Also, for what it's worth, you can rate the site's trustworthiness at www.mywot.com (Web of Trust is a well respected site for checking a site's safety and whatnot)
Not that you could really bring the reputation any further down. Looks like he's been at it for quite a while, based on a comment from 2011.
Comment has been collapsed.
First, I do a lot of trading and sometimes random friend requests are people wanting to do legitimate business. How am I supposed to know the difference?
Second, while the friend requests are annoying, the idea that words are being put in my mouth and used without my knowledge is what disturbs me far more. I am a very honorable person, and I consider my good name a valuable thing. I do not appreciate it being misused by someone else in this way.
Comment has been collapsed.
"I love the instant free Steam Wallet Codes. I've been using this in conjunction with Steam trading on steam to amass quite a big Steam Library. Some of the games I get for free are ones that go on sale. I request it for free, and being a good trader I tend to exchange it for something worth more."
How to help you nail this guy
Comment has been collapsed.
I love how much your avatar and this bear's expression fits this thread.
For real though, that sucks man.
Comment has been collapsed.
Wow, you can win so many games!!! So easy too, look at those quotes.
Just following the reference link (2109653) to Prize Rebel.
And/Or report the page to http://www.webs.com/report.htm
Comment has been collapsed.
Ugh...well, this explains everything. I've been swamped in random friend requests for the past week or so too--upwards of five a day, and some of them really quite...odd, like people with profile pages not in English (odd because I'm in the US and don't speak Polish/Arabic/etc!), or people whose accounts were created the same day as the friending. I've rejected all of them, as it's my policy not to accept random friend requests unless I know the person from elsewhere, and even edited said policy into my Steam profile hoping to put a stop to the deluge. Nope. Still more invites.
I Googled a bit, got this thread as the top result, and out of curiosity visited the site you linked...wouldn't you know it, my username's on there too (and a link to my Steam profile), with a testimonial I most assuredly did NOT write. The game the site claims I "won" from them (Mass Effect 2), I legally purchased from Steam years ago and have proof as such.
UGH. Why or how they picked my username I've got no idea. I do have a crapton of games on Steam and a bunch of badges, so maybe they just picked "prominent" users? (Though I'd hardly think of myself as some kind of Steam power user! Seriously, wtf, why me?) Well, this sucks. I've filed a report with webs.com...I'm loathe to give them my phone number, but I want my username OFF that site!
What's the standard practice for reporting sites like this to Valve? Just file a Steam Support ticket?
Comment has been collapsed.
I kind of suspected the other testimonials were fake too. I'm glad you found this post, I was thinking about trying to contact you and the other person later today.
I am not sure that Valve can do anything about this since this site seems to only be using Steam games as an incentive for getting referrals or completing activities (which I expect are the usual surveys, credit card offers, trial subscriptions, etc that are all over the internet). I do think contacting Webs.com is probably a good move. I probably will as well (despite my reservations) if I don't see changes to the site by Monday. I would urge you to contact Prize Rebel (the site which freesteamgifts.webs.com ultimately links to) here like I did.
Also, since writing my post I've sent the site creator a PM through Youtube (no response yet), and left a couple messages on his videos, warning people of his duplicity. Hopefully that will get his attention.
Also, carefully watching one of his videos led me to identifying this profile as one of his accounts.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm glad I found this page too--otherwise I'd still be cluelessly rejecting friend requests left and right. (I was beginning to suspect something fishy was going on somewhere, but had no idea what or why.) I'm not sure about the other poor sap with a "testimonial" on that site, but I'd say odds are good his username/avatar is being used without permission as well. Contacting him might be a good idea.
And yeah, I sent off a message to PrizeRebel just after sending a report to webs.com. Best to cover all the bases and all that. I'm not really sure what Valve could do either, except maybe apply some sort of increased pressure to PrizeRebel/Webs.com/whoever to get the site removed. If the site isn't actually giving out Steam codes/wallet codes though, surely that represents some sort of fraud that Valve would want to stop?
I'm not sure (legal issues are hardly my forte, and I haven't had all my coffee besides), but I may try contacting Valve anyway--or at the very least message a SPUF moderator and see what they think should be done re: contacting Valve. Being essentially impersonated like this really pisses me off.
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh , i just follow the link up there to that site, and immediately i see you , Why did they do that ?, i mean what did they do that to gain what ????
