Do you think that SGTools giveaways should be compatible with privacy?
Whenever I see a private profile, my first thought is 'this is probably a scammer'.
And unfortunately there is a big need to protect our giveaways from scammers, thiefs and leechers.
So I see no reason to allow hidden mystery users to win our giveaways.
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You might like to consider that private or friend-only profiles aren't just for "scammers, thiefs and leechers".
Privacy erosion has become a huge issue of late, and all I'm asking is that people start to respect privacy again.
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Normally, I agree. I like to keep many of my profiles on various web sites hidden or restricted.
Not on Steam though. If I see a private profile, my first instinct too is that the person has something to hide, which in a community where money can frequently be exchanged in some form among the members is a huge red flag. I can understand keeping the inventory out of view, restricting profile comments, but keeping the entire profile hidden is just a sign to be very careful.
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Thanks for clarifying that. I find it a little insulting when someone says that all people with private profiles are
scammers anyway.
I have my profile set friends-only, because Steam collects way too much data anyway. I also block out my steam client
via firewall whenever possible and use offline mode a lot to make sure they don't gather more information than is good
for them. Sometimes it can't be avoided, though, that I have to go online for updates, to register new products, farm cards
and so forth. My point is, it's bad enough, that Valve knows exactly which games I have, when I bought them and don't
intend to share that information with just everyone. What I play, when I play it and what games I got is none of anybody's
business.
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And that is your right, but you have to accept the fact that Steam is now as much of a social site as a game store. And as a social site, it acts like a real community. And in real communities those who stay in their flats all day and never mingle with the others will always be suspicious in the eyes of others. So you either accept Steam's social status and mingle with the crowd or stay cooped up but accept that people will consider you a strange person they won't likely want to do anything with.
The good thing is that no other game stores are like this, even the more open ones like GamersGate or GOG. One can safely stay private there as much as they want.
Oh, and happy sweet pastry occasion! Have a nice VirtualCookie™ to celebrate. ^.^/
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Suspicious is one thing, you may be suspicious all you want, that's entirely up to you. I just don't like to be called a scammer and
a thief upfront, and that giveaways need to be protected from the likes of me. All because it's important to me that I don't
share my favourite games and personal gaming hours with the rest of the world wide web.
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Only because you see that into it. Same as OP. You could also change that view into thinking that it is just another requirement. As some people may say you are only eligible to enter for their giveaway if you join a certain group or spent a few dozen or hundred bucks on this site, others can say that you are only eligible if you share your basic Steam information.
Like how you are required to give certain personal info for other prize raffles made by other companies, including real name and postal address. Some people are not comfortable with it, but it is their choice not to enter, as it is not forced upon anybody, nor it is some legal right to be able to enter a raffle without any form of payment, be it money or doing some requirements.
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you need to remember thats outside of Steamgifts rules, and therefore is on a gray area
whats next? your first born child for a chance?
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So are all the rules of Archi's Touhou Giveaways group, yet you don't see people parading around his recruitment threads saying their rights are felt violated.
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private groups were designed to be self-regulated by who created them, we are talking about forum GAs and generally public GAs
whats next? "you cant join if you have a tumblr profile?"
inb4: you cant join if you are black, mixed, or tall
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Well, SGTools giveaways are also private giveaways. Would it be better if people post all of them in one thread to make it feel more like a group? :)
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There is no grey area about limiting who chooses the criteria that you use to determine who to give your invite-only giveaway link to. It is purely the giveaway creator's decision and nobody other than those chosen to legitimately receive the link are permitted to enter by Steam Gifts rule.
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Fair enough. However, those company raffles you mention, usually don't go ahead and
call everyone who doesn't enter due to privacy concerns or voices that kind of opinion
a scammer and a thief.
It's the attitude that leads to the requirement, that bugs me more then the requirement
itself. Better nip it in the bud, or it might get out of hand, just like all that social media
madness. :-)
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I don't recall anyone calling them a scammer and a thief besides OP taking it that way. All that ever was sad that scammers and thieves like to hide behind private accounts. The opposite, that a private account always means such people was never said to anyone, and, frankly, the more I read OP's answers, the more I feel it is more about throwing a silent temper tantrum for being denied a few giveaways than actually trying to inform people.
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Maybe not directly, but this one comes pretty close to it:
(quote Dyna18): "Whenever I see a private profile, my first thought is 'this is probably a scammer'.
And unfortunately there is a big need to protect our giveaways from scammers, thiefs and leechers."
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I personally don't see problem with having an open profile. Just make sure you don't put any personal data anywhere and you should be fine. Sure people can see what games you own, but is that a big deal? As said before, to counter beggers or scammers, you just shouldn't accept everyone who invites you.
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Other people have their own views of what constitutes a problem, and they're not always wrong. Just sayin'!
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privacy on internet ? yea...
want privacy here ? dont enter
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Using a private profile is also a countermeasure against scammers. If they can't see what I have, they won't bother scamming me.
I leave my profile public, though.
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They will still see lots of "expensive" games, and some will start begging "yu hev da mony", "buy me dis", "buy me dat". ლ(ಠ_ಠლ)
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Precisely, the Steam community is not one I trust to have sniffing around my stuff...
EDIT: nor web crawlers, etc.
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Aaaand that's why you ignore blind friend requests and set your comments to friends-only.
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Or accept the friend request when they are shown online and immediately enter chat and ask why did they add.
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Ehhhhhhhh. If they're someone worth adding, you can check the relevant sites real quick.
For example, if they're not part of an accepted barter.vg offer, and they haven't said anything on sg about needing to add me, I'm not going to waste my limited time and energy bothering to sleuth out who they are and what they want, even the most likely result of them being a scammer doesn't hold true.
Put simply, it's disrespectful and I have no need to burn myself out trying to respond to that.
But, that perspective aside, sure, you could do that..
..though you'd have to not be one of the people that thinks blind invites are safe to trade with, for that to work out well. -.-
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Well, this way I found out a few people who wanted to have my reviews on their activity wall, so a simple question can yield unexpectedly welcomed results. :)
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I think it's more a matter of my circumstances limiting my ability to divert attention to such things- though even in other circumstances, I'd still have the expectation that my time and focus would be more valuable spent elsewhere.
I suppose it's a type of gamble, in the end- and I'm not really known for that behavior.
so, may not be a 'best'/'worst' thing (so long as you're properly cautious, of course!), but just a difference in perception of risk/reward and cost/gain. :)
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My scams are legendary.
You are right to exclude us scummy bottom dwellers from the bountiful world of Steamgifts...
