou shalt not abuse others, who use subscription accounts 3) Thou shalt not I didn’t know I couldn’t sell my Valve account. No idea who would want it – but the fact that I can’t sell it is news to me.
I don’t really play too many games on the computer anymoreit’s just easier and more comfortable to sit on the couch and play on the 360 but I do have a few games through Steam and while it hasn’t crossed my mind to try and sell them, the fact that I can’t really bothers me. Not that buying a used pc game on cd/dvd is all that appealingthere could be issues with activision, someone else having the product key, etc but for example, I can trade in or sell my 360 game without an issue (unless it’s using EA’s pass system) and the recipient has full rights to play the game. Where is that ability with a PC game through Steam? In all fairness to Valve though, they usually do have sales and reduced pricing on a good chunk of their inventory. That’s one of the trade off’s with using a system like Steam.
You get reliable service and easy to download and install games that are always available no matter what computer you want to play on. You get really cheap deals on games all the time on there. You also get an account that you can’t sell.
Nearly every single service on the internet has accounts that are non-transferable. Every major MMO, Gmail, Facebook, every commercial website I’ve ever been on, x-box live account, playstation network account. Now that I’m thinking about it, I can not think of a single internet account that can be legally sold. The only difference being people pump a decent amount of money into their non-transferable Steam account. Sorry to break it to the guy below who is obviously stating opinion as if it were fact but those EULA’s have absolutely total legal weight. Otherwise the number of news stories that could be found about someone winning against a company for wanting to sell his digital property would be more than ZERO.
I went out and bought these games, I am forced to play them through steam. So, because of this pretty average service, I am not allowed to resell something I have paid for? That doesn’t sound right. If that is the case, consoles should also not be allowed to resell their games. If we aren’t allowed to sell our accounts, there should be ways to remove games and have their account keys turned back into an Inactive but available for use state so we can resell them if we wish. This is another reason gamers transition from computer gaming to console gaming, because its just that much easier. I don’t really think what this person tried to do was stupid.
This is one of the things I really hate about a digital distribution system. It’s great for connivance and saving money, but you have practically no rights as a consumer. I always have a lot of games and when I get tired of one, or beat it, I usually lend it out, trade it for a new title or sell it. Except with STEAM I can’t do that. I have tons of games on STEAM I have collected in one way or another I have never played and have no intention on playing, but god forbid Valve implement some sort of system where I could trade games with other users, re-sell titles to other users, or trade them back to STEAM for store credit. It’s a dick move at best.
The worst problem is the EULA. In the past the legal system and decided that the EULA is fair and does hold legal weight. The problem is Valve is free to change it whenever they want, for whatever reason they want and we either have to agree to the changes, or refuse, loosing access to our entire account. And Valve does NOT offer to reimburse you for all of your lost games, simply because you refuse to agree to their often underhanded changes to the EULA. If my landlord can’t just change my contract in the middle of a lease, why can Valve do whatever the fuck they want, any time they want? It’s not right and it’s not fair, especally to consumers.
I’ve seen what others have, and I have to agree that somethings are against the laws that the companies input themselves. The fact that they are locking people out of their account for selling a license that in which is there is really off putting, although I get the point they are trying to make. But I ask since they are just a license distributer themselves they shouldn’t be able to say even in their ELUS and things as such because technically they don’t own the games either. SO saying that they can punish people for selling something that they only have the right to sell is beyond them or should be Another fact is that in our Constitution it states very clearly that entertainment is free to the people and be redistributed to the people by the people. Another thing that has been ultimately dropped or is no longer considered by our government and its people mainly the companies.
Mostly because they’ve come to the point where they’re faceless giants and the government for one should do something about this but what can you do when it’s government gets paid by these companies. For one I believe that Music, Movies, and Games all fall under entertainment and therefor should be free.
But that’s not where were. I understand that people most make a living, but what money do they lose when someone is selling a license that they themselves have already made money off of But to say that this actually takes away from peoples rights to disturb what they own is the very point that is involved here. If I were to make something out of wood that I have in my back yard and sell it for 100 dollars, I’d still have to pay taxs on what I make from it, not to mention if it becomes a job there are a ton of other things one might have to pay for making a company.
