tl;dr: Watch what you put online and who you friend, especially on Steam. Once it’s on the internet, it’s there forever.
There’s a website similar to SpyPet for Discord, but for Steam. They compile all of our users’ profile pictures, name history, comments, URL history, “real name” history, our friend networks, forever, and they give us no option to opt out of it. Not even a private profile will stop it from scouring your friends’ lists, the forums, your avatars and name history. So what’s the purpose of it?
Stalking. I’m a victim of it.
And despite all of my efforts to not leave a trail leading to my new Steam account, SteamHistory enabled my stalkers to find me.
There are a number of unfortunate folks that have dedicated their time to follow me into whatever game servers I visit and spoil my day. I had deleted my old Steam account and repurchased all of my games on a new account that was privated from the start. I was very careful to not disclose any information that could lead to my identification, including using VPNs and prepaid methods to avoid leaking my real name to Steam. Despite that, my stalkers managed to attribute my new anonymous account to me, even though my profile is private and haven’t posted anything. But how? Well, they were “kind” enough to tell me how.
How did they find me? Enter SteamHistory.
The task itself would have been impossible without a massive database of Steam friend networks, but the website simplifies such an endeavor that it is basically trivial. Assume the role of a stalker for a second and that you know nothing about your victim’s new account. All you know is that they have a few friends with whom they sometimes play and their profiles are also private. What can you do? Initially, it seems like a lost cause, SteamHistory gives you a lead.
Go on their website and look up your victim’s friends. Despite that all involved profiles are private, it is unlikely that the victim’s friends would create new Steam accounts and repurchase their games. It’s more likely that they would simply private their profiles. With this knowledge, look at each friend’s friend history and find the friends that they all have in common, then eliminate all of those in this intersection that you are sure are not your victim. This process will always narrow the scope into only one last person: the target. Bingo. You’ve found your victim. And you didn’t even need any data from them. That’s how they found me.
What does SteamHistory store?
They store and put on an exhibit your embarrassing names, your immature profile pictures, for the whole world to see. Your deadname, your abusive ex’s comments, made forever available for any imaginable bad actor. They etch in stone the fact that you once were Steam friends with this guy that turned out to be a sexual predator.
So what can you do?
Nothing besides not using Steam. Or get Valve to implement better control of our privacy, but good luck with that. The owner of SteamHistory has been confronted on the matter, and what they said is that you can opt out of data collection by deleting your Steam account. They don’t care about the GDPR because they’re situated in the US.
So heads up.
Or get Valve to implement better control of our privacy
Even Valve cannot delete publicly available information from someone else’s server.
Archive.org does the same.
Yes, but they could implement better restrictions that stop third parties from scraping data like that.
Like what? If you can see it with your eyeballs, it’s trivial for a simple script to scrape the information.
Then there should be a way to restrict even eyeballs from seeing the information.
I thought private mode did that, but I guess not. Or it only restricts the information to eyeballs.
I thought private mode did that, but I guess not.
As far as I know, it does, but as I said, they can’t delete information from an archive on a server they don’t own.
How do they get the data in the archive in the first place then?
There seems to be a way for them to get friends data from steam somehow and that hole needs to be closed.
How do they get the data in the archive in the first place then?
I’m not sure what you mean. They get it from Steam. Once again, publicly available information.
that hole needs to be closed.
You can close it by making your profile private. But they’ve already archived that info.
They have to comply with GDPR as their website is accessible from EU countries, as long as they have data to identify a specific EU citizen.
So in theory, if you’re from EU you could put your name and surname on your Steam profile, have it archived and then file a GDPR request to have all of your data removed
They have to comply with GDPR as their website is accessible from EU countries, as long as they have data to identify a specific EU citizen.
There’s currently American laws that if not followed, States have a right to pursue a lawsuit. Many American companies shrug and wait for the paperwork. Often, it takes a few months for that paperwork, and then years before it moves through the courts. Imagine a EU company getting that paperwork. Besides the initial “I’m in the EU, I don’t have to follow your American laws”, the court case would take YEARS to materialize.
Now flip that for American companies following EU rules.
A law is only as strong as those who enforce it. Look at Twitter. How many warnings will the EU give and still not do anything about it?
I’m not saying this to wave my freedom around. This is just reality. Major American companies to this day still are lax around GDPR. So a small 1-person company is going to shrug and do whatever they want. Until they do something outrageous like terrorism or CP, they’ll at most get a strongly written letter.
And by then, they’ll just bankrupt their company and start a new one.
Again, not saying that to be a jerk. I’ve been on that side of arguing that our products should follow GDPR, watching some manager tell me fuck off, then literally nothing happening for years.
So yeah, I’m pretty jaded.
What warnings has the EU issued against Twitter? Usually when it comes to GDPR DPAs don’t issue warnings like that.
Some that care enough should report it to their national DPA and see what happens.
Never friend anyone, just play single player games.
If you do play online games, be aware that everything can be permanently online.
Internet people are fake
very careful not to disclose any information to steam
proceeds to associate with everyone they were previously friends with on public logs
I just want to point out that if your friends accounts were public like you imply they wouldn’t have even needed to use the site. All the site does is automate the data collection process. The only way to fix it is to make private accounts the default.
Read the post next time.