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, I have quite a few games (over 1100 according to my profile I believe, though profile numbers are always a bit inaccurate) so I guess I would make a good success story?
I think people that are trying to get something for nothing don't want to believe that someone actually works hard and buys their own things.
Comment has been collapsed.
so they use you as a bait... to lure other to join their....to join their network or system ?, i glance at their site but i really dont' know how it wokr ( never need to know anyway). That was a fucked up method, but it work i guess . I truly hope you can able to do something about it
Comment has been collapsed.
lol .... i laugh so much at the image when you say that to him while wear a buttler suit
Comment has been collapsed.
It's not free. It takes a long time and effort to win anything better than a <1$ worth bundle game. Where as the idea of that website, is that you are guaranteed to be able to redeem free stuff right a way, not just having a very slim chance to do it.
Comment has been collapsed.
Let's face it, without contributing you're very unlikely to win anything decent. Most people nowadays create group / contributor / private giveaways. Private ones require genuine effort, group usually require regular contribution, just like contributor ones. And if you decide not to contribute, it will take a very long time for you to win anything, and will be wasting valuable time which could be used to earn money and actually buy the games you desire.
Comment has been collapsed.
A person's time is really what they make of it. If I enjoy going through, clicking for a chance to win a few games which takes literally a minute out of my day, then spend some time lurking the forum, how is that a loss? I'm enjoying myself. Clearly you value your time so much that it's money to you, how much have you lost replying to my posts, and entering your 4,371 giveaways?
It really sounds like you're just trying to argue for the sake of arguing. If you want to get into costs for giveaways entering, let's talk about the cost of your computer, your energy and internet bill. Oh, and since you have to eat and drink to live, and live to enter for giveaways, let's count food and water bills too. And since you likely need a roof over your head to protect yourself and your computer so you can enter giveaways safely, your rent/mortgage and insurance are important as well.
Wow, entering free giveaways on SteamGifts sure is expensive! ;-)
Comment has been collapsed.
Exactly, as I said, it depends on how much you value your time. If you go that much into detail, then yes, you're almost right. But this only goes to prove my original post. A single click on a "redeem" button is free, whilst trying to win something on Steamgifts is a long term commitment.
I wouldn't say I've wasted time, as I have won quite a few items. And since I'm a student, I wouldn't have spent the time working extra hours anyway. However, if I had never heard of Steamgifts I would definitely have around 20-40 minutes a day more to do other stuff. I almost feel the urge to visit it every once in a while and spend my points / reply to comments.
Also, I wouldn't call this arguing, it's more of a discussion we've got going on here. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on the matter.
Comment has been collapsed.
You are right that to take full advantage of SteamGifts and win, it is a long term commitment. But your original post said "there is no free shit in this world". Regardless of the time commitment involved, it is still free to win games here. Not a dime has to leave a person's pocket to join SteamGifts and win games, as long as they meet the requirements for joining. You originally made it sound as if there's some special premium to be paid out of pocket to win games around here. The contributor value of course could be considered the premium, but it only gets you into more giveaways, and it's totally by choice. There's plenty of non-contributor giveaways to enter.
I find it funny that my silly comment grew into such a discussion, honestly. I didn't think it would be made into such a big deal.
Comment has been collapsed.
It's not a big deal. I don't even know why we are discussing something that is a personal opinion. As someone below me has said, the games you win were still paid by someone, and again as I said, a long time commitment == requires time == people value time differently. I understand why you consider it free, though.
Comment has been collapsed.
Of course they're paid for by somebody, wasn't trying to imply that they're not. However, ricards tried saying nobody can get free shit. Those who win games on this website are indeed getting free shit. That's the only point I was trying to make.
Comment has been collapsed.
Heh... I feel sorry for you. I had the same happening to me some months ago on a popular website because I gave away some free DESURA keys that a guy wanted to trade for.
I tried about everything: cleaning my friendlist, changing my profile, the URL, etc, but he had my unique Steam ID so there was nothing I could do.
I contacted Steam support about it, and they basically told me that I wasn't exposed to anything so long as my account itself was clean (which was the case). Then he stopped as soon as I found his account and reported him to the Steam support that basically banned him :P. I know it's not really of any help, but I thought knowing that your account can't be really compromised might cheer you up a bit.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well since "tyraarane" brought up googling himself (Welcome to the site BTW), I decided to do the same and found this: http://zhyk.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=408136
Does anyone know what it is about, Google translate isn't doing a great job, it looks like a list of accounts someone is suggesting might be worth attempting to hack or something?