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Have you tried opening your profile, logging out of SGTools, deleting the cookie and logging in again?
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I jumped through a few hoops like that (didn't delete any cookie, l though - I assume the anti-cheat measures won't be fooled by manipulating client-side data), and asked the sgtools maintainer what the correct way to do it was, but he appears too hostile to privacy to help.
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Then maybe knsys should add an option to refresh/delete the cache for users with private profiles.
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That may be a solution, and in fact I think I remember him mentioning that as a possibility.
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SG part shouldn't be possible to refresh because one guy could mark all his giveaways as not received to pass majority of checks.
Steam part can be refreshed I think, I can't think of any abuse reasons at the moment.
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Thanks for explaining. That's quite a nasty way to abuse the system.
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If you respect the privacy of others, I urge you not to use sgtools to create giveaways until/if this is resolved.
is the tool bypassing privacy settings? :|
in any case, knsys should make it public that those are limitations of the tools and probably nothing can be done. if people with private/friends-only profiles want to join sgt GAs, they need to set to public.
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As I said, I will set my profile public for a minute for sgtools to get the information it needs (if that worked), but any longer and I feel that my privacy is violated.
EDIT: yes. sgtools cacheing makes it fail to see when my profile is public
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i think it's a necessary evil... having people syncing their accounts on the fly to enter sgt gas without meeting the requirements would defeat the purpose of the tool. just imagine everyone marking their multiple and unactivated wins as not received and entering.
i don't think you can have both, private profiles and enter sgt gas.
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If it has to be that way, fine, but make it very clear to giveaway creators who they're excluding.
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Haven't used it to create any giveaways yet but I really don't see an issue with it. As much as some people might say it's there to give creators more options the whole thing ultimately comes down to excluding people.
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it's there to give creators more options the whole thing ultimately comes down to excluding people.
It's actually the opposite. SGTools allows me to safely create giveaway without level restriction and not have to suffer the consequences (e.g. reroll every other giveaway). As such it allows me to include way way more users. 81 of my last 100 giveaways where Level 0 thanks to SGTools. Previously I had to use Level 5+, and even that wasn't as safe as using SGTools with Level 0.
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People who haven't used the tool or aren't prudent with checking violators usually point out exclusion but to us it's really just the convenience of not having to re-roll 5/9 of your giveaways.
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Sure you can look at it that way but I've just created a giveaway to check the options and by design they all exclude groups of users. I'm not saying thats bad or that it doesn't make giveaways eaiser/safer but it does that by excluding users.
http://www.sgtools.info/giveaways/5730d650-b3a7-11e5-83c7-0663045ed9e8
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Of course you can configure very restrictive filters, but I personally prefer to only check for unactivated wins and nothing else. This way I can reach far more users than I ever could with Level 5 giveaways, and I almost never have to ask for a reroll :-)
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I'm experimenting with some SGT settings.
I tend for bundled games to set the reqs as: all games activated, no multiple wins and no VAC bans.
For non bundled games I use the same three reqs above + real CV won/gift ratio of 1.00
However I still put CV level to 3 and 5. Maybe I could try it your way and drop the CV level.
When using CV levels I have had bad boys/girls (non-activating and/or multiple wins) ranging from CV level 0 up to and including level 6.
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Are there no potential issues / false positives with VAC bans? If not, then I may add this check to my filter.
I decided to stop auto-filtering for multiple wins because some people who have reformed and did everything they can to clean up their profile still can't get rid of those because the original giveaway creators are not reachable or decide not to co-operate. I do check for multiple wins manually for every winner, but want to be the one deciding how to act, not let an automated tool categorically block everyone with multiple wins.
I prefer to give non-bundled games to my whitelist or groups, though I did give a few non-bundled games in the beer and homebrewing quiz. I plan to do the same for the coffee and homeroasting quiz, once I get a chance to actually spend the time to write it. I already bought the gifts, hopefully they don't become bundled by the time this quiz is out...
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I hear that very few VAC bans are false positives and that those users were unbanned. For me a VAC ban is something that shows an indication of a certain cheating mentality as I have also experienced during trading and especially those users with multiple VAC bans.
Cheaters ruin the online experience of a lot of other users and the step to scam someone in a trade isn't that far-fetched for a cheater.
Number of banned and unbanned (=false postives) users
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I agree, I've started again making lvl 0 giveaways, but it's isn't a definitive tool, on a giveaway I'm running right now, looks like someone entered bypassing the sgtool link, so the link got leaked. I'm going to ask the user where he got the link from.
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+1; not long ago I had to reroll a public level 7 GA because the winner had won 4 times the same game ( and I'm not talking about a mistake when he started, it wasn't that long before) and of course since it was a little more than a month, it got denied. I couldn't believe it...
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It got denied because more than 1 month passed or because the user was already suspended? I've never had the former, but possibly that because I always file it as Other if more than 1 month had passed.
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Yeah even if it's more than a month I usually still ask for a reroll just in case, but I mean a level 7 user who won twice a game and then again four times another one (the last win being november 2015). It just really surprised me to see a high level user doing something like that... Although I guess it shouldn't. Would be really nice if some of the SGtool were standard features on regular SG's GA.
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From the post you linked, it seems that only applies when people check for unactivated games. When your profile is private it cannot check what games you own, just like you have to make your profile public to sync with SteamGifts. If you want to enter a giveaway behind that wall then just momentarily set your profile public as you have to do with SG (caching issue aside), otherwise people with unactivated wins could just make their profile private to enter the giveaways and completely defeat the purpose of that check.
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Read the bit about that not working due to the cacheing issue...
Yes, sgtools being able to automate checking for unactivated wins is very useful, but with the current implementation privacy is collateral damage!
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I did, I just only gave it a brief mention. I don't know how caching helps circumvent some forms of cheating, but if that's what you've been told then I'm sure it does in some way.
But! There may be a potential solution. If people want friends-only privacy (as opposed to completely private) then theoretically there could be an SGTools bot that you could add and the tool could check through the eyes of that bot. Friend slots are limited so it'd have to be a card-set donation driven thing to scale.
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or it could add people on request, check, then unfriend after 10-20 minutes (enough to enter the ga).
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If you can't accept having a public profile, accept that you will need to live without entering some giveaways. Just as they should accept that some users might wish to have a private profile, you need to accept they choose to limit their giveaways to keep out less than worthy users, and your private profile isn't always going to work well with the tool used.
I accept there are legitimate reasons for a private profile, though beggars going after me is something that rarely happens. Haven't had one all year.
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I accept that I won't be able to enter giveaways by creators who explicitly don't want non-public profile users to enter, but right now it's just silent fallout from using sgtools.
