Valve deals with more than 77,000 hacked Steam accounts every month
Account hijacking is a very old and common problem for all kinds of gaming services that operate online. For Steam, however, it appears to be an increasingly annoying problem, as approximately 77,000 accounts are reportedly hijacked every month.
Worse, the number of hacked account continues to grow, according to Valve’s most recent blog update. According to the company, account theft can affect anyone including any group or even individual. Valve warns that these hackers can wait for a long as they are earning their living so it can be hard for traders to protect their items.
A two-factor authentication process has been introduced to traders as additional precaution. Valve implemented the said process to secure trader items against any account hijacking attempt. This idea seems good enough to discourage hackers and at the same time it is also encourages Steam users to keep their items protected.
Valve is taking many steps to decrease the number of hacking attempts and to prevent hackers from stealing goods from hijacked accounts. Wired reported that, recently, Valve introduced a waiting period for trades. The feature holds the items up to three days. The reason behind this waiting period is to make sure that the user’s account is not hijacked.
Hackers who hijack Steam accounts try to get rid of the items available in their listings as soon as possible to make sure that the account is not returned back to the user before selling. The waiting period discourages hackers and gives more time to the Steam users so they can recover their accounts. A one-day-hold feature is also introduced for users that have been friends for more than a year. According to Valve, these steps are really very helpful in eliminating trades initiated by hackers.
However, not everyone is adopting these updates gracefully. A large number of users don’t even care about these security steps taken by Valve to protect them. Many users do not even use the simple Two-factor-authentication.
Valve has warned its users many times about cheats and frauds on Steam. At the end of the day it depends on users how they use their knowledge and awareness to protect their accounts. The service provider Valve can only help users by introducing new security features, but using those methods or not completely depends on users.
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