This is a point that is very over looked. Another point is the internet is free And will most likely always be free unless one of these acts actually pass. It would then be fair to state that anything one person has bought is theirs even if it is a license. Otherwise if it is possible people will take such things as a Heinous act and begin to find ways to get around it anyway if they haven’t already. Besides that. Heres another example if you buy a gun then sell it, is the ATF going to come after you for doing so? Kick start crack.
No even though it is infact a license, and to own one you must have a license you can still sell it. Therefor I say games and gaming account are the same. And should be subject to no different rules.
Yeah, when they can take me to court and successfully win a lawsuit against me for selling my usership rights, and then transferring all copies and ownership of the games and the keys and account necessary to run the games, then I’ll be concerned enough to write my Congressman to ban this kind of practice as it infringes on my right to sell that which I have full ownership of. Notice, I said usership rights, which is what we buy, the right to use the software. Often times it’s the key code we actually purchase. We own that right, it is not a privilege given to us. We actually own the right to use the software because we paid the agreed upon price for that right. We do not own the right to distribute copies of it, but we even have the right to back it up for personal use, which is why programs like Alcohol 120%, Deamon tools, and others cannot be banned despite the fact that they provide tools to make working back ups of many DRM protected games.
So when they can take me to court and successfully sue me for exercising my rights to sell what I own as the owner of the right to use a software, then I’ll be angry enough to write my Congressman, and tell them to change this blatant infringement upon my economic freedoms. In fact, I intentionally attach each Steam-required game I own to a separate Steam account just so that I can sell it later on when I’m done with it. I love how you just condoned downloading DRM-circumvented copies of games you own the user-rights too without actually saying it. In case anyone can’t guess, I’m talking about torrents, and I’m not afraid to admit it either because file-sharing is perfectly legitimate if you only ever use it for legal purposes.
You wouldn’t believe the headaches file-sharing has saved me, from finding drivers no longer available anywhere to simply replacing lost/damaged disks to even allowing me to play games, DRM’s of which would not allow to even work on my computer. Borderlands was an incredible waste of $50 because it took Securom and Gearbox/other company take 2 or 2k, can’t remember which, 8 months before they simply stopped trying to help me run the game, my emails were ignored, and my calls were just the same old crap, send them some file. Finally just downloaded it via torrents, and the game worked great online and off. I didn’t break any laws, and I’d challenge any court to convict me because I owned the user-rights of that game, which were not being provided by the company I made the financial agreement with by buying said user rights at Walmart. And by what legal means do they have the right to say you cannot legally sell that which you own, which in this case is the license to use the software? You what I’d like to see is for this to go before the Supreme Court, you while there are still more Conservative justices rather than those who legislate from the bench whatever their party wants that Hollywood and game-makers could simply pay for the desired ruling, and then see what they say looking at this. Bet they’d find that because the user has purchased a user license which equates to rights to use, they have ownership of that license or right to use the software, ownership of the specific key code associated with that license, and ownership of the physical media provided, and because they own it, they also have the right to sell that physical media, key code, and/or right-to-use to another party so long as they relinquish all their rights to use.
Either that, or they’d simply find the whole practice unconstitutional and from then on software-makers would have to provide physical ownership of something that the end-user owns for their money paid, and can do with as they please because we cannot legally conduct commerce unless something is provided for the money given. You see what the difference here is? We have the right to drive with a license because the license is to provide proof of our eligibility to drive. The license is actually owned by the state, but is lent to a person to prove their eligibility. We don’t pay for the license itself, we pay for the proof of eligibility, and the license is provided as that proof, but we never take ownership of any kind of license, only ownership of the of the proof of eligibility, sort of because proof of eligibility is not a tangible piece of property, but only a concept that refers to a specific person and cannot be understood regarding anyone else without the other person obtaining their own proof of eligibility. Lets see, what about renting a car.
We pay for the right to use the car, and in fact, anyone can use that car if we relinquish that right to them, however, the rental company has a right, since they own the car, to demand to know who all will be driving that car. You agree by contract to tell them. Anyway, I think a decent lawyer could successfully argue that in front of the Supreme Court regarding the ridiculous practice of user licenses not being legally transferable. Yeah, that’s a nice sentiment for you kids, but when you’re my age, early thirties, and looking to play some of those games you used to love as a teen, and Steam isn’t the powerhouse it used to be, and all these games aren’t working anymore because Steam refuses to let go of their source code and you can no longer download any of those games, legally and uncracked that you threw out so long ago with that then prehistoric computer, you’re going to be regretting having had all those games on Steam. Of course, the cracked torrented versions might still be around, and will probably still be just as illegal because one thing to learn from all of this is game-makers don’t release their games to the public very often, even after they’ve long lost their appeal.