So long as there are legitimate reasons to have a non-public Steam profile (and I can only think of my own, not those of other people), and SteamGifts itself works just fine with that, it's unfair for those users to just be collateral damage.
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You want the positive, you have to deal with the negative. Its staying that way. Private profiles can't be scanned to ensure games are activated, and there isn't going to be a change to SGTools to give them a free pass because then everyone that wouldn't meet requirements would just go private profile.
You aren't getting what you want while denying the wants of others.
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You're completely missing the bit about how sgtools currently is unable to verify my profile for giveaway purposes even when I open it at the appropriate time for a scan (like I do to sync it with SteamGifts, often several times a day so that it knows exactly the state of my owned games).
Also, I'm in no way trying to deny any wants of others; quite the opposite. Giveaway creators can exclude me for whatever reason they want; but they have to want it and not for it be an "accident".
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+1 to Sighery and Delta
I take OPs post as object of frustration (just from my POV)
SGs is not some commonwealth portal that should provide equal access to everything for everyone (that's the one of the reasons for
lvl requirements, groups etc - and that doesn't works always - I was denied reroll more than once for ppl with multiple wins because it happend more than month ago, and I'm small time gifter)
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I've dotted some of my reasons throughout this thread, such as here and here; you could call it grief avoidance (I know, proper grief avoidance includes avoiding opening cans of worms...).
However, what I'm trying to impress on people is that not everyone's needs or abilities are the same, and that we should be aware of and have respect for each other's differences (so long as they fall within certain social norms).
Some people think that's me just lecturing about unimportant stuff (to them); fair enough, but at least I've made my point.
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What's the answer to all of those questions when you consider "What can anyone else do with that information when combined cleverly with the the rest of the data they've gathered from public sources?"
One seemingly innocuous piece of data can provide the missing link to piece together more ("aha, this incomplete profile for someone who plays these ten games on Steam fits nicely with this other incomplete profile of someone who reviewed the same ten games on this other site" - not likely as simple as that, and a lot of data-crunching over millions of incomplete profiles is involved, but you get the picture).
I've read this on the internet, so it must be true... (I'm also a former computer professional; there, crunch that data point, EvilCorp!)
Actually, I'm more worried about the ways of combining all that data in ways I haven't yet thought of (the data will still be there when I or the black hat has thought of it).
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Oh come on now, I said I was simplifying for illustrative purposes! (Yes, it does involve linking together billions of pieces if you want to end up with something useful; that just takes compute power and clever algorithms.)
It's not that sgtools doesn't suit me (it's an incredibly useful tool if the kinks can be ironed out), it's that it's currently excluding people other than those it's meant to be excluding (so far as most people who use it are concerned), and there's little awareness of that.
I've stated repeatedly that I have no problem with people having a tool which helps them to exclude non-public profiles knowingly and on purpose.
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This third party unofficial unsupported by steamgifts tool is 2 clicks away from: like on facebook, retweet, join a certain group etc. If that's what users want let em have fun.
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You like drama eh? Nice thread title you got there.
As others has already told you, there is a obvious reason to consider private profiles as violating not activated rule and that is that with a private profile the tool (and in fact anybody) can't check your owned games, so letting you in without checking is a really bad idea since you could always turn to private profile and hide your not activations.
About the sync not happening when you want, we are on the same case, to avoid people that try to tamper their results to hide their tampering. Right not if they do cheat, we have some time to catch them with proof and try to permaban them from steamgifts. There are other options, but it's on the hands of support team (I created a ticket some weeks ago in order to know what info they need, but I still got only silence). When I get the feedback I could implement an anytime resync with the proper logging to ban the abusers.
There is no need to stay private on a game site where nobody cares about your profile, but if you're still paranoid with it, I'm sorry but "Not activated" rule will always flag on you.
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Nowhere have I said that I don't want sgtools to be able to check what games I have activated. That's clearly a very useful function.
Your "no need to stay private" is your opinion, which you're free to have, but I and others definitely don't share it.
And I don't like drama, I just like people to have the knowledge they need to make informed decisions.
FOOTNOTE: privacy is basic right, protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as agreed to by all civilised countries
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So is speech but I can still tell you what you can and can't say on my property and if you choose to ignore it, I can have you ejected. Privacy works the same way. You can play by the rules of the private entity you wanna play with, or you can not participate in those who's rules you disagree with.
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So long as the rules are clear, there's no problem with any of that. The issue is that sgtools is currently excluding non-public profile users without that being made explicit.
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The rules are clear: No nonactivated wins. If SGtools can't check and verify, then you can't enter. Plain and simple. As far as I'm aware, SGtools has always had this problem with private profiles, and it's well known.
There are no "human rights violations" here. That's entirely in your head and is clearly rooted in the idea that you have a right to enter private, protected GAs with a private profile. You don't.
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That's a good point. I agree it should be made explicit. But my hunch is that this would achieve the opposite result of what you probably desire - I think it will encourage more people to use SGTools.
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It's perfectly fine to consider non-public profiles as too much hassle (I'd prefer you didn't, but it's not up to me!).
This thread is about being able to specifically decide on that as a giveaway creator, instead of excluding non-public profiles as a side effect of another decision (e.g. the, also perfectly reasonable, one to use sgtools to filter those with unactivated wins).
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I guess I don't understand how you're equating a publicly available profile with privacy mv. I'm a proponent of both btw, and to me privacy is a matter involving personally indentifiable information being viewable online. But with a Steam profile, you choose how much of this you wish to provide (which can be none at all). So how is it impacting you from a privacy standpoint exactly...? All anyone can see is a random username with games. So I'm at a loss to understand what you specifically object to when it comes to your profile being seen by others. Mine has been "public" all along and I've never run into any issues as far as privacy goes...at least my definition of it.
Really, the only legit reason i can see for wanting a closed profile is scam attempts...but even then all that means is a few bogus friend requests per week which can easily be blocked. This privacy argument eludes me, and the fact of the matter is that those with private profiles are inconveniencing GA creators for some phantom reason here I feel. Just my two cents : )
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Due to data mining and the ability to automate the tieing together of apparently innocuous data points, I'm more and more wary about exposing any data I don't need to. And this is from someone who's still in the phone book and has in the past used my real name online everywhere! (I guess the difference is that I'm now somewhat frail due to poor health and classed as a vulnerable individual, and I already get way too much spam and unwanted phone calls due to being so open in the past.)
While you may be able to cope with the results of an open Steam profile, there are those who might find it more difficult.
