Steam Letter

	My name is James.  I am writing to tell you how Steam Support is treating me very poorly, and how you need to protect yourself against hackers.
	My story begins several years ago.  I purchased the Orange Box from Valve with the intent on just playing Portal.  I gave Team Fortress 2 a shot as well.  Two thousand hours later, I would say I got my moneys worth out of the purchase.
	Yes, I have played TF2 for over two thousand hours.  And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.  The weapons, classes, maps and modes; they’re all terrifically implemented and meshed together.  There was always a different experience every time you play.  I love it.
	Along the way I came across the TF2 trade scene.  I was intimidated at first; indecipherable lingo was used, messages flew by at a rapid pace, advice was not freely available.  But I stuck around and got the hang of it.  I identified a discrepancy in the market early on: if you were patient you could find people selling Crates at under the market value of one Weapon.  I bought and sold a lot of Crates and Weapons.  My profit was almost nothing, but it accumulated over time.  I continued using this strategy all the way up to Paints and Tags.  After a while I had my first Hat.
	Fast forward a year.  I had two Unusual Hats, all the rare Promos, a ton of Keys…I had it all.  My dinky little strategy of waiting for small discrepancies between regular buying and selling prices had earned me a ton of valuable items.
	It was around this time I was getting burned out on the trade scene.  I started playing the regular game again.  It was cool running around with rare hats that had cool particle effects on them.  They made me feel so audacious at times that I would sometimes just wear regular, widely available hats instead.  And, the game itself was as good as it ever was.  Things were good for me in TF2.
	I don’t remember the first time I got hacked.  It just happened out of the blue.  I got a message saying I had been logged out of Steam, which was odd because I was logged in to Steam at the time.  I thought nothing of it.  Why would I suspect anything was wrong, other than a small glitch on Steam’s end?  It turned out, however, I was being hacked, and all my hard-earned items were stolen.
	Enter Steam Support.  I had dealt with them a few times in the past.  They were a real pleasure to deal with; long response times, replies that had nothing to do with my questions, a lack of courtesy.  They were great.  I recall searching for other people having similar experiences with Support, and it was easy to find others who shared my frustration.  Steam was widely known for having terrible customer support, which is odd for a company making so much money (just ask Comcast).  Anyway, they restored my items, I changed my passwords, and all was well…for about a month.
	It happened a second time.  This time my verification e-mail was hacked.  The intruder discovered my e-mail verification account and cracked the password.  He or she (or they?) then logged on to Steam and went through the steps one goes through when they forget their password.  They used the temporary password that was sent to the hacked e-mail verification account to log into my Steam account and traded my items to the hijacker’s account.  I contacted Steam Support, got my items restored, changed my password, and changed my verification e-mail.  Good to go.
	Then it happened a third time.  This was the killer.  This was where Steam Support drew a line in the sand against scum like me, the ones who have the audacity to get hacked for a third time.  What can I say?  My items are valuable.  They have real-world dollar values.  My hats were worth somewhere around $500-600.  Not a tremendous amount, to be sure, but there was some incentive to crack my account.  I was a target, and two previously successful hijackings surely didn’t hurt my image as such.
	How did it happen this time?  I don’t know, to be honest.  My new and old e-mail verification accounts were simultaneously hacked.  I had forgotten they were linked together years ago as the accounts where temporary passwords would be sent if I was unable to access one or the other.  One of the accounts had been broken into.  They changed that password and sent a request to have a temporary password provided for the other account.  The other password was then changed as well.  They then requested a temporary password from Steam, logged in, and my items were stolen again.  I contacted Steam Support and decided to learn how to safeguard myself.
	My e-mail accounts are safe now.  I change passwords every month.  I have different, strong passwords for every site I use.  I have safeguards in place in case someone attempts to hijack an account.  I made myself safe.  I installed various keylogger, malware, and spyware detectors.  I previously had one installed, but I do not feel that one is enough.  Different programs find different problems.  The biggest thing you must do is use an e-mail safeguard that guarantees, or comes very close to it, that you and only you can access your account.  Gmail offers 2-step verification.  Google it if you need more information.  Use it.  You will be much safer with it.  It is easy to overlook how valuable safety is until you become a victim.
	So what about my items, then?  Steam Support, tasked with assisting distressed customers, is treating me like a criminal.  They refuse to restore my items.  “Why?” you may ask?  Because they have done it twice already.  And my account security is my responsibility.  These are the crutches they cling to.