In fact, most of those old Dos games we’re all downloading and using Dosbox for are probably technically still illegal to be downloading without purchasing the user-rights from someone who has distributor rights such as GOG or an individual who is selling you their user rights along with the box and disks, lol, or rather just disks at this point, for a lot of them. Yeah, I try and stick with gaming companies that actually seem to care about their consumer base, like Bethesda Softworks. I know some might refute my claim here, but I would rebuttal by saying that Bethesda switched to Steam-only DRMs just so that they could have an effective DRM that wouldn’t be unexpectedly overburdening to the gamers and modders out there. Now, it’s debateable if Steam is worse or better than things like Securom, but if a DRM must be used, and apparently they all seem to think DRM’s are a must, then might as well be one that has a better guarantee like Steam. Only thing I don’t like about Steam is that it defies my ability to fully use the game I purchase because it inhibits me from playing with my brother if we say, went half and half for a game so that we can own the user rights jointly. Nothing else except computer games in this entire economy do the manufacturers attempt to prohibit joint-owners from accessing the full potential of the product they buy.
In other words, you may be able to share a Steam account simply by knowing the password and account name, but you won’t be able to play with your brother online unless he owns a separate copy on another account. And game-makers have been trying to enforce this prohibition and force us into this kind of mold for some time now. I liked how Microsoft did it, and I appreciate it too, very much, and they actually provided the ability within the game to allow more than one person to play multiplayer using the same disk.
They limited it to three only before another disk had to be present, but it demonstrated that they actually wanted to make it’s full functionality available to the consumer. Exactly, we’re buying the right to use the software. We own that right because money was exchanged in the amount agreed upon by both parties. We’re not buying a temporary or limited right, we are buying the full user rights to the game.
We own those rights until we relinquish them to someone else. It’s like this, you buy the game as a gift. Until you relinquish those rights to the person for whom you are buying it as a gift, you own that game, you own the user rights you paid Walmart for. It doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the product or financial agreement simply because you choose not to open the cover before relinquishing those rights. Game-makers would like us to believe it changes things, but it doesn’t fundamentally because you never signed any agreement subject to purchase stating that it did. I bet that could have been challenged in court.
But if you’re willingly buying what is only a subscription. Funny thing subscriptions, haven’t seen one yet that I couldn’t share with as many people as I wanted. I have a Consumer reports subscription that I could give to everyone right now, and who’s gonna sue me? In fact, I could probably sell that subscription, what remains of it anyway, to anyone I wanted, and they could subsequently change the contact info so that I can never access that subscription again, and that would be perfectly fair too, since I sold them the remainder of that subscription. Bet Consumer reports wouldn’t even care, you know, other than protecting their own butts from the potential ID theft my buyer got all my personal info.
Dude, just sell it. First call Steam and ensure that whatever your personal info they had isn’t stored and can’t be accessed. Then establish a new email address with false information that you have written down so that you can remember it with yahoo or Gmail or whatever, and then change the contact email of your account to that email. Then advertise you want to sell the account. Don’t tell anyone what the name of the account, just what games they’d be getting with it. Probably best to do this over Craigslist so that you can meet the person at a wifi spot and they can give you the money, and you give them the info in person, and they can see if they can access the account right there with you, and change the email contact info if they want.
Then when you are both confident that everything’s squared away, go your separate ways. What’s going to happen? You simply won’t have access to the account because the person will change their password. The only problem would be is if you decided to screw them over by claiming your account was stolen, and then providing credit card numbers as proof and stuff like that that they couldn’t change.
But you could call Steam ahead of time to ask how you would go about proving your account was stolen, and review those things with the buyer ahead of time if they’re concerned about it. Make sure that anything you could use to claim your account was stolen is erased or not present.
Like with me for example. I don’t buy games on Steam, so I have no credit card info with them, which means I couldn’t use it to prove I owned the account. My screen name and email, and receipts of retail games that that I could prove the key codes belonged to the game I bought, and thus the one’s registered with the account belong to me.
