• I think I'm being Stalked on Steam?
    12 replies, posted
Not sure where to begin with this but between about a year and 18 months ago I believe I have been getting stalked on Steam by a particular user. I get why this seems incredibly unlikely given that there's a minimum spend required to use the community, but I wouldn't underestimate the resources creeps might use to get what they want from others. For all I know, this person might also be stalking dozens of others, and this is plausible since their accounts always have a number of friends. You can easily say "stop accepting random friend requests", but I have made a small number of very good friends on Steam over the years and would hate to miss out on the chance of that by blanket blocking anyone that even tries to add me. Them having games (which I realised on the latest profile are mostly f2p and the actual spend probably reflects a bare minimum to be allowed to use the community) also makes it hard to tell as easily if they are legit. So how it goes is basically this: They add me, I accept out of curiousity, and they approach me like someone with actual competence at language. We chat a little, then their English falls apart and they throw some creepy phrase about wanting to do something sexual with me. They try to guilt me for not being interested even though we've been chatting for probably minutes in total and I have pretty much zero emotional connection with this person. Eventually they give up chatting and conveniently disappear, removing me too, it seems. Months later, repeat the whole process with a different account. So how do I know this is the same person? First, every time this person has pretty much the same approach and the same writing style. By writing style, I don't just mean bad, their choice of wording and everything always seems consistent. Their profile never has any actually useful information to determine what kind of person they are on it or even any comments. And this person seems to "learn" from what happened in past chatting sessions. For example, last time, I asked how old this person was and they gave me a fair answer, but I still wasn't interested. On the most recent occasion I asked and they said "old enough", which seemed suspicious to me. Soon after I convinced them to give what they claim is their actual age, which matched with the one given before so may or may not be a lie. Don't get me wrong, this guy isn't nearly as bad as some internet stalkers I've heard of, and is sort of friendly but approaches in a very creepy manner, every time. So I'm wondering, what the hell can I do short of shutting myself off from the possiblity of new friends to avoid this? Details in favour of the hypothesis that I am actually being stalked: • This person initially set their location to Ukraine or something (I don't remember) which would have explained their poor English ability, which I was willing to forgive at first. I then once asked them where they're from and they said US. I then told them it seems suspicious that their competence with English wasn't up to scratch if they're "old enough". Every time they've added me since then, their location is set to the US. • This person seems to spend the bare minimum on games to be allowed access to the Steam community, with the rest being F2P games. This could be deliberately done to make them look "legit" at a glance. • This person never has any friends or groups in common with me, so how would they even find me? They also always seem to be in at least a few pervy groups. • Their approach always seems to be the same in terms of both writing style, what they want from me, and creepyness. Details against the hypothesis that I am actually being stalked: • Spending money on new accounts all the time seems absurd... Unless you consider that this person might be stalking dozens of people, which would both explain and discredit how they always have friends - maybe they deliberately try to walk a fine line between causing complete disgust and guilt to the point of empathy in people? • I don't have links to any of the accounts but the latest one had 3 years of experience. Who buys games and lets an account sit disused for 3 years? However, they had a very low amount of in-game hours, so maybe they have a large number of accounts with different games and hop between them. • None of this users' friends looked familiar at all, and if this guy were stalking multiple people, you would expect the same names to come up repeatedly, wouldn't you? On the other hand, I haven't actively tried to remember any of their previous friends' names. I don't have links to any of the profiles as I was never too sure this was really happening until the last time recently. I do have a chat log from the latest incident but would prefer not to post this, and see it as not really being any evidence on its own without any history to compare against.
Some people mitigate issues like this by ignoring friend requests from Steam accounts that don't overwhelmingly demonstrate significant money expenditure, and ignore accounts under some arbitrary amount of years old. 3+ years on steam and enough big-budget games to go over 100$ by today's prices is a good bet. Have you ever posted nude pictures of yourself online, and if so, do you remember where? It may be that you have different users adding you each after relating some online account of yours to your Steam account. Or if in some other scenario, you could still attain one single dedicated stalker after posting such.