	But these ideas do not make any sense.  What does the number of times an account has items restored to it matter?  Ah, I get it: if they continually restore items, people will have their friends log on to their account, trade their items to that friends account, and then ask Support to restore those items.  It would promote duping, in other words.
	Ok then, let’s put ourselves in Steam’s position.  Looking over the logs of items traded (they have these available), they can see that my items have gone to different people on each hijacking.  Perhaps I have different friends do it each time then?  It’s possible, but why am I friends with people from across the world?  These people have private profiles and are not on my friends list.  These people have backpacks full of unbelievable amounts of expensive, rare items which can likely be traced to people that have their accounts hijacked.  Surely not everyone who trades with these people is a friend of theirs, trying to scam Support?  That would require a rather high level of coordination, so much so that it strains credibility as a likely event.
	And if I was trying to scam Steam Support, why would I keep doing it after two successful attempts?  Does it make sense to push my luck that far?  It is just not reasonable for me to risk such highly valuable items to help somebody else out.  After all, I did not make any trades with these people after the thefts.  Surely I would want some sort of compensation for my risky undertakings.
	Perhaps I accepted Paypal funds for my efforts, then?  Surely I can’t prove that I didn’t accept cash for these actions.  Let’s talk about that.  During one of the first two item restorations, I was incorrectly given an item by Steam Support.  This particular item was worth $300 dollars at the time.  “Sweet!” some would say.  Time to cash in, right?  Maybe get that one ultra rare hat I always wanted, or just trade the thing for some spending money?  Nope, not me.  I sent Steam, who was unaware of their mistake, an e-mail explaining that they had given me the extra item.   I gave it right back to them.  I hadn’t earned it, so it wasn’t mine.  I’m an honest person, you see.
	Does that sound like the actions of somebody who is trying to scam Steam Support?  Would I not have sold the item, or traded it to one of my supposed friends from across the world?  Steam Support’s argument that I am abusing their system is invalid in the face of how unreasonable it is for me to risk my items with no apparent rewards, coupled with the fact that I gave a high value item back to them as an act of courtesy.  My actions are inconsistent with the profile of somebody looking to profit from fraud.
So that leaves Steam’s argument with my responsibility to protect my account.  Well, my account is pretty darn secure now, so Steam’s argument appears to be lacking in this aspect as well.  Yes, I did have bad security once.  But that is now corrected.  What is Support trying to accomplish with this stance?  Are they punishing me for not being knowledgeable about how hackers operate?  Should I have seen a hijack attempt involving two separate e-mail accounts coming?  Really?  It is a straw man that they use when they are unable to come up with any wrongdoing from the customer (for example, getting hacked more than twice).
	Coupled with all this are the usual Steam Support issues.  I had an initial wait of six days before their first response.  This was in regards to a hijacked account, a very serious situation that should be handled immediately.  When I did get a response, it was an irrelevant canned message about how I should clear out my Steam Apps folder.  These sorts of messages are common with Support.  There was a twenty(!) day stretch where I received no responses at all.  They rudely closed the ticket without resolving the situation on two occasions.  My account was suspended on two occasions for no reason whatsoever, other than to make me change my password two more times.  These suspensions lasted for fourteen days total.  They never reached out to me at any point to ‘make things right’ either.  Their view is ‘These things happened; we don’t think we’re responsible for these things, so you’re out of luck’.  It’s all very anti-customer.  There is no attempt on their end to use judgment.  It’s like they cannot be bothered to take the time to reasonably think about the situation.  No compensation for the stress, the downtime, or the fact that they still refuse to restore items that were stolen from me.
	And so here we are.  You know as much about the situation as I do.  The only difference is you don’t know the feelings of loss that I do.  You don’t know what it feels like to be treated like a criminal when you are the victim.  It’s like going to the police with a list of your stolen property, but since this is the third time you’ve been robbed, they indirectly accuse you of being in on the robbery and refuse to help.  It’s like going to the bank after you have had your funds drained by a malicious entity, but since this has happened twice before, you are out of luck.  Despite being able to prove you are innocent and a legitimate victim, they send you away with a wave of their hand.
	I’ll tell you how it feels.  It sucks.  I feel helpless and weak, all my hard work undone.
	I used to play and love TF2.  I used to enjoy playing all my Steam games.  This situation has made me so bitter that now I have other hobbies.  I’m done with Steam.  Thanks for nothing Support.
	Learn from my experience.  Safeguard yourself.  Take action before something bad happens.