Such receipts could be rendered to the buyer or I could tear them up in front of the buyer if I’m afraid they could get my credit card info from them. Another thing I do is I register a new account for every Steam-required game I buy just for the future condition that I might want to resell the game. I know it will be a pain in the neck for me to sell the game, but I so abhor and oppose this ridiculous policy that I will do whatever is in my power to fight against it. I will not abstain from buying such games because I very much enjoy some retail games that require Steam activation. I won’t buy any games on Steam because I hate Steam. I won’t penalize the game company because Steam is screwing it’s customers, not that me alone would even matter. This is why I will never do anything other than basic stuff in the accounts that I made in which I might possibly sell the game later on someday, and it’s also why I make one account per retail game that requires it.
So far I have 2 such individual accounts, and I’m about to create a third. After reading several of these comments, I have to make one final thought known. If Steam is actually just a user subscription service, and you’re merely paying a subscription fee to use the game, maybe on that basis Steam can technically say that they can revoke the subscription at any time and that you can’t sell that subscription to anyone else, which in of itself is still wrong. However, I’m mostly concerned with this notion that I buy a game in good faith from a retail shelf, making no agreements about anything whatsoever before the financial agreement is already passed, and they think that they have the right to tell me that I cannot sell the rights that I paid the ownership for to use and/or to sell at my leisure. I’m not sure what the Supreme Court would say about such a matter, but something tells me that this could argued and won by us the consumer. Not sure the Steam downloading games thing can be won by us the consumer, such as selling accounts and such, but pretty sure we would win on the selling of the disk media, key codes, and our purchased ownership of the rights to use the software.
People pose in front of a display showing the word 'cyber' in binary code, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica December 27, 2014. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic Steam is the largest digital distribution platform for PC video games. But on Wednesday, Valve, which runs the Steam store, announced account theft has become an epidemic. Around 77,000 Steam accounts are “hijacked and pillaged each month,”. The company says account theft has been around since the inception of Steam in 2003, but “the problem has increased twenty-fold” since the 2013 introduction of something called Steam Trading. Basically, Steam Trading lets people trade games, in-game items, and that are stored in your Steam account. But unfortunately, this system has made it easier to steal from other users, and more difficult for Valve to protect its Steam customers.
The main problem is once something is stolen, people trade those items again and again, and often times, it’s eventually “sold to an innocent user,” according to Valve. Valve says “enough money now moves around the system that stealing virtual Steam goods has become a real business for skilled hackers practically every active Steam account is now involved in the economy, via items or trading cards, with enough value to be worth a hacker’s time. Essentially all Steam accounts are now targets.” The short-term fix was to duplicate all the stolen items in order to replace them for the victims; but Valve points out that “duplicating the stolen items devalues all the other equivalent items in the economy.” But Valve is working on more long-term fixes. The company said it’s improved security features, closed loopholes, and improved their system for telling people when their accounts are at risk. Valve has also created a specialized two-factor authentication, the to protect its users.
It uses a separate device aside from your PC to confirm your identity, like a smartphone, which is not as easily compromised as PCs, according to Valve. Valve explained why they needed to create their own special two-factor authentication: We needed to create our own two-factor authenticator because we need to show users the contents of the trade on a separate device and have them confirm it there. Requiring users to take a code from a generic authenticator and enter it into a hijacked PC to confirm a trade meant that hackers could trick them into trading away items they didn't intend to. This basically made it impossible to use a generic third party authenticator, such as Google Authenticator, to confirm trades.
Valve said it’s considered removing trading entirely, which was the easiest solution even though it generates revenue for the company. But in the end, the company settled on two-factor authentication and a series of other changes, including a way to approve trades. You can learn more about the changes here. Right now, Valve says most people haven’t protected their accounts with the new two-factor authentication, and many don’t even know about this theft issue. People that haven’t enabled the new security features can still trade, but they’ll have to wait several days for the trade to go through, which gives Valve time to discover if Steam accounts have been hacked and recover them before theft can occur. Valve says it’s aware that adding security steps makes it more difficult to use its products. But it also said “this is one of those times where we feel like we’re forced to insert a step or shut it all down.” “We’ve done our best to make the cost as small as possible, for as few people as possible, while still retaining its effectiveness.”.