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Alright I see the point you're getting at with your past experiences and such...but again...when it comes to Steam there's very little meaningful data points to tie together on your profile if you don't include them yourself in the first place. The personally indentifiable info is always hidden. Honestly, I'm a lot more concerned with hackers somehow getting into Steam's database than I am with a public profile. This is how real privacy breaches occur out there.
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I used to have private profile, but resign from it due to requirement of syncing with SG. I have my inventory set to private and comments as private.
I decided that I don't have any kind of personal info there (apart from my country origin) so there is no way that someone from real world will connect me with my steam account (I have in my friends one person I know and my brother). So it's useless to hide, when literally noone cares about my profile.
People don't care about other people idling for hundreds of hours, playing for hundreds of hours in CS:GO, having fat elephant as avatar and "bad rats" as favourite game etc, so why should I care about the fact that people I don't know in real life can see my "virtual personality " with my number of games and wishlist? I fail to see a good reason here, it's not fb where people (most of the tiime) give their real name, surname, adress, age, interests and so on.
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it is possible to connect you to real world through looking at your steam profile thou ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
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I didn't vote because I find the poll poorly worded and confusing. So here's my vote:
Do you think that SGTools giveaways should block private profiles and friend-only Steam profiles?
[X] Yes
[ ] No
As a giveaway creator I just hate to get winners with private profiles, because I have to email them to request that they temporarily make it public so that I can check it for unactivated wins and multiple wins. Too much hassle. In fact, I'm very tempted to blacklist them to make my life easier.
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I'm sorry that you find a basic human right so inconvenient, but you're free to have that choice. Feel free to blacklist me.
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I value privacy, which is why I'm not (and never will be) on Facebook or Twitter, and why I use a different username in every forum I participate in.
Still, you can't ignore the fact winners with private profiles require a lot of hassle if one wants to follow this site's requirement to check one's winners. Why should the giveaway creators be subjected to all this hassle?
I haven't yet blacklisted anyone for having a private profile, but I have to say it's very tempting to do so every time I have to chase them to make their profile public for the checks.
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I ask that you deal with the inconvenience out of respect for my privacy, as I would for you, OR that you decide not to and specifically exclude non-public profiles because of that choice, but not because some other tool happens to implement that as a side effect (or even a deliberate undocumented policy).
sgtools could potentially reduce that hassle, but currently also adds the unwanted side effect.
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It's a desired side effect which actually makes it practical (and easy) to enforce entries with public profiles. Going through the million or so profiles on this site and blacklisting all those with private profiles is completely impractical. In fact, the 1000 users blacklist cap it's not even possible in theory.
And no, just "dealing with it" is easy to say. It's not easy to do. Chasing winners with private profiles takes the joy out of using this site.
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I had one gifter ask me to open up my profile long enough for him to run the sgtools manual check, which I'm only too happy to do, and that worked fine (though I hope changes in cacheing behaviour don't break that ability).
I wholeheartedly support those who wish to enforce the rules this way (I choose to be lazy and just have a quick glance at a winner's SG page, and rarely their Steam profile), but having a non-public profile isn't against the rules, and I hope never will be.
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I'm sorry, but I fail to see why someone that is giving you a game (for FREE) has to deal with the fact that he has to go through a hassle to give it to you. In my opinion you have a choice here: either you accept having an open profile (which really isn't a big deal privacy wise, as was stated earlier), or you can't enter for those GA's.
You're given the opportunity to win games for free, yet you don't want to do anything for it or sacrifice anything for it. In my opinion there should be a option when creating giveaways to exclude those with a private profile, to save the gifter from going through a hassle.
Just to clarify: I'm not against private profiles, but you have to accept that it has its consequences.
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I'm sorry, but I fail to see why someone that is giving you a game (for FREE) has to deal with the fact that he has to go through a hassle to give it to you.
There is an e-mail and an option to attach keys, what's the hassle?
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That isn't the point.
You can't check a private profile for not-activated wins, and many of us do check that before delivering a gift.
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We're actually supposed to check if they own the game before sending it to them.
We're also supposed to check afterward if they activated it, but that's harder to manage and less easy to abuse long-term.
For private profiles, sg staff can and will check for you [just do a reroll request on any private profile user, indicate the reason, and they'll check all the appropriate things for you].
This still creates a lot of extra, unnecessary effort on the part of the giveaway creator AND the volunteer staff, so it's not exactly an ideal situation.
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Point taken, but you and I both know not everyone checks (I didn't when I first started here). ;)
Agreed, too much extra work for the people creating the giveaways, particularly when chasing down a private profile. I've only encountered a handful so far, but they make me cringe a little every time I have to deal with it.
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Point taken
I was trying to support your point, not argue it. :P
As in: Kudos to you for doing it. ~.^
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Sorry, it's 438am, and English is quickly becoming a 2nd language for me at this hour. O.o
I realized you were supporting the thought and I just didn't express myself properly. I meant to say "Good point." :X
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Hey, you're in my time-zone!
Gosh, that 'sleep' thing is sure silly, am I right?
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Unfortunately, I was wrangled into a long conversation on Steam and wasn't watching the time slip away.
I have to work in 2 hours and sleeping now will just make things worse.
Looks like I'll put another pot of coffee on and hope for the best. ;)
I'm in IL, about 75 mins NW of Chi-town, just south of the Wisconsin border, enjoying the wintry weather
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If it makes you feel better, coffee puts me to sleep- the only thing I've ever found that works as a stimulant is 1: 2 boxes of donuts and an entire bottle of mountain dew, consumed within 30 minutes (And since I am no longer 12 and clearly suicidal, that's off the table- nevermind that about 40 minutes later I blacked out into an actual 'sugar coma', so, y'know..not an ideal method for staying awake anyway) or 2: energy drinks, but I have adverse reactions to those.
so, hey- drink that tasty, tasty cup of coffee and think how blessed you truly are.
And try to hold on to that thought when you're standing glaze-eyed and drooling when the sleep-dep kicks back in mid-day. :'P
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Well, things worked out for the best. I was supposed to put some cabinets in for a buddy today, but when I called him to get started, we both decided this weekend was better for both of us.
Sleep accomplished! :D
I have a similar reaction (as you do with coffee) with most opiate based pain-killers. Not sure if it's an allergy or not, but they make me hyper rather than weary. Sadly, I'm addicted to energy drinks (Monster in particular), but coffee will have to do, as it's much too cold to venture out for a Monster. ;)
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I absolutely love the taste of energy drinks [the discontinued ( :'( ) Von Dutch being far ahead of the others], but, y'know. They always come in huge double-serving cans and if you can only sip on it, it'll spoil before you're even a bit through. :(
Could be nice if opiates stimulated me, I'd have a lot more energy every day.. :X
Gratz on the Achievement Unlock: Did the sleep :)
I think I blacked out shortly after my last comment, as well :'P
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I certainly can't argue.