Comment has been collapsed.
Thanks! I'm a she actually, but...there are no girls on the internet, etc.
Anyway. Yeah, the Google translate result is worrying. It translates as "who needs to take, to Brutus" which...doesn't make much sense, but does imply hacking. Well, that's just what I needed, since my name's on that list as well. I have SteamGuard and other security measures in place, but...that's not a paranoia I needed, ever. :/
Come to think of it, I have a couple friends who speak Russian. I'll message them both and see if I can get a better translation and post back here if I get a reply.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ah you're on the same list, weird...
Yeah I looked around the site an a thread "Software for Brutus" seems to suggest "Brutus" means something like bruteforcers or simply hackers.
But yeah it would be good if a Russian speaker could take a look.
Comment has been collapsed.
The super-weird part is that they list the account name as "Tyraa Rane"--which is my username on the Steam forums (the old vBulletin ones), and my displayed name on my Steam account...but it's not the username I use to login to Steam. So if that's a list of targeted Steam accounts they're not going to get very far with just that!
It may have something to do with that SPUF database hacking a while back (in 2011, I want to say?). I've honestly got no idea. Guess I'll just sit and twiddle my thumbs in paranoia until I hear back from my friends.
Comment has been collapsed.
I wouldn't worry about it overly much. Just heard back from one of my Russian-speaking friends, and she had this to say:
"Hmmm, well I must say that what "спс" stands for eludes me, but generally this conversation you gave a link to seems like some dudes up to no good. The responder asked why the OP doesn't have passwords too.
So they're probably incompetent, but you should be aware that your file is being looked at. Changing your password would be wise. But, from what I can see, they've accomplished nothing and don't have any further information."
All they have is usernames (SPUF usernames from the looks of it), no passwords or anything. Probably scoping out potential targets if that, and since it's from almost a year ago, not worth too much further alarm.
Comment has been collapsed.
Спс is the equivalent of thx, simple as that. What they're calling "брут" (i.e brute) is Steam Bruteforcer which is, from what I gather, is an account hacking tool. Though apparently it has become obsolete and/or difficult to obtain since the addition of SteamGuard, hence why the thread has not been updated in a while. That's just my speculation though. In any case, I'd say that by the looks of it whatever interest they had in these logins has long passed so you shouldn't be too worried.
Also don't ever bother using Google Translate when translating to rus from eng and vice versa, being a native Russian speaker even I don't understand the gibberish it sometimes sprouts off (that goes both ways) =P
Comment has been collapsed.
edit; and yes it looks like a account takeover list of sorts..
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, that just makes no sense. "Steam database logins" with just a list of usernames? There's no way they could've gotten my Steam login anyway (I know I haven't been social engineered, and my PC is virus free)...and I see it's from April 2012, and AFAIK no one's ever attempted to hack my Steam account.
Ugh. Like I said in my other comment, I've got some friends who do speak Russian, so I'll see if I can get a non-machine translation from one of them. Maybe it'll shed a little more light on things.
Comment has been collapsed.
well a login without a method of fetching passwords is totally useless...
maybe they scuffled this list up after that hack attempt on steam earlier last year.
but I don't think we have to worry about anything though.
and yeah letting a Russian translate the thing would be beest :3
Comment has been collapsed.
Unless you, say, use the same password for your email as you do your Steam account, and don't have an email account that supports 2-step verification. Then SteamGuard is just an extra loophole for hackers to jump through.
Just saying...there are people out there that security-clueless, unfortunately.
Comment has been collapsed.
My gmail account is way too important to reuse a password with.
I'm not 100% convinced SteamGuard is foolproof, since I've seen plenty of claims by people that it failed them. Of course the claims are likely flawed and the people in question are themselves at fault.
Comment has been collapsed.
nothing created by humans is foolproof. And the cases you just described must be from people who use one password for more than one purpose, so IF they had the same password for both mail and steam then the joke's really on themselves and not SteamGuard.
Comment has been collapsed.
Comment has been collapsed.
Okay--so I heard back from one of my Russian-speaking friends about that site, and here's what she had to say:
"Hmmm, well I must say that what "спс" stands for eludes me, but generally this conversation you gave a link to seems like some dudes up to no good. The responder asked why the OP doesn't have passwords too.