Yes, this includes passwords, and guess what? You're helping them do it.
A report published in the Guardian newspaper claims that its reporters have seen criminals advertising Steam data for sale on a Russian dark web forum; a full log of all data stolen by botnet - probably including usernames and passwords - goes for just $15. Steam has become a very high value target, because it's so easily bought and sold. The best part? Some of you are cooperating, willingly or otherwise. 'To the best of our knowledge, most of the Steam accounts get stolen via botnets,' says Alex Holden, chief information security officer at Hold Security.
'However, in the past, we have seen exploitation attempts against the platform.' There are two main types of exploitation, according to Holden: the achievement hunters, and the Community Portal. Gamers who care too much about achievements will go to any length to get them, and that includes paying hackers to obtain them or getting hacks online to increase their chances. But dealing with the kind of source willing to provide hacks for a price significantly increases your chance of getting hacked. These are the gamers who cooperate willingly, blind to the risk their activity poses to their own account.
The ones who may not realize the danger they're in are the ones trading on the Marketplace. The Phishermen have discovered it's much more sensible to mimic, not the Steam homepage, but the increasingly popular Community Portal, where all the trades and content sales take place. Spoof that, and someone could have their account stolen when all they want is a new hat for their Sniper. So which are you? Someone that cooperates and then gets hacked, someone who doesn't realize what's going on but gets hacked anyway? Or have you been lucky so far?
Yes those fucking phishing bots, ive been added countless times by them in the past months, i made a few threads on the community hub of both TF2 and Dota 2 in the past i suggest everyone reads any of em, yeah its a bit long, but i think i got all the important stuff written down, particulary the fact that now phishers dont even wait for the users to log out before stealing their accounts, this is important, because if the user still has his/her account open, he/she can change his password and avoid losing his/her account, i already helped 2 people avoid this fate. I've been fairly lucky, and I'm hoping it holds up. I had my STO account broken into once (and recovered), and when I went back to WoW briefly to see if Pandaria was any good (it didn't impress me so I left quickly) I found my account had been robbed and I had to request a recovery from Blizzard. Of course at the same time I'm not a huge achievement hunter, and don't generally trade things online outside of the games. This kind of thing is part of why I've been wary of the transfer to things being purely digital and companies wanting you to be always online. Gaming is if nothing else going to become riskier, because honestly there is simply no way to ever make this kind of thing entirely safe.
For every security system conceived of, people will find a way around it. Of course at the same time there is no way to do MMOs without being online, so as a concept I figure they were always fairly vulnerable. Why is it that when this type of thing happens, it always seems to be Russians? I mean every country has its hackers, but Steam and Eve seem to have a disproportional amount of reports of it coming from that country in particular. Am I missing something, or is it just being overrepresented in reports?
Anyway the achievement hunter one I'm fine, but I enjoy using market quite often. How is this problem effecting that, since I don't really understand how it is (if it even is, I'm a little confused about what the article is saying about it).
Why is it that when this type of thing happens, it always seems to be Russians? I mean every country has its hackers, but Steam and Eve seem to have a disproportional amount of reports of it coming from that country in particular. Am I missing something, or is it just being overrepresented in reports? In the case of Russia it's not just some individual hackers or hacker groups stealing this and other sorts of info.
It's organized crime groups that are dealing in this sort of information. I think that's why you see them more often in the news. I'm not sure if organized crime in other countries has quite caught on to how much money there is to be made with this. And on a side note: who the hell tries to trade or buy on Steam outside of the actual Steam application? You're just asking for trouble if you do that. Why is it that when this type of thing happens, it always seems to be Russians? I mean every country has its hackers, but Steam and Eve seem to have a disproportional amount of reports of it coming from that country in particular.
Am I missing something, or is it just being overrepresented in reports? Anyway the achievement hunter one I'm fine, but I enjoy using market quite often. How is this problem effecting that, since I don't really understand how it is (if it even is, I'm a little confused about what the article is saying about it). Russians have a lot of cyber crime. Money is also worthless over there so they buy cheap there and sell to naive foreigners. Russia has a scamming culture, its the reason everything is recorded, even the car accidents.