Having vetted private users in my PosTho group when they entered it, I'm reasonably confident in their validity, though it's still a hassle to run that check each time.
For anyone else.. well, sgtools saving us the hassle of checking private profiles isn't a disfavorable part of its design. :P
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As I've already said, I have no problem with people who KNOWINGLY wish to exclude non-public profiles.
By the way, if you check me out, you'll see that I'm hardly a freeloader...
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You should be proud with your steam profile. Why make it private?
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Well, before I emptied my blacklist, I were going to add winners with private profiles there. So, I kind of like this feature on sgtools. Why would someone want to hide profile if he did nothing wrong?
I understand when people hide inventory though, it prevent beggars from adding to friends.
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you talk as if privacy equals a crime of some sort. if someone values their privacy, we should not automatically jump to conclusions. not everybody with a private profile has something to hide. some people just don't like to expose themselves on the internet. yes, most people who try to add me with a private profile are scammers and beggars. that doesn't mean most people with a private profile are scammers and beggars.
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I never said they are scammers or beggars. They have a right for privacy. I have a right to blacklist them (not doing this anymore, but still have a right), or filter them out with sgtools. I know some people that don't register on sg, because they don't want to login with steam - that's a matter of privacy too, but it does not mean we must made our giveaways anonymous. It's always a chose of a person, what he wants more - privacy or giveaways.
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i was referring to this statement of yours:
Why would someone want to hide profile if he did nothing wrong?
this kind of implies they are doing something wrong, right? ^^
of course you have every right to distrust anyone. you can do what you want. you can blacklist anyone for your own reasons. totally fine. but i just felt it was necessary to correct you a little bit, because you were implying that everyone with a private profile is shady in a way, and hides something. and i just don't feel that's the case. if we talk about whether it should be possible to use a private profile on sgtools, just like on SG, we should at least not treat private profiles as criminals or whatever. i personally dislike private profiles. but i know some people just like it that way. and i think it's worth thinking about whether we can find a way to allow them to use sgtools.
this is not only important for them. if someone wins one of my giveaways, i always check their profile with sgtools. if they have a private profile, i add them, ask them to make it public for a few minutes and check it then. if that is not possible anymore, because sgtools completely ignores private profiles, this is also a problem for me. it will be much more work to check those profiles for non-activated gifts, multiple wins and so on.
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This only implies that I don't understand their reasons. Sorry if sounded offensive, I didn't meant to.
As for sgtools - I don't think that there is a problem at all. Make profile public, pass the checking, make it private again - if this is too much trouble for entering the giveaway, then probably they don't really want it.
if someone wins one of my giveaways, i always check their profile with sgtools. if they have a private profile, i add them, ask them to make it public for a few minutes and check it then.
This means extra work for giveaway creator. I believe this is disrespect, to give extra work to someone who give you games. That's why I'm against private profiles in my giveaways.
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This only implies that I don't understand their reasons. Sorry if sounded offensive, I didn't meant to.
no offense taken, don't worry. :)
As for sgtools - I don't think that there is a problem at all. Make profile public, pass the checking, make it private again
yes, that would be a reasonable solution for both sides, but i believe the argument is that this doesn't necessarily work anymore (if i understood it correctly).
This means extra work for giveaway creator. I believe this is disrespect, to give extra work to someone who give you games. That's why I'm against private profiles in my giveaways.
i don't mind the bit of extra work, if it's really just adding the guy and asking him to make the profile public for a minute. it's still so much less work than in the past, when we had to check the profiles manually (rather than with sgtools). i don't really see the 'disrespect' here. the other side could argue you disrespect their privacy. ;) SG has always allowed for private profiles, so you could never prevent that in the past. maybe you have a way to do that now, with sgtools. but i personally am fine with private profiles, as long as they are cooperative after they win, when it's time to check their profiles.
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yes, that would be a reasonable solution for both sides, but i believe the argument is that this doesn't necessarily work anymore (if i understood it correctly).
If there is such issue - it should have been reported to sgtools creator, it's not a reason to create topic to accuse it.
the other side could argue you disrespect their privacy. ;)
Well, I didn't forced them to participate in a giveaway ;)
so you could never prevent that in the past.
You could, if moderators approved your rule, but I'm agree, now it's much easier.
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If there is such issue - it should have been reported to sgtools creator, it's not a reason to create topic to accuse it.
he did that before making this thread. nonetheless, i think the important thing is to discuss whether we think sgtools should allow private profiles or not. i think if it's not too much of a hassle, it should.
You could, if moderators approved your rule, but I'm agree, now it's much easier.
huh, did support ever approve such a rule? ^^
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huh, did support ever approve such a rule? ^^
I have no idea, I never made custom rules back then)
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That's true, but if you have a private profile, you should just accept it if people don't trust it. This is the internet and there are plenty of people that can't be trusted. So it might not be fair for those that are honest people that never did anything wrong, but they just have to accept that not everyone trusts people they basicly don't know anything about.
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I think you're a bit overreacting. From the sgtools dashboard: "Your account failed to pass the giveaway requirements, but you can try again when you feel like you are passing them." The site is intended to allow rechecking the requirements. Which means that it will probably be fixed as a bug.
Simply the cache is the problematic part here. It's supposed to be a part of anti cheat system. I think that it was a big mistake to implement it that way, but at the same time the fix shouldn't be a problem. Generally caching results caused by errors is a bad practise because you're unable to retry the action even if it the cause was a one time event. Furthermore in a situation like this if the results are cached a user with some unactivated wins can mark them as not received make a check and mark them immediately as received(at least that way of cheating the system was suggested in this discussion). The cache makes it possible to join multiple giveaways evading only one activation check.
Even if I'm missing something here and in the wider perspective it helps in some way there's still the possibility to distinguish the situations when sgtools finds unactivated games and is unable to perform a check due to private profile. Then it would be possible to cache the results only in the first case, or in both but with far shorter validity time for the second one(if we were misinformed and it was supposed to be a performance optimization).
As for the anti cheat function it would be probably better to cache the SG part of the info and perform a comparison of the wins after a random delay. If some unreceived games then show as received that would be a reason to mark a user as suspicious.
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If you have no problem in people / sgtools/etc checking your activated games, what is there to hide? You don't havr to publicly display and info, you can disable comments, set your inventory to private...
