Steam and You

===Steam and You===

Non-profit and free for redistribution
Written on May 15th | 2017
Published on May 15th | 2017

For entertainment and research purposes only

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===DISCLAIMER===
The Paranoid's Bible and its writers hold no responsibility for the acts of others.

The Paranoid’s Bible is for research and entertainment purposes only.

Please visit our blog for more guides and information: https://www.paranoidsbible.tumblr.com/

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===Preface===
Steam’s a digital distribution platform that offers DRM services, among other things. Most notable for being run by Valve, Steam has enjoyed a near competition-free run that has cornered the market, which has also made it a target for malicious groups and individuals who want to either test their mettle against the service’s security or for monetary gain.

Outside of the usual remarks, one of the biggest issues with Steam, the developers and studios that use it is the fact that it’s quite unfriendly when it comes to the consumer. This is a complaint mostly from those who promote the Free (as in freedom) Software movement and wish for greater rights for end user.

At any given moment, Steam, a developer and/or studio can revoke your claim to a game that you bought, lock you out of your account or outright ban you from the community, market and service as a whole due to anything from the obvious, like a TOS violation to the unfathomable like someone getting a report brigade rolling against you. This is what the guide wishes to address, a few simple gaps to fill in and some precautions to take. We’ll give some loose suggestions on what you need to do in order to secure your Steam account and ensure it’s not going to be targeted anytime soon, or accused of anything that you didn’t do or say.

___References:___
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)
http://store.steampowered.com/

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===Programs You’ll Need===
While there exists a multitude of 3rd party programs, most are either malicious or poorly coded and promise too much to the user. The programs that we’ll recommend are useful, have been used by the PB staff, and are good to have on hand for certain tasks.

***Remember:*** Read each program’s instructions, TOS and whatever documentation is included. That should, hopefully, prevent you from royally screwing up your Steam account.

---Depressurizer---
Depressurizer is a Steam library organizer. While its original creator is inactive, there exists a currently active updated fork.  You can find the official group and current fork at the below links.
Steam Group: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/depressurizer
Fork: https://github.com/Theo47/depressurizer

---Idle Master---
Steam introduced trading cards, which you can buy, sell and trade in order to make some micro-transactions and craft badges, wallpapers and emoticons. While ultimately useless, it is something that nags at the back of many users’ minds due to the simple fact that there are free items that they’ve been promised. While its creator got upset over Steam’s community market restrictions, it does get the rare update here and there. You might find it useful to pop on while sleep or doing yard work, however

***remember:*** Do not run this program while playing a game or using a VAC enabled/protected server. You’ll want to be completely inactive on Steam when using this program as it’ll “idle” your games, without installing them, to farm your cards.
Steam Group: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/idlemastery
Website: http://www.steamidlemaster.com/

---Steam Achievement Manager (SAM)---
As the name implies, achievements without the work. While this will send many achievement hunters into a lunatic frenzy of screams and unrivaled fits, Steam doesn’t give two shakes of a lamb’s tail when it comes to this program. As long as you don’t play any games and are inactive when you run it, you should, in theory, be fine. Check the documentation; avoid games that give you items when you hit specific achievements.
Website: http://gib.me/sam/

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===Some Suggestions===
Consider this chapter just a bit of a refresher course on some things you should do or know by now.

1. Use a unique and strong password.
This means you need to use a password 8 to 16 characters long, not used anywhere else for any other accounts, and should be made up of random characters ranging from uppercase (ABC); lowercase (abc); numbers (123); special characters and punctuation marks (?!*$&).

2. Use a common but unique username/profile name (for you) not used anywhere else for any other accounts (that you own).
Think of something commonly used, like Cookielover, add a number to it and be done with it. Don’t use this username anywhere else for any other accounts.

3. Don’t add people at random, think carefully.
They’re strangers, on the internet. You don’t need to add them because they requested to be your friend or gave you a compliment. You need to be more stringent who you add and associate with online. Take your time; don’t feel rushed to add people because you believe that you need friends in a community.

4. Don’t give Steam any more information than needed; ignore the urge to enter a debit card or credit card number.
Look toward purchasing gift cards instead, this lessens the information that you give to Steam (and Valve) besides lessening any harm that can befall you during a leak or database dump that stems from Steam.

5. Don’t get caught up in scams or phishing attempts, avoid clicking on strange profiles and/or links.
Steam’s always finding exploits or holes that can be abused, so avoid going to strange profiles and clicking on odd links. By not clicking on anyone’s links or the links sent to your account, you can prevent the majority of so called hack attempts.

6. Avoid using logging into sites, with your Steam credentials, that aren’t owned or verified by Steam/Valve.
This is to lessen the chances of your information being stolen.

7. Don’t leave reviews, unless you really need to bring attention something.
This isn’t meant to censor or stop anyone from leaving a review, however leaving reviews can lead to some meta-data being leaked that several websites to can archive and scrape, thus helping increase your digital footprint.

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===Securing Your Account===
This chapter’s simply to recommend some settings that’ll help ensure your account is at its optimum and is set to help give you a little more security and peace of mind. Understand these are loose suggestions and won’t work for everyone, depending on how they wish to use Steam.

Log into Steam and navigate to the dropdown menu labeled Steam. Once you click that, go to settings and follow the below for some suggestions on what to do.