So now Russians are seen as awful people, awful traders, and a general blight on steam because how much crime is spilling over from russia. Russian hackers use steam as a dumping ground for stolen items. If there is ever a stolen account being cleaned out for a valuable hat, its a russian. If there is a stolen game being sold on tf2outpost to launder money, its a russian. If ever a trade goes bad, its a russian. This is coming from a steam trader: Do.
Stay away from their accounts. Stay away from their offers. Because those trades are high risk to getting you arrested for money laundering or getting your newly bought game taken away with no refund because the trader that sold it to you bought it with a stolen credit card. Probably both. Because that's what criminals do in the steam economy, use it to money launder.
Russia has a huge PC gamer population, so it wouldn't raise any eyebrows if a lot of money is exchanged there in seemingly useless items. A game isn't worth being arrested. A game isn't worth the effort to try to convince the police that you thought 'WatchDogs $30' on May 20th, 2014 was a completely legit offer. Its safer to exchange lots of money in a big crowded market than a small empty one.
Keys run for 2.50$ a pop, so lots of tiny transactions also make it hard to know if its legit or not. Keys in the steam economy were the original bitcoin. Which means steam helped invent cyptocurrencies.
I fell for a false link once when I was like 12, got my account back, everything where I left it, except for my friends list which had been whiped. I had been using the same password for everything at the time, so he managed to access my Paypal.
But I changed my password before him so I saved it. Same with my email, said it had been logged into via somewhere else. For the record, he said I had been mentioned on the steam forums so I went to take a look via the link he provided. Fell for it hook line and sinker. So anyway, never access anything to do with steam unless it's via the client itself.
And on a side note: who the hell tries to trade or buy on Steam outside of the actual Steam application? You're just asking for trouble if you do that. I go to the Steam community page in my browser - way more convenient when you can use tabs and addons. Hacking does not equal cracking, but I imagine that most of this is about scamming? Loco mania cd key serial keygen nero torrent.
What you just read isn’t a typo.
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If you don't know the difference then please don't make threads about it. Hacking, cheating and exploiting are also not the same thing Giving away your password because you're a stupid person =/= being hacked. These people are correct, by the way. Giving away your password because you're a stupid person =/= being hacked. Actually, it's called social engineering, why delve into a server looking for passwords to access an account when you can just pose as the sysadmin and contact the guy whose account you want and get him to tell you his login details? And yes, it is considered hacking. Unless if your idea of a hacker is some pasty overweight guy who is surrounded by monitors dressed like he is from the Matrix listening to dubstep/techno 24/7 who taps three keys on his keyboard and instantly gets into any server.
Because if that's the case: hue hue hue hue hue hue. Why is it that when this type of thing happens, it always seems to be Russians? I mean every country has its hackers, but Steam and Eve seem to have a disproportional amount of reports of it coming from that country in particular.
Am I missing something, or is it just being overrepresented in reports? Anyway the achievement hunter one I'm fine, but I enjoy using market quite often. How is this problem effecting that, since I don't really understand how it is (if it even is, I'm a little confused about what the article is saying about it). Russians have a lot of cyber crime. Money is also worthless over there so they buy cheap there and sell to naive foreigners.
Russia has a scamming culture, its the reason everything is recorded, even the car accidents. So now Russians are seen as awful people, awful traders, and a general blight on steam because how much crime is spilling over from russia. Russian hackers use steam as a dumping ground for stolen items. If there is ever a stolen account being cleaned out for a valuable hat, its a russian. If there is a stolen game being sold on tf2outpost to launder money, its a russian.
If ever a trade goes bad, its a russian. This is coming from a steam trader: Do.
Stay away from their accounts. Stay away from their offers. Because those trades are high risk to getting you arrested for money laundering or getting your newly bought game taken away with no refund because the trader that sold it to you bought it with a stolen credit card. Probably both. Because that's what criminals do in the steam economy, use it to money launder. Russia has a huge PC gamer population, so it wouldn't raise any eyebrows if a lot of money is exchanged there in seemingly useless items.
A game isn't worth being arrested. A game isn't worth the effort to try to convince the police that you thought 'WatchDogs $30' on May 20th, 2014 was a completely legit offer. Its safer to exchange lots of money in a big crowded market than a small empty one. Keys run for 2.50$ a pop, so lots of tiny transactions also make it hard to know if its legit or not. Keys in the steam economy were the original bitcoin. Which means steam helped invent cyptocurrencies. I can definitely confirm this.