Essentially, you can have a public profile that only shows the games you own, while anything else can be set to private. Steam doesnt require any sensitive info regarding your person to be shown in public, so what exactly bothers you with this solution?
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These days I hide any data I can (see earlier comments). and I make sure I give any site a minimum of information to leak in the first place.
I have nothing to hide from any civilised person; if only those were the only people in the world...
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private profiles are evil and they scare me !
ok not really, but as im a trader i dont really fancy private profiles though (:
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Also a trader here and I agree with you.
Concerning trades I find that someone with a private profile that wants to trade with me more of a scare than a joy.
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While I don't have a private profile myself and I usually see them as a warning sign (e.g. for trading, there are just too many scammers) I want to say that I support your suggestion. As far as I can tell syncing your profile and then making it private again with the site should be enough to enter giveaways just like it is here on SG. Of course that opens possibilities for cheating (like syncing, entering a giveaway for game X, making the profile private and then activating a key for said game) but it's impossible to completely prevent such things and forcing users to permanently make their profiles private shouldn't be the solution.
That being said I do feel like giveaway winners have a certain responsibility towards the giveaway creator. For example if the winner has a private profile and would decline my friend invite I would ask for a reroll. It's always a give and take and while everybody has a right on privacy the giveaway creator also has the right to protect his interests as he is paying for the gift.
Bottom line: I think the way SG handles this is a well chosen middle ground. While the creator of SGTools has the right to implement it at his own will users should at least be informed.
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I agree with every word of that except for the obvious mistake towards the end of the first paragraph, which you've probably now edited so I look silly (and even with the meaning of them all combined...).
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Sorry for making you look silly. ;) I just changed the phrasing a bit, what mistake did you mean?
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By "forcing users to permanently make their profiles private" I thought you meant "forcing users to permanently make their profiles public"... Either you haven't made me look silly yet, or I've made myself look even sillier by failing to read what you wrote properly.
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someone makes a security change to their site. When you inquire about it, they respond rapidly, reasonably, and politely.
-
Within only 10 hours (people do need to sleep and work, you know), create a public, inciting thread offering an inflammatory, one-sided perspective predicated on empty arguments, hyperbole, and attacks on another person's character.
As an added bonus:- Flagrantly and repeatedly misrepresent how human rights work.
- Implicitly give the impression that the security of the giveaway creators and the notable hassle of dealing with private profiles, is secondary to your ability to have your way in contradiction to the expectations of a private organization and its members.
- Don't offer suggestions for how to have things work more favorably for you- rather, paint people as being out to violate your rights, "hostile to privacy", reluctant to assist, and deceptive.
- Though you did finally clarify your intended (and quite reasonable) point, even though it would have been better addressed to sgtool's staff first.
-
???
-
Prof- okay, maybe not.
We can ignore the hostile tone- we all get like that over something or another, at points (and people always think I'm a lot more upset than I really am, so I've little room to argue the matter).
We can ignore the dubious presentation (even if some statements are unreasonable)- we all get overpassionate at times.
But making a public, accusatory thread that in part targets another person, without giving them a chance to properly respond to the matter first, is rather distasteful.
Between the hyperbole and the direction the thread is focused in, it's hard to give your perspective much credibility.
That being said, there is no magic 'make private profiles work one way but only in certain circumstances' effect, so you have to accept the downsides with the upsides.
Profile syncing is in line with sg's core expectations, and anything else is a limitation of sgtools, or something that can be improved over time- assuming sgtools is actually given a chance to address the matters before being publicly reprimanded over them.
and SteamGifts itself works just fine with that:
It does not. There is no way for it to determine your current status if your profile is private.
If it's local caching, you can clear that manually by doing ctrl or shift + F5.
If it's sgtools site caching, your best bet is just to make your account public BEFORE loading the site, since that's when it'd establish a new cache.
If it's asking you to set back to public for every single giveaway, rather than (ex, once per day), then that would make the site rather unusuable, and you ought respectfully first discuss the mater with kyns on how it can be improved.
I fully agree with you about open disclosure, I just don't agree that sgtools had had enough time to address the matter to warrant this sort of response.
Had you been a bit more patient, used less hyperbole, and been less over-the-top with the "omgosh, you hate human rights, blacklist me!", I'd have been firmly on your side on the matter.
Mind you, I don't see the point whatsoever to private profiles on steam, as they don't protect anything worthwhile AND they're a major hassle for giveaway creators AND they're skeevy as heck- but I do respect the perspective of those people who wish to use them, even if I don't understand it.
And not disclosing information is never good: However, in your haste, you have no way of validating that this was intentional, which unfortunately puts all the negativity on you- which you then go out of your way to solidify with your over-the-top approach to things.
tl;dr reiteration: Agree with your perspective, don't agree with your approach.
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Here's a potentially better version of your thread:
3 days after communicating with sgtools staff:
[Notice] or
[PSA] sgtools filtering now excludes private profile users
While not explicitly excluded, private profile users are now unable to reasonably enter sgtools-filtered private giveaways due to elaborate and vaguely-detailed caching issues related to sgtools profile syncing,
How these caching checks work isn't well explained to private profile users, nor is the fact that these checks exist made clear to giveaway creators when making a filter.
I've tried discussing it with sgtools staff, but so far have been unable to get a clear response on if they will make the filters more accessible to private profiles, or even if they'll add explicit mention of the functioning where needed.
Privacy is very important to me, even for something as non-personal as steam, and while I support the use of sgtools filters, I find this exclusion very troubling.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
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I hope the OP didn't miss these last two posts, because they illustrate perfectly what is wrong with this thread and how things could have been handled better. Two thumbs up! :-)
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Indeed, I'm just going to edit my original description to point out Sooth's alternative wording.
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It was certainly not my intention to incite, only to inform and encourage productive discussion, and if I've somehow made any personal attacks I will retract them as soon as I learn of them. Any place my tone can be taken hostile is also unintended.
I thought the sgtools maintainer had made up his mind after a reasonable dialogue, and started this thread after sleeping on it, but if you think I was premature, then I apologise (perhaps I should have let him respond to my final suggestion to make giveaway creators aware of the undocumented exclusion).
SteamGifts works fine with non-public profiles in so much as it allows them in principle, and provides a means to open them up for a limited window to provide the information the site needs. This is fair; there ARE lots of people who would cheat the system given the opportunity.
I'd already tried working around the cacheing issues, and asking the maintainer whether there was a proper way, but he flatly stated that sgtools wouldn't support non-public profiles (and has repeated that in this thread). That's his choice, but affects users of sgtools who don't necessarily want to exclude users such as myself (and by that I mean genuine users in otherwise good standing who also happen to prefer not to have a public profile).
