Suggestion: Steamgifts should not share users email adresses with people doing a giveaway.

Maybe 99.9 percent of time it would not cause a single problem but that single time, leaking people's email adresses can cause harm and it can be really bad.

Think about it; anyone can start a fake giveaway of 500-1000-5000 copies of something, and collect every user/winner's account and email adress.

I think we should stop this practice and never show email adresses.

6 months ago

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Do you want your Steam account's email adress to be showed to people doing giveaway?

View Results
Yes, because it is not a problem. You can share my email adress.
No, because it is a problem. Do not show my email adress.

Use a different e-mail on Steamgifts, not the same one as on Steam. That is a general advise.

6 months ago
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It's not a problem at all. You can use an anonymous number mail service or a separate mail address all together.
Duckduckgo or Mozilla are just two of many proxy services.
No need to view everything in black or white.

6 months ago
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U never know before u register here.

6 months ago
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When you use the same email adress for steam and steamgifts you aren't very smart...

I, as example, use for sg a emailadress that got only created for sites that could spam me. After X years, or when the amount of unwelcome emails get too high, i delete the email adress and create a new one.
Each problem solved in a very easy and fast way.

6 months ago
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It would make sense if cg would enforce mandatory email notification for winning giveaway and consider that email notification enough without needing to contact giveaway winner even if winner is online and entering other giveaways.

6 months ago
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You sending the game key already counts as a contacting them, no need to do anything else.

6 months ago
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You don't need to use the same email address for SG and Steam tho, or at least I use two different ones.

6 months ago
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Oh no not an email address!

<Grabs tin foil hat>

6 months ago
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I use a different one, and I never got any spam from it, on my 11 years here.

6 months ago
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Fully agree, especially now that we're not required anymore to chase down unresponsive winners. I don't see the benefit of exposing email addresses to other users.

6 months ago
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It is required for people using Steam gifts instead of providing keys.
But I agree that addresses shouldn't be revealed anymore when people opt for keys.

6 months ago
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not required for those using steam gifts, can still add people and directly gift/trade to them.

does make inventory gifts more convenient though... just pop in their email and click send.

6 months ago
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As if people wouldn't exist that ignore Steam friend requests. And especially when people are in a hurry during a sale it's necessary to have the option to contact them quickly.

6 months ago
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Except for the "please accept my invite, I'm trying to gift you something" and getting a steam ban for it.

6 months ago
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Well, there are much simpler ways to get emails. It's a good thing Steam never reveals account names though.

The email thing was only ever useful for HB gift links right? But people would just enter the link so the winner can submit it themselves.
Yeah there's really no benefit to revealing people's emails, it's kinda weird to have so many of active Steam users. But also it's just an email.

6 months ago
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The email thing was only ever useful for HB gift links right?

And for actual Steam gifts. As in, buy game on Steam and send to email.

6 months ago
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Using different email adress for Steamgifts is not a solution, it is just ignoring the problem.

Ask this, if it isn't a problem that Steamgifts to share your email adress to people doing giveaway, why do you use different email adress?

If you are using different email, then you see and feel there is a problem and trying to dodge the bullet with inconvenient ways which causes more problem of its own instead of running or supporting the campaign to fix the gun problem once and for all.

So I seek your support in this matter. Steamgifts shouldn't share any email adress of any user.

6 months ago
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It's a simple solution for everyone who considers it a problem. Pretty rich (aka absurd) to label that as "ignoring the problem".

6 months ago
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It is not a solution because the problem still exists. The problem is "users email adresses are shared" and you can't fix this problem by using another email adress which is still shared.

Also as I have said, using different email adress for each service and websites is not convenient at all:

Inconvenience 1: You have to create new email, new random password for each and every website and save the info somewhere so you don't lose access. If you lose it, you can't ever access to mail anymore unless you inconveniently link all of them to your main adress or inconveniently link them all to your mobile number as your way of account recovery.

Inconvenience 2: You have to access every email adress you have created regularly so it wouldn't get suspended due to inactivity. If you lose the email adress due to inactivity, you are gonna lose the account too.

Inconvenience 3: Everytime you have to use the service/website or relogging that requires 2FA for security reasons, you have to look up list of accounts and passwords and find which email you have used, then you have to login into your email too to get your 2FA codes.

Convenient solution to this inconvenient behaviour is to use Password Manager softwares which of free/freemium versions are not convenient enough to use and requires monthly subscriptions to use it conveniently. But still, why do we have to find solutions over solutions for own account safety instead of saying "let's not share people's email adress"?