I have a friend who used to frequent SteamTrades.com. She would buy Team Fortress keys and then trade them for games just like you described. One of her new Russian trading friends introduced her to one of his friends who then traded with her for the latest Call of Duty a day before release for an equivalent $30.00. Two days later Steam notified her that they would be removing the game from her inventory since it was originally purchased on a stolen card. It happened to a few of her other friends too.Poof.
No more game. Moral of the story, just wait for a damn sale. Why is it that when this type of thing happens, it always seems to be Russians? I mean every country has its hackers, but Steam and Eve seem to have a disproportional amount of reports of it coming from that country in particular. Am I missing something, or is it just being overrepresented in reports? Anyway the achievement hunter one I'm fine, but I enjoy using market quite often.
How is this problem effecting that, since I don't really understand how it is (if it even is, I'm a little confused about what the article is saying about it). Russians have a lot of cyber crime. Money is also worthless over there so they buy cheap there and sell to naive foreigners. Russia has a scamming culture, its the reason everything is recorded, even the car accidents. So now Russians are seen as awful people, awful traders, and a general blight on steam because how much crime is spilling over from russia. Russian hackers use steam as a dumping ground for stolen items. If there is ever a stolen account being cleaned out for a valuable hat, its a russian.
If there is a stolen game being sold on tf2outpost to launder money, its a russian. If ever a trade goes bad, its a russian. This is coming from a steam trader: Do. Stay away from their accounts. Stay away from their offers. Because those trades are high risk to getting you arrested for money laundering or getting your newly bought game taken away with no refund because the trader that sold it to you bought it with a stolen credit card. Probably both.
Because that's what criminals do in the steam economy, use it to money launder. Russia has a huge PC gamer population, so it wouldn't raise any eyebrows if a lot of money is exchanged there in seemingly useless items. A game isn't worth being arrested. A game isn't worth the effort to try to convince the police that you thought 'WatchDogs $30' on May 20th, 2014 was a completely legit offer. Its safer to exchange lots of money in a big crowded market than a small empty one.
Keys run for 2.50$ a pop, so lots of tiny transactions also make it hard to know if its legit or not. Keys in the steam economy were the original bitcoin.
Which means steam helped invent cyptocurrencies. Come on dude dont generalize ive met some great russians on steam after all the information ive collected about the steam phishing attacks, id dare say only a handful of people are behind this attacks, using phishing scripts that take controls of someones account each time a new victim falls for the scam. Giving away your password because you're a stupid person =/= being hacked. Actually, it's called social engineering, why delve into a server looking for passwords to access an account when you can just pose as the sysadmin and contact the guy whose account you want and get him to tell you his login details? And yes, it is considered hacking.
How To Crack Steam Accounts
Unless if your idea of a hacker is some pasty overweight guy who is surrounded by monitors dressed like he is from the Matrix listening to dubstep/techno 24/7 who taps three keys on his keyboard and instantly gets into any server. Because if that's the case: hue hue hue hue hue hue I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time believing that asking someone for his/her password is hacking. Using exploits on old/outdated software (like in that PSN debacle years ago) however, is.
Giving away your password because you're a stupid person =/= being hacked. Actually, it's called social engineering, why delve into a server looking for passwords to access an account when you can just pose as the sysadmin and contact the guy whose account you want and get him to tell you his login details? And yes, it is considered hacking. Unless if your idea of a hacker is some pasty overweight guy who is surrounded by monitors dressed like he is from the Matrix listening to dubstep/techno 24/7 who taps three keys on his keyboard and instantly gets into any server.
Because if that's the case: hue hue hue hue hue hue I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time believing that asking someone for his/her password is hacking. Using exploits on old/outdated software (like in that PSN debacle years ago) however, is.
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You would be surprised at how easy and effective it is to make one phone call or e-mail pretending to be from whatever company the target has an account with. Hell, ever sit out in some public place with a smartphone, laptop, or tablet? Really easy for someone to peek over your shoulder without being noticed to see your login credentials for any website you log on to.