I'd actually be fine with opening my profile briefly to enter EVERY sgtools giveaway, as inconvenient as that is (obviously, an easier solution would be better).
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In a time long ago when I accepted a lot of Steam invites those that had private profiles were among the first to try to beg, throw racist and anti-semitic insults at me, scam and/or low-ball me. I don't think all the private profiles fall in those groups but imhpo a lot of them do. And I'm speaking out of 11 years on Steam experience.
Also I think that a private profile on Steam is nearly default seen as bad for not only the above reasons but when a giveaway winner has a private profile it's a hassle to befriend the winner to check if he or her has non activated wins and multiple wins.
I can understand that someone that's using social media would like to have privacy (taking into account that most of those programs "phone home") but on Steam it's something else because there's not much on a Steam profile that needs to be private except one thing and that's the Steam inventory. And that inventory you can make private for everyone even your Steam friends.
Edit: Videos, Artwork and Screenshots can also be set to private or friends only if one so wishes.
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since not respecting the privacy of others when creating a giveaway should be an explicit choice
Ever consider working for Fox news?
An easier way to avoid this is, you know, don't join sgtools giveaways. If you don't like it, don't participate. You keep your privacy the way you want. No one's forcing you to join the giveaway but certain people like you always find ways to complain how getting free stuff isn't hassle free for you and try penalize the givers for doing so.
If you respect the privacy of others, I urge you not to use sgtools to create giveaways until/if this is resolved.
If you respect our right of choice like your right of choice to be more private then you shouldn't have asked this in the first place. You're just trying to find ways to get people to cater to you without respecting THEIR choices. Overall that statement shows how selfish your stance is.
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Fox News is nowhere near as subtle.
Or reasonable.
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I said something like that once on twitter and I was surprised to see there were actual Fox news fanboys trying to come at me. lol.
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It's called the Tea Party. About as useful to argue with people like that as with religious (or Apple) fanatics. Regardless of political side, although the right-wing (as in European terms right-wing) tends to be more liable to do that. But the Murican ones finally ralised the importance of social media and use it. Well, try to do what they normally do there too. ANother reason to not have a Twitter/facebook account, ever.
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The whole point of this thread is to give sgtools giveaway creators an informed choice that they are currently lacking.
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Your wording is no where near offering information. It isn't "Hey this happens when you do SGtools GAs. Be informed." You specifically stated, "In the meantime, I'd like to at least try to make folks creating giveaways via sgtools.info aware of this, since not respecting the privacy of others when creating a giveaway should be an explicit choice (I won't go so far as to say it shouldn't be allowed at all, as much as it irks me!). If you respect the privacy of others, I urge you not to use sgtools to create giveaways until/if this is resolved." That isn't giving an informed choice. You set a condition that "IF we respect the privacy of others, you should NOT use sgtools". You clearly painted that if we do make SGtools GAs, we don't respect the privacy of others. Most people are well aware that people with hidden profiles get a false flag when checking but some people also don't want to bother with those people and ask for a re-roll if they won't cooperate.
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OK, I could have phrased that better, admittedly. I recently added a bit to my description to acknowledge this type of feedback and highlight some alternative wording provided by Sooth.
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In the end entering giveaways isn't a right, it's privilege and sometimes something needs to be traded for it. In this case they opportunity for tool to confirm person's steam profile, If they don't want that to happen they can choose some other giveaway to join.
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Sure, but I've stated that I am happy to let sgtools see my profile in the same way as I do for steamgifts itself, just not to leave it public permanently. Also, I'm perfectly fine with giveaway creators choosing to exclude non-public profiles, but it should be a choice they make.
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It looks you're making a mountain out of a molehill. If I make a sgtools gib, I don't really see this as a big issue. If you have your profile on private, you can always show me your profile and I just might send you the giblink. Sure, it's a roundabout way, but I think a lot of SG users would do the same as me.
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It's admirable that you're prepared to do that (I would to, if I created an sgtools giveaway, but I just have totally open giveaways with not even a level restriction - my choice, and not one that I would even want others to necessarily agree with).
I just wouldn't want to bother you or any other sgtools giveaway creator for that, though, I'll just move on to the next giveaway (except if everyone uses sgtools to create giveaways, with the current state of things I'd be stuffed!).
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I noticed that the other day. I don't enter giveaways but I sometimes try to view them. Would be nice if the SG site integrated the functionality of SGTools.
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To be honest, what privacy? I have my full name (quite common in my country) and my country on my profile.
People can see what do and did play with, showcases, and anyone can comment on my profile, while I have 1300 games. Do you know how many beggars found me? 0. Do you know how many offensive comments I did got? None, just only one guy who seemed so random he was probably drunk ( "-rep Not a susan boyle fan. #Winteriscumming" and "-rep spends all his summer writing reviews on games that dont exist."). I write decent reviews instead of jokeish 11/10 would play again types, I try to have friendly friends instead of mates who spam childish things on my profile - and it works!
I know we work differently, but almost noone is as important as they think they are. There are no people watching over my profile, collecting info about what do I play. Also, how would that info be beneficial for anyone? Even more, how could that hurt me? I'm not doing any private chat on profiles, I do that in private chat.
I'm not again private profiles, but THIS is why people with private profiles are shady - hiding game time on random "group-bots" to make them seem legit while they are phishing zombie-profiles, and things alike. As basically any people who follows me for a day in my city could get way more personal info about me (where do I keep my wallet, personal habits, address, good description of me) I can't really be bothered people seeing my games :)
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/sigh Always miss the interesting stuff :/.
Former trader here so never understood private profiles myself. The information that your profile shows is more or less useless if you are scared of the boogieman and the only use of private mode that I see is a public "leave me the fuck alone" status. To each their own I guess but this complaint is a bit silly. If you want to stay private, accept the fact that you will be restricted from entering certain gibs.
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I'm entitled to my paranoia...
I'm fine with not entering giveaways where the creator chooses to exclude non-public profiles.
I'm not fine with being excluded as a side effect of someone using sgtools to filter out people who actually break the rules (having a private profile isn't against the rules).
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But one is not able to check users for rule breaking unless they are public and thus by extension, are willingly blocking private users by using this tool. Can't have your cake and eat it to :D.
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I bet that far more than 90% of sgtools giveaway creators aren't even aware that they're excluding people other than those who break the rules, or additional criteria they specify for their giveaway.
If they do so knowingly, that's fine. Hence this thread, trying to get that 90%+ down a bit.
