so my Steam account has been hacked/hijacked

and I am having a terrible time getting a hold of any steam rep. My email for my steam details has been changed, so all repies go back to my account email that has been changed. This is very problematic and I feel really much neglected in the fact im sure that my steam account is being neglected by Steam support.


Let me guess, they are OFF on the weekend.

 

Nay its much more likely they are off at 2am

 

As long as you have the debit/credit card you used when you bought any games, you should be good.

 

Sorry to hear about this. Any idea how this happened? This makes me nervous when I hear something like this. Hope you can get it sorted out.

 

Yeah I got my account back this morning, but get this. Last night someone was on my account playing BlackOps for several hours. I talked to a few friends through xfire and they tried to talk to the person through steam, everytime they did he would log off/log on.

I hope he wasn't trying out hacks on my account.

I guess this is a lesson, don't buy ALL your games from one location, as I have several thousand dollars worth of content on my account.

 

as long as he didn't hack on a valve game it should be fine.

 

This is one of the other reasons I will never be too comfortable with Steam. Aside from the client potentially crashing denying you access to all games you own, what you mentioned above is also worrying. Unfortunately, with Steam you have very little control over your own purchases. Glad you got it all sorted in the end though.

I wonder if there is anything suspicious loaded on the machine you use Steam on, such as a keylogger or trojan.

 

Yeah, I probably have thousands in my account as well. Problem is that you can't have more than one account according to Steam's policy. So what is a person to do?

 

Steam suppot is really great though. Ive had my account hijacked twice and i dont know how because i didnt have a key logger either time. Funny thing was the hackers did not play any games while my account was hacked, funny eh?

 

lol they have a separate email for your support so in case your main account is compromised you can still get in contact...

 

If you do a google for Steam accounts hijacked or hacked, it is quite widely reported. I think this is some good basic information provided from Steam Support on this problem.

 

Another reason for me not to use steam.. anyways i don't like it.. very fussy with regional content and i like discs... Really suprised that steam can be hijacked.

 

Steam has been great for me, I have been using them from when they first opened. 04 I think.
One thing I can say is be real careful from who and where you download any files or Config files for any game! Mostly to fix a issue with a game is why they are put up for download.
Most gaming sites are just fine and the people who run them are great and Hardcore gamers just like us. But there are a few out there that would take food from there own kids mouth if they though they could make some free money by doing so.
This is one thing we found years ago while working on a case about hacked accounts. The company I worked for was involved in this. So I bet if you think back you may find out how it was done.
And it could have been random luck with someone running a hack program decoding passwords for Steam.

 

does verifying your email address on steam protect you at all? lol

 

Black Ops uses VAC.

 

Actually you can have multiple accounts. Steam policy just prohibits you from running multiple accounts in one computer at the same time, using a 3rd party program.

Also a few tips to not get accounts hijacked.

As many people say, never share your account info with other people, (probably not even with your friends just to be safe, unless you really trust them). Also don't bother going to sites that offer trainers/cheats/other programs that need to be downloaded. Chances are, they might be keyloggers (one of the frequent way people lose their steam accounts). Also if you ever happen to go to some kind of cyber net cafe, try not using your steam account there as you will never know what programs are installed on the computer.

 

My understanding is that unless its a "VALVE" game like tf2 it won't affect any other game.

 

The real lesson is to have a strong password when it's something of value.

 

and change it often.

 

I would be willing to bet cold hard cash that upwards of 50% of the people "hacked" on Steam have shared their account with someone else at some point in time. And I can promise 90% of the posts on the Steam General Forums titled: "PLZ HELP MY ACCOUNTZ GOT HACKZOR'd" are by 14 year old kids who either a) stole their Dad's CC to buy a game and got a charge back b) Traded their lunch money away to a kid at school for their Steam account c) Shared their account with their brother who eventually shared it with all his friends and their brothers

 

In my experience, it's mostly people's own greed and stupidity that gets their account hacked after they fall for a "free steam games" phishing scam.

 

Fixored yer post!

 

That is a really basic, yet good point. But my password at the time was not in the dictionary, it was a collection of numbers and random letters, 12 characters long. Also my account was auto-login, so I haven't "entered" a password into Steam since the day I downloaded to this laptop, a year ago.

No viruses, or keyloggers were detected after several scans either.

 

yep, although very basic, this will save your account. My password is something that no one can guess. It's basically typing a foreign language in an English qwerty keyboard plus few numbers.

 

L33t P@s5VV0Rds FTW!

 

Problem here is that even if it isn't in a dictionary it's possible to crack any password 17 characters and under using rainbow tables and a decent laptop. You really need to have a password that is at least 18 characters.

 

As our computers become better at gaming, so will they become much better at guessing.

 

Brute force is not even close to practical atm and won't be for a long long time. Like he said, a STRONG password (not 'fluffy5') is more than enough.

 

Also never use the same username and password on steam, MMO games that you use on forums. Forums get hacked all the time because of poor/lazy coding and insufficient security.