back to article BLAM! Valve slams brakes on Steam flimflam with $5 spam scram plan

Video-gaming kingpin Valve has promised to do a better job of protecting its subscribers from dollops of spam, by applying a $5 limit on user accounts before unlocking a number of key features. The company explained the new strategy in a post on its support forum. It said that features – including friend invites, group chat, …

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    1. PleebSmash
      Pirate

      it's foolproof

      It costs money for an employee/mechanical turk to look at and ban a spammer. Steam gets $1.50 when the spammers have to buy a $5 copy of Barbie Princess Equestrian Fairies or whatever. If the anti-spam crusader can ban 10+ spammers in an hour, they can get a $15!!! minimum wage and everyone goes home happy. Except the spammers, who might eventually have to quit.

      1. jonathanb Silver badge

        Re: it's foolproof

        The minimum wage would be nearer to 45 Rupees per hour than $15, but your point is valid.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'd hope they'd also ban the payment account or card used when they ban a spammer. So without a new valid credit card daily, no go.

      1. Jedit Silver badge
        Boffin

        "So without a new valid credit card daily, no go."

        Out of curiosity: is there anything preventing spammers linking the same stolen credit card to 100 accounts, triggering them all at once with $500 of purchases across the accounts, then engaging in a blitz?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          is there anything preventing spammers linking the same stolen credit card to 100 accounts

          You would have hoped Steam would pre-empt something like that and cross-check the card number to make sure it's not being used on many accounts.

        2. Lee D Silver badge

          Re: "So without a new valid credit card daily, no go."

          I'm pretty sure I've seen a lot of posts on Steam forums about not being able to use a credit card because it was tied into their friend's account etc.

          There are *some* proxies, e.g. you can pay by PayPal, but even there the number of Steam accounts using the same PayPal account would be trivial to detect at Steam's end.

          It's not meant as an "eliminate all spammers" method, but a hindrance to stop causal free-account spamming, I imagine.

          The majority of market/friends list spam I see is Level-0 people with closed profiles and zero games (or only free games). This would seem to indicate that a pay-requirement would at least drastically reduce the number of spammy accounts even if it doesn't eliminate them.

  2. Sgt_Oddball

    funny that

    It's weird I've had a steam account for over 9(!) years and it's only recently I've had spam/scammers contact me.

    Had a couple of accounts who might have been friends ask to friend me. Then sent identical messages asking about sharing some stuff. Pretty much removed then on the spot.

    It would be interesting to see how they'd manage in game purchases though for all those freemium games.

  3. Sebastian A

    Spam on Steam is targetted

    The more socially-active you are the more likely you'll be targetted. More games, profile activity, even presence on trading websites (or content in your public inventory) all makes it more likely they'll spot you and have a crack.

    And I imagine the credit cards being used to validate ($5) these accounts will all be stolen anyway.

    1. Whitter

      Re: Spam on Steam is targetted

      One couild imagine a case where potentially-compromised credit cards had an alert put on them: might help speed-up clearing out the clones.

  4. MrDamage Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    WTF?

    "Activating a retail game on Steam or inputting promo keys from hardware or graphic card vendors won't, for example, unlock access to the major functions that the service has to offer its legit users."

    So people who actually want a physical copy of the game, instead of vaporware which can be taken off them at a moments notice, are basically shunned from the Steam community, like the lepers of old?

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: WTF?

      > shunned from the Steam community

      And nothing of value was lost. Remember, Steam is mostly just a DRM system at heart. The rest is just window dressing to attract punters. I've made sure my copy of Kerbal Space Program and other games I've bought direct from the developers never goes near it.

    2. Piro Silver badge

      Re: WTF?

      The point is, I guess, that someone could be in possession of a lot of promotional codes for games, and keep activating their accounts using them. $5 isn't exactly a lot.

      1. auburnman

        Re: WTF?

        But $5 each and every time a new account is created will add up to a lot, and more than likely will stop a lot of spam as it stops being profitable for the spammers. Valve should go further and tier the response, so that a brand new account that has spent no more than the minimum $5 could only message say, ten other accounts in the first week.

  5. imanidiot Silver badge

    Is this a problem?

    I've never encountered spam on steam. (I also don't have that many friends on there, so that might help)

    1. auburnman

      Re: Is this a problem?

      It's becoming one. I went years with no Steam spam, but lately I log in and see 5-6 messages that 'vlkdhbvkjef' has added you to their friends list, and have started seeing items like "Hi bro my friend want trade wit you but he cantfor sum resn add <<dodgy scam here>> pls" cluttering my inbox.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Is this a problem?

        Yeah there's been a definite uptick in these of late. I'll reject and block all friend requests unless I know them personally anyway and only friends can post stuff at me, so the requests are just a nagging inconvenience at the moment. I welcome this move from Valve.

    2. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: Is this a problem?

      As SteamID's follow a predictable pattern, and free accounts cost nothing but an email address to set up, and spamming a thousand users can be automated using Steam's WebAPI, yes... it's a problem. Maybe they haven't got to you but I've had a dozen or so and two just this week.

      The hope is that you'll add them as a friend, then they send you an IM with a link. That link - if you're daft enough to click on it - goes to a credential-stealing page and - again, if you're daft enough - if you log into "Steam" on that website it gains access to your account. From there, it has another account that it can quickly (and probably automatically) spread from, can steal all your in-game items, stored inventory games, Steam Wallet cash, etc. and pass it off - again, automatically - to some central accounts that someone can flog all the gear from on the market and get payback instantly.

      By the time Steam catch up, thousands of items are involved, there's thousands of transactions to revert, etc. and they may never know which ones were genuine and which were just people selling on that item they traded for. The big-name games have been stripped out of people's inventories and sold on (possibly even for real cash, Paypal, etc.), they have enough junk to craft expensive items via an automated API, and sell those one to unsuspecting users. You can even go to other markets (e.g. TF2WH, etc.) and trade things across different games etc. until you find something that people will pay cash for.

      Given the setup, if you can eventually get even a couple of hundred quid, you've paid for all the infrastructure, steam accounts, programming (more likely script-kiddie downloads), etc. and if you're malicious maybe even cheated and got the accounts VAC-banned.

      And all by just running a program that creates free accounts, automates some chats, trades and sales, and a weblink with some dodgy Javascript on it that plugs captured details back into the program.

  6. Robigus

    Bikini Picture = Click

  7. Crazy Operations Guy

    Three-part scam

    Scammers buy credit cards on an underground forum, use them to buy a specific game and either rate it highly or badly (maybe even do this to disseminate a malicious mod for a game), and then use those accounts to spread the scam further. Then they can take the credit card details of those they've scammed and start the cycle anew...

    1. foxyshadis

      Re: Three-part scam

      Each step takes quite a bit more work and time than "Sign up and start spamming" though.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    10 year account and no recent spam

    However I have ignored several scam attempts, mostly ingame chat systems where the developers are less interested in their customers welfare i.e. f2p/ crowdfunding/ "beta" games but some attempts on stolen steam accounts

    Pretty much whenever players can for zero cash investment join and spam a gaming community you will find people attempting to socially exploit their fellow gamers.

    The above revenue systems where you have no rights if you invest cash rely upon gamers already being gullible and so the prize plums already collected for the thieves by other seeking to exploit the same group.

    That Valve hope to profit by limiting access to these collected plums says it all really however until the investment required to access steam is greater than that which can easily be scammed then it is not going to have much impact other than Valve profitting from selling their clients list.

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