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.
I mean, this sucks, but I also wonder how this could be fixed. If you read up what absolutely benign stuff like your physical screen resolution coupled with how quickly you move your mouse coupled with your possible languages ad companies can use to uniquely identify you among the whole world visiting their page, it’s not a long throw at all to uniquely identify someone based on their steam friends.
Scary. Thanks for posting this.
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
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.
Never friend anyone, just play single player games.
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.
It’s just a profile scraper, no? I tried my own and a few of my friends profiles. They were not indexed yet and because they all have private settings you cannot see anything else besides current Display Name and current Profile Picture.
So you should tell your friends to set profile/edit/settings/privacy settings: Friend’s List -> Friend’s only. After that you create a new account and the scraper won’t be able to access their new friend list anymore.
Edit: Also why is this post written that way, I was unsure if AI generated or some attempt at a novel, or am I going crazy??
Fun fact, the GDPR applies to entities outside the EU, if they sell to EU, or they handle EU citizen data.
interesting, only the most basic info is included about my 19 year old account. I’ve always been very conservative with the info I share online though.
back in the day, everyone was regularly reminded that the internet is a wild west and only by safeguarding your personal information and using pseudonyms and avoiding identifying info can you have a chance to be safe and have a good time. but now that PII is profitable, all the big internet companies tell you the opposite so they can make a buck. I think this is the inevitable outcome of it.
sorry to hear a baddie is clinging to you, that’s always quite troublesome. it can be hard to do anything about it. shitty as it is, your best bet is usually to become an undesirable target: boring. they’re school yard bullies. they do it for the reaction, that’s it. the more you react, the harder they try. fucking assholes.