> Steam > Settings > Account
This should help you alleviate some potential attempts on your account and help bolster its security a bit more than the average user. Please note that by participating

in Steam’s whole mobile app/mobile authenticator setup, you’re giving them even more information than they need which is frowned upon by a lot of privacy enthusiasts,

however if you feel safer with it, then it’s your choice.
* Click “Manage Steam Guard Account Security…”
* Wait for Steam to take you to the appropriate page
* Ensure Steam Guard’s enabled
* Choose the “Get Steam Guard codes by email”
* Avoid giving Steam anymore info than required, hence avoiding the use of the Steam app/mobile authenticator
* Click the “Deauthorize all other devices” button (Do this at least once a week)

> Steam > Settings > Account
Just to help prevent any hiccups from beta and anyone from using your account if they steal your rig or devices.
* Don’t signup for Beta, regardless of anything they offer in exchange
* Check/enable “Don’t save account credentials on this computer” (only if you don’t trust the rig that you’re using)

> Steam > Settings > Friends
Honestly, the whole community/friend finder aspect of Steam is quite annoying and can leave you open to more harm than good. While it may just be a paranoid’s bias, we recommend keeping your account in invisible/offline mode so people won’t pester you if you logged on and just want to relaxed.
*Disable/uncheck “Automatically sign into Friends when I start Steam”
*Disable/uncheck “Display timestamps in chat log”
*Disable/uncheck “Always open a new chat window rather than a tab”
*Enable/check “Display a notification” x 4
*Enable/check “Play a sound” x 4
*Enable/check “Always”

> Steam > Settings > Family
Avoid this as family sharing/linking can potentially lead to complications and abuse. If you have a spouse or a younger sibling, then let them use your rig to play a game or whatever. Convenience  isn’t always practical when it comes to security and privacy.
*Disable/uncheck “Authorize Library Sharing on this computer”

> Steam > Settings > In-Game
This is more of a user’s choice than anything; however we do recommend disabling the Steam overlay as it has been known to not play nice with older games.

> Steam > Settings > In-Home Streaming
Again, user’s choice, however you should keep “Enable streaming” disabled at all times until you wish to use it.

> Steam > Settings > Interface
User’s choice however set the “Favorite window” dropdown to “Library” to be on the safe side in case of any Store page issues.

> Steam > Settings > Downloads
User’s choice, but we do recommend that you hit the “Clear Download Cache” once a month as some people have, while not even downloading anything, witness it improve their speeds. Some have reported this as useful while others have found it to do nothing.

> Steam > Settings > Cloud
Just avoid cloud on Steam, mostly out of privacy concern than anything. You’ll want to disable the two options on there and just move on. If you’re so concerned with

save files, then purchase a USB and make your own backups.

> Steam > Settings > Voice
User’s choice but use “Push-to-talk” to be on the safe side and prevent any accidental conversation leaks or things you don’t want people to hear.

> Steam > Settings > Music
User’s choice, nothing else to add…

> Steam > Settings > Broadcasting
Avoid it at all costs, privacy concerns and what not.

> Steam > Settings > Web Browser
Excessive amounts of junk data can build up if this isn’t cleaned at least once a week. Hit the two buttons listed there to clean cache and cookies.

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=== Making Your Profile Private===
This chapter’s more or less about locking your account down and preventing people from viewing it, spamming it or anything in that category. This is doubly plus good as you’ll avoid Google and other search engines from hoarding and making caches of your account and its history, among other things.

> Click username > Profile > Edit Profile

Starting from the top and working our way down, locate your “Profile Name”. Seeing as Steam keeps a running log of your past names, it might be useful to clear your past names in case you want to hide from people who’ve been bothering you or just want a clean dropdown. First you’ll want to go to this link: https://pastebin.com/sdGXj9sC

Copy the character between the brackets (it looks like a space but isn’t). You’ll want to do this about 10 times, adding an extra character (1 character, then 2 characters and so on) per entry/save until your dropdown of past usernames is blank. You can then set it back to whatever profile name you wish to use, however remember Steam gets iffy about you changing your username too much, so do this every two to three minutes. While time consuming, it’ll prevent them from screaming at you and preventing you from changing your profile name.

Avoid putting anything down in the “Real name” field and your avatar can be whatever you want but don’t use anything you’ve used on other sites. Avoid displaying your country and set your custom profile URL to something random, like a string of numbers and letters.

Don’t connect your account to Facebook and avoid featuring anything on your profile, like badges, a summary or anything like that. You want it to be basically empty outside a few minor details, like the profile name (Don’t use any usernames you’ve used elsewhere) and avatar.

> Click username > Profile > Edit Profile > My Privacy Settings
You’ll want everything to be set to friends only or private and ensure you’ve checked/enabled “Keep your Steam Gift inventory private…”

Finally, open up Steam Achievement Manager and look for four games in a row with randomized looking characters that look similar to a D with a strike through it. They all should have "Player" at the end of their names and one should have (1979). Two of them should also have the numbers 2 and 3 in them individually. Click each of these games, one by one until all four windows are open. Once open, exit out of them and close the program down. You'll notice your "Recent Activity" has been cleared.

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===Afterword===
Not much can be done with Steam and securing your privacy, and outside of the obvious and previously stated tactics above… it’s a losing battle. All you can really do is lessen what information you give to Steam and Valve while trying to enjoy their service. Outside of that, ensure you don’t give them your Social Security Number and just do without those extra few bucks from card or item sales. You can always get the game (on sale) at a later date, however if you want some DRM free games that you can backup on an external drive or a USB then look toward Good Old Games (https://www.gog.com/).

GOG is already introducing their own Steam-like program, besides working with publishers to introduce a feature that allows you to connect your Steam account and receive games you already own. You’ll most likely end up using both GOG and Steam anyways, so you might as well create an account and see what games you can claim there

and vice versa.

___References:___
https://www.gog.com/reclaim
https://www.gog.com/connect