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Steam Escrow System Drives Impatient Users To Fake Trading Sites Serving Malware (malwarebytes.org)

Posted by Soulskill on from the impatience-is-security's-archnemesis dept.

An anonymous reader writes: On Wednesday, Valve introduced a new "trade hold" system that should prevent scammers from stealing items from Steam users' hijacked account, or at least minimize the occurrence of such incidents. Anyone using the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator to confirm trades is able to continue trading as always. Users who haven't enabled it, or can't, can still trade, but they'll have to wait up to 3 days for the trade to go through. The system was, understandably, not welcome by some users, and it didn't take long for scammers to take advantage of this discontent.

3 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Well, I did learn something by NotDrWho · · Score: 2, Informative

    Apparently Steam has a trading feature, which exists for some reason. You can't use it for selling used games. It's only for "gifting" games and digital items.

    Nope, no one could have foreseen that a system like that would be catnip for hackers and scammers.

    And they wonder why I won't give them my credit card number.

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    1. Re:Well, I did learn something by Somebody+Is+Using+My · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ummm... I hate to break it to you, but the verb form of "gift", as in "bestow a gift", dates back to the 16th century. It's not a modern or American usage; it is a long-recognized usage of the word.

      And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

  2. Hold system is ridiculous by LanMan04 · · Score: 3, Informative

    My son plays TF2 and doesn't have a cellphone yet (11 years old).

    If I want to send him something from my account, it takes THREE DAYS because we "haven't been friends for a year" yet. Even if we had been friends for that long, it would take a full 24 hours because he doesn't have the "mobile authenticator". Every time. He doesn't even have a phone, you jackasses!

    And now *I* have to have the stupid authenticator turned on if I want to trade with randoms on the internet. Dude, my account is secure! I get email notifications of trades, which show up instantly on my phone.

    It's way way way overkill, with no way to opt out. Sucks.

    --
    With the first link, the chain is forged.