Giving away your password because you're a stupid person =/= being hacked. Actually, it's called social engineering, why delve into a server looking for passwords to access an account when you can just pose as the sysadmin and contact the guy whose account you want and get him to tell you his login details? And yes, it is considered hacking.
Unless if your idea of a hacker is some pasty overweight guy who is surrounded by monitors dressed like he is from the Matrix listening to dubstep/techno 24/7 who taps three keys on his keyboard and instantly gets into any server. Because if that's the case: hue hue hue hue hue hue I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time believing that asking someone for his/her password is hacking.
Using exploits on old/outdated software (like in that PSN debacle years ago) however, is. In the tech world, it still falls under the same security category as hacking. They also refer to it as social engineering (as stated above). You can be guaranteed that if you took a tech course that you'd be asked a question about hacks, and social engineering being an answer to that question. I agree that 'hacking' brings images of a guy furiously typing at a keyboard to mind, but it can be anything that involves compromising a system. That includes getting a phone operator to divulge information that you can use if you call back again and get a different operator.
It was a flaw in the operator system that is being exploited, even if no software and programing is involved. I'm alittle ashamed to say this isn't news back around 05-7 I hung out on a trading forum for steam accounts and keys. I started out thinking it was stolen or russian keys but as time progressed the forum was taken over by steam account sales. I bought a few accounts that were simple account with just Valves multiplayer catalog for my lan parties and I could mostly say the accounts were just store hacks but I exited the forum after a few of my accounts got repossessed and it was clear I was getting stolen goods. There are toooons of forums and IRC rooms for trading stolen accounts but it's dangerous and even if you scooped an account with thousands of games for $20 you will eventually get targeted for your info credit cards etc. I dont do any steam item trading. I have friend that occasionally scoops my cards for cs gun skins or whatever but thats it.
So which are you? Someone that cooperates and then gets hacked, someone who doesn't realize what's going on but gets hacked anyway? Or have you been lucky so far? This is indicating nobody's smart enough to avoid this crap. Considering my SteamID is almost 10 years old and has a lot of my history with it, I'm absolutely paranoid about losing it. You can deal with the Steam Community in a safe manner, it just takes due diligence to check links and frankly not enough people do that.
Steam has a hell of a support problem, and it's mainly because end-users are stupid. Aside: Let's call things what it is. Social Engineering or stupidity.
Hacking indicates a vulnerability with the system, and that is an end-user problem not an issue with Steam's security. Are people on Steam really desperate enough to pay and give away their sensitive info for the chance to raise some useless stat in their games? I thought it was bad on xbox live.
Falling for phishing is sometimes understandable since your wanting to do whatever task you want done really quick and don't see subtle differences in the site layout and URL. Either way the entirety of the internet needs to learn to be a lot more careful and wary of either method. Easiest fix: only browse the Steam Community from in the Steam client. It doesn't allow non-official Steam sites to be opened. Now don't tell people your password and problem solved. That would be the smart thing to do.
Regrettably, the general public isn't into doing the smart thing. I never really liked logging on with my Live or PSN account in a browser because it looses that layer of security.
And if I ever get a call or even make a call where the person asks my for my credit card info, account info or passwords, I'm hanging up (possibly after a string of foul language.). Easiest fix: only browse the Steam Community from in the Steam client. It doesn't allow non-official Steam sites to be opened. Now don't tell people your password and problem solved. So anyway, never access anything to do with steam unless it's via the client itself.
The problem is, the client's web engine is terrible and painful to use. Fortunately, logging into Steam from a browser isn't risky as long as you check the site's identity. When reaching a Steam login page, the address in your browser will change from 'to 'indicating a secure page. If it doesn't, you already have the red flag you need not to enter your password.
You can check the site's https identity in any modern browser (Chrome, IE, Firefox,). So which are you? Someone that cooperates and then gets hacked, someone who doesn't realize what's going on but gets hacked anyway? Or have you been lucky so far? False dichotomy. I don't download cheats/hacks.
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I've hardly set foot in the market, I sell cards from my inventory, that's about it. And most importantly, I'm not dumb enough to fall for phishing. I also have up to date antivirus with browser plugin, as well as some other protective software, so I'm not so likely to get infected by something. My steam account and email aren't the same, and have different passwords, the steam account name refers to a defunct email from an email site that's been dead for over a decade.;).
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