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If you respect the privacy of others, I urge you not to use sgtools to create giveaways until/if this is resolved.
That's not how it is at all!
It's not facebook or instagram, it's steam. There isn't anything on one's profile except games they play and their screenshots. And if people are using it for showing their personal pictures or videos, they obviously haven't heard of social networks.
I mean like many other people whenever I see a private profile on steam, I know they're either scammers or if i'm redirected to their profile via SG, I know they're cheating the system somehow.
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Some people just don't want their irl friends to see that you've played 300 hours the last two weeks while you should've been looking for a job. Some people, not all are scammers.
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Why? What's wrong with letting your irl friends know that you're a no lifer?
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Not even my friends get to be my Steam friends... Or they wouldn't if I had any. (SteamGifts gifters get to be my Steam friends for just as long as they need to be.)
The reason: privacy erosion caused by the data mining and inter-linking of every last piece of available public data.
This is the reason that Facebook, etc. are a danger even to people without accounts there, through data about you shared by people who do have accounts. (By "danger", it's usually only as bad as getting annoying marketing crap, but there are actually worst case scenarios where such leaked analysis can be very harmful indeed). I don't care how likely or otherwise any of this may be, but I do what I can do increase my odds of avoiding the grief.
For those of you staring at the loony in the tinfoil hat, fair enough, but actually think about it some time.
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I've resigned myself to not having any privacy on the internet. It's just a sad fact anymore, but unfortunately private profiles aren't going to be all that useful forever. With the number of breaches, leaks, and (most recently and relevantly for our community) caching errors (seriously, Valve?) any data on the net is basically available given enough interest, time, and effort.
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I won't give up my privacy without a damned good fight.
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The easy way to fix this would be to have a profile on friends only, the SG Tools creator could then create some bots that can pull information from members profiles, the friends only people then friend the bots... problem solved :D
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There is a cap on the number of friends on can have on their list. One would either have to feed the bot a ludicrous amount of cards/games to boost its lvl for more slots or have a shit ton of bots to compensate. Either way, this is not going to work :/.
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That solution might not work, but no harm in anyone suggesting alternatives in case it inspires one that does.
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It blocks out rule breakers and allows creating Level 0 giveaways without worries. The end results is that far more users get access to giveaways. As mentioned earlier on this thread, I switched from Level 5 giveaways to Level 0 thanks to SGTools. Do you see this as a bad thing that excludes users?
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Yeah, I have no interest in these rules and am not likely to use them (other than as part of something like "high level appreciation week" or a similar initiative). In general, blocking out rule breakers is the main value I see in SGTools-filtered giveaways.
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Thankfully we have guys like "knsys" who help us (GA Creators) make our giveaways available for the right people,just saying :-)
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....gähn
a) besser hättest du deinen Nick nicht wählen können !
b) Junge,du mußt auch die Meinung anderer Leute akzeptieren auch wenn sie dir persönlich nicht in den Kram passen ^_^
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- Trefferquote "silly"
albern
silly, foolish, ridiculous, inane, fatuous, giggly
dumm
stupid, silly, foolish, dumb, dull, thick
blöd
stupid, silly, daft, dopey, idiotic, dense
läppisch
silly, footling, fiddling
närrisch
foolish, mad, silly, scatty
zickig
silly
tölpelhaft
silly, foolish, oafish, gauche
passt doch zu dir :)
2.Du weißt schon,das dies ein öffentliches Forum ist und dein Wunsch niemals in Erfüllung gehen wird ? Wenn ich mich recht errinnere bist du es ,der seit unserer ersten Begegnung immer wieder versucht
a) die Meinung anderer nicht zu akzeptieren,sie falsch darzustellen oder sie einfach für überflüssig zu erklären,weil sie DIR nicht gefallen !
b) die Leute davon abzuhalten,SG Tools zu benutzen,deren Funktionen auszuprobieren oder die Möglichkeiten,die SG Tools bieten,generell "schlecht" zu reden nur weil DU diese Funktionen nicht benutzen willst !
Warum glaubst du,machen plötzlich so viele SG User Gebrauch davon ?
c) > Verständlich ausgedrückt? Nein? Okay: Antworte mir einfach nicht mehr. Sache erledigt.
Solange du mir ständig neue Munition lieferst,läßt sich das wohl nicht vermeiden,sorry :-)
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What's the problem of limiting a GA to those who haven't won more games than they ever played in their life? :)
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I would just like to point out that giveaways are not the only (or even, in my experience, the primary) use of SGtools; it also scrapes profiles and compares them to libraries to verify that wins are activated. While you might think SGtools giveaways are unfair, I appreciate being able to check my winner's profiles quickly (of course, with personal review to verify) and request reroll in the case of rule violations. SGtools giveaways offer preemptive chances to screen users, and some people create special giveaways for users with better stats that they normally wouldn't create. I would never create a public level 0 giveaway for some of the stuff I give away, but I might do a "public" SGtools giveaway with filters for rule violations and ratios perhaps. It's not like SGtools necessarily reduces the numbers of giveaways people can enter, it just filters who can enter what and, if used properly, provides a versatility that enhances the functionality of SteamGifts.
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To the wonderful SteamGifts community, a wee word if I may...
A recent change in the implementation of sgtools.info means that giveaways created with it are likely to exclude entry by those with a private or friend-only Steam profile.
sgtools generally helps people automate checking SteamGifts policies or additional policies of their choosing for giveaways, but this is a serious divergence from SteamGifts policy (i.e. SteamGifts has no problem with private or friend-only profiles, so long as the profile owner opens it up for just long enough to sync at least once a week). and it seems to be currently implemented without the knowledge of the giveaway creator (I've just asked the sgtools.info maintainer to at least make it clear that this is happening).
In the meantime, I'd like to at least try to make folks creating giveaways via sgtools.info aware of this, since not respecting the privacy of others when creating a giveaway should be an explicit choice (I won't go so far as to say it shouldn't be allowed at all, as much as it irks me!). If you respect the privacy of others, I urge you not to use sgtools to create giveaways until/if this is resolved.
I would have no problem if I could just open up my profile long enough to enter one of the affected giveaways. but apparently this isn't possible due to some cacheing implemented by sgtools (partly as an anti-cheat mechanism, I'm told). The sgtools maintainer is reluctant to even tell how long you would have to keep your profile open to allow the cache to expire, but it's apparently longer than a minute and shorter than two days.
Thanks for listening, and feel free to use the poll to help gauge the community's feeling about this.
EDIT: some folks find my wording to be a bit one sided, and Sooth has suggested an alternative.
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