If another service or website does that, which is "sharing information to 3rd party" doesn't matter if selling or giving it away, they should have to get your consent first to do so, otherwise it is illegal activity. If this happens by accident or upon data breach, then it is called leak. And if a person does that to another person by sharing their personal information, then it is called doxing which is illegal too. And we are doing it willy nilly here, letting Steamgifts to share our account information to 3rd party; it doesn't matter which accounts are linked to that email adress. Even if we only use that email adress only to login Steamgifts, let's not do that too, right?

Not sharing email adresses greatly improves our security and saves us from all the trouble.

If you are so against to not sharing email adresses, please you tell us why email adresses must be shared?

6 months ago
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Who said anything about creating a different email address for each service? Your concern was that your address gets shared, so specially for such sites you could use an alternative address.

I already commented elsewhere how I would handle sharing. No sharing if the key option was chosen for giveaways, but shared for Steam gifts.

6 months ago
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new random password for each and every website and save the info somewhere so you don't lose access. If you lose it

At least a different password is highly recommended anyway.

Password Manager softwares which of free/freemium versions are not convenient enough to use and requires monthly subscriptions to use it conveniently.

Have you ever heard of KeePass? Free and open source. Not the most beautiful UI, but simple to use. It's even used within big companies.

You have to access every email adress you have created regularly so it wouldn't get suspended due to inactivity.

Even free email providers offer you to have several email addresses tied to your account, which you can easily check within the app/website. Even better and recommended solution is to have an actual mailbox app (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird on desktop, K-9 on phone) to gather emails even from various providers/accounts.

6 months ago
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Non existent logic for me.

6 months ago
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It is a general advise to use different e-mail adresses for different services.

6 months ago
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Your logic is impeccable. As there's no need to hunt down unresponsive winners any longer I support your suggestion.

Let's hope cg will make it happen this century.

6 months ago
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amen to that.

i'm feeling so rich on data, now...
so.
absurdly.
rich.

6 months ago
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Alternatively you can use email forwarding services and create a Steam Gifts only email address.
SimpleLogin
Addy
Firefox Relay

6 months ago
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Btw your vote is skewed, it's either accepting your "truth" and calling it an issue, or calling it a non-issue because not caring about doing the stupidest thing - using the same email address as with your account.

And yes, it's a minor inconvenience of putting in another email (gasp) and then doing nothing (which in your book equals to "inconvenient ways which causes more problem of its own").

btw adding another email instead of the main one is not ignoring the "problem". It's avoiding.
You can avoid things that you're aware of, but ignoring something means having no action against the thing - because you're ignoring it.

6 months ago
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Sorry for my English. You are right, it is "avoiding" not ignoring. But still we have a possible "fix" here, and I say we should fix it, instead of keep avoiding them and try to teach everyone too how to avoid them.

I think the act of years of avoiding brought us all here. Which I find pretty selfish, to avoid alone and keep quiet. We should make things safe and secure for everyone instead of only for small number of people who learned how to avoid them.

6 months ago
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Email is showed to creator only if you win. So not winning is also simple solution.

6 months ago
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Personally it's not a big issue, that email is just a proxy and it's not like I don't already get sent scam emails to it.

But fairly sure it breaks my countries data protection laws. And just because every user could set up a fake email or a proxy, doesn't mean we should presume every user has the same level of tech literacy to protect themselves. Even if the email itself is secure and not attached to steam, it still just a matter of privacy for some users.

There is currently no reason a users email should be given to another user. In the past steam had a feature for purchasing gifts and sending them via e-mail, but that got removed many many years ago. [Edit: 7 years, slightly less than I thought]. The only purpose now is to contact winners; but they shouldn't actually need an email address to do that. Most websites solved this issue decades ago by sending the email on the users behalf.

TLDR; I don't especially care if my e-mail is shown, but it shouldn't be.

6 months ago*
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Fair enough, I think an easy solution would be to just have a setting so you can toggle whether you want it shared.

6 months ago
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Why u want it shared?

6 months ago
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Well for gifting it can be convenient to use the email so just letting the user decide makes perfect sense.

6 months ago
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I don't like emails being shown. The vast majority of games are sent directly through the site and if there is a reason to contact someone directly, just add them on Steam. I have never emailed anyone on this site and I don't think I have ever received an email from anyone, yet I can go view around 1200 users email addresses right now from my history of created giveaways.

It's not a major concern, but it still bothers me a little.

6 months ago
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Amen, OP. It is quite stupid and outdated to show them.

6 months ago
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Deleted

This comment was deleted 4 weeks ago.

6 months ago
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100%

I dont want to know the real names and the birth year of the users I gift.

6 months ago
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