I never accept invites from people who i have no relation or common groups or friends. I did follow your way but all i got was idiots who either tried to scam me or wanted to trade.
[QUOTE=bitches;51922936]Some people mitigate issues like this by ignoring friend requests from Steam accounts that don't overwhelmingly demonstrate significant money expenditure, and ignore accounts under some arbitrary amount of years old. 3+ years on steam and enough big-budget games to go over 100$ by today's prices is a good bet. Have you ever posted nude pictures of yourself online, and if so, do you remember where? It may be that you have different users adding you each after relating some online account of yours to your Steam account. Or if in some other scenario, you could still attain one single dedicated stalker after posting such.[/QUOTE] I have not posted any publicly, and would not have expected any of the few friends that I have shared such photos with to release them as I would have checked with myself that I trust them before doing so. However, it's entirely possible I've since lost a small number of those friends on bad terms and they had vengefully publically released photos of me. I think your idea is a great compromise and probably the approach I will take failing anything better, wondering if I'd ever lost a potentially great friend might drive me nuts inside for a while but it's probably worth it to avoid more of this.
I'd do the following: If you get a friend request, check their profile. Check where they are from, check if you have any friends in common, check their gaming hours, check their groups. Check their profile mainly for information in the description. Most users write something there, even if it's just weird gibberish. Also check their comments. Might be helpful. Check where they are from. If you live in the U.S. and they live in Russia, it's slightly weird he adds you, unless you have friends in common or played together before, of course. Check their friends. If you don't have any friends in common, then it should raise an alarm with you. Check their gaming hours. If the account has been made 3 years ago and only a handful of games have been played for less than 3 hours, this should raise suspicion for you. Also , if it's just F2P games, might wanna consider that he doesn't have steam for actual gaming purposes. Check their groups. If the groups seem weird, then try to avoid him. Overall, if you don't have a good feeling with the person, or you think he's sketchy, just don't add the guy. There are plenty of people around to make friends with, so if someone seems sketchy, just don't add them. Also, do you have to pay for steam accounts nowadays? Aren't they free to make?
[QUOTE=Rozelsky;51922984]Also, do you have to pay for steam accounts nowadays? Aren't they free to make?[/QUOTE] If I remember correctly: You can register for free, but you need at least a certain amount of money's worth of game purchases before you are allowed access to the Steam community. I might be wrong about this.
I had a user with a hentai image send me a request. The game hours check out, but I think its one of those joke profiles where you're supposed to know who the character is and it turns into this weird RP thing and I can't do that.
Could be someone trying to get chummy in the hopes that you'll buy them something because "friends". Back when Rust was new I had numerous people "stalk" and attempt to friend me with the intention of getting a copy of Rust or an access key.
Honestly you could just ask bluntly: How did you find me? Why did you add me? and What do you want? If the person just responds with gibberish/links/dodging the question you proceed to remove them. If you think it's that same user who chats in the same manner it should make it easier to filter him out.
[QUOTE=bitches;51922936]Some people mitigate issues like this by ignoring friend requests from Steam accounts that don't overwhelmingly demonstrate significant money expenditure, and ignore accounts under some arbitrary amount of years old.[/QUOTE] I have what I'd consider pretty effective requirements listed on my Steam page. Level 7 on Steam and more than 10 games. Those are really easy requirements for someone who actually uses Steam enough for me to bother actually friending. Hell, I'm at level 24 strictly from Steam events, 3 game badges, and how many games I own, and the 10-games requirement shows that you do, in fact, actually use Steam and don't just play TF2 and/or try to scam people on that account. [editline]6th March 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=LuaChobo;51923178]you need 1 valid purchase from the steam store[/QUOTE] Which, thanks to Greenlight and Bad Rats, can be anywhere under a dollar at any given time.
Unless you have played with them, or know them from somewhere, don't add them. That simple. I get like 5 or 6 random invites a month and I just ignore them. It still happens even though I say leave a comment/I don't accept randoms.
y'all are cute [IMG]https://puu.sh/uy7bS/60a5b6c63d.jpg[/IMG]
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