So they're probably incompetent, but you should be aware that your file is being looked at. Changing your password would be wise. But, from what I can see, they've accomplished nothing and don't have any further information."
That's what I suspected, and from further conversations here it seems linked to the SPUF forums rather than Steam accounts (since the username they have is my Steam display name / SPUF username, not my Steam account name). So most likely a false alarm.
Comment has been collapsed.
I did initially search a few of the names to see if they were good accounts or just random and most of what came up was from SPUF, but that could have been down to people's propensity for changing username. It seems they certainly took the names from SPUF then.
Yeah, didn't look like there was anything much to worry about, just nice to know what they are up to. I will just go and log into SPUF though, since I don't think I've been there in some time.
Comment has been collapsed.
maybe you could send an e-mail to CS of webs.com and get the damn thing shut down at least.
I doubt they'll hand out user info though, but he can be bactracked with less legal ways lol
Comment has been collapsed.
Woa, i have no idea a thing like this can be happen, i guess that thing rarely can happen to me, although some time i do receive request from stranger, but rarely
Comment has been collapsed.
I made a thread very similar to this once, it got closed for 'calling out.'
The mods here suck. Wrong place to post this stuff - as much as I agree with you. While this thread isn't closed yet, get proof of his misconduct and I'll happily oblige in the act of spamming his profile with sincere remarks.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, I'm not encouraging anyone to spam his profile or anything like that. I am not a fan of "mob justice", even though I think there is pretty substantial evidence in this case. In the first youtube video on his site (the one where he activates STALKER Clear Sky) you can see his name on GMail (Jackson Ding) and you can also see his Steam account name (sabot00).
I know "calling out" is against the rules but, as far as I know, this person is not a member of this site. I am not discussing any misbehavior related to this site or anything that the mods here can punish. It is not as if I can quietly report him to the mods. For those reasons I do not see this as "calling out".
Comment has been collapsed.
The person I made the thread about also wasn't a member of this site. That didn't stop the admins from closing the thread.
For the record, here's the URL: http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/i1by0/on-ethics-and-morals/page/31337.
I also agree wit the whole mob justice thing. But unethical behavior that goes unpunished only justifies it. Merely closing his account will result in him opening it up again. I wish there was a Hall of Shame website where we could use real names of people who have done wrong.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't understand how you can compare this to your thread.
You posted a chat log, mocked them and then acknowledged that they could have been hacked, but that still didn't distract you from your goal. I'm not sure what your goal was as all you did was post the log and mock them.
The OP here is looking for advice or suggestions on how to handle the situation. I wouldn't even class it as calling out as you can see his profile in his YouTube videos.
Comment has been collapsed.
I can acknowledge myself to have been too emotional at the time. But that doesn't justify censorship. Nothing ever does.
Comment has been collapsed.
And telling people to kill themselves is a reasonable response? You say you hate evil yet that is an evil remark is it not? You, yourself, have double standards which makes you just as bad as the people you sit and judge.
Anyway, in response to your original post, your thread and this thread are completely different.
Comment has been collapsed.
Judging by TeeJaxOff's reply, you had a very friendly rebuttal! Good thing support members can view edited and even deleted posts!
I wouldn't worry about following the rules though, if you intend on keeping that attitude, you won't be around much longer.
Comment has been collapsed.
It will be tough for me to explain because English isn't my native language, but I'll try.
I'll take an old film cliche as example. Take the movie: Jurassic Park. The scientist dreamed about bringing dinosaurs back to life and put them in the zoo. And he did. Its a great idea if you think about it for a short time. But because of its excitement about bringing dinosaurs back to life, he forget what could go wrong and what the consequences could be. Which in this case is that the dinosaurs brake free and start killing humans (and each other).
This is something similar. That made the site (lets call him Scumbag), found a site where he can get free steam games, but he doesn't like to do the surveys. So Scumbag made a plan to make an advisement site that gives visitors an idea that they can get steam games easily for free. And Scumbags links them to his referral page where they register. That way Scumbag gets free games because of all those referrals. But because Scumbag got so excited about his plan he forgot about the consequences about what could happen. He forgot that some one could be mad at him for using his profile without his knowing. Or that people will search for those profile´s in hope to get those free games.
Meanwhile those visitors will find out that those free games aren´t that easy to get. So those visitors are using those linked steam profile to beg for free games. Eventually the owners of those profile pages will know whats going on and start reporting Scumbag.
So, even if some one has an idea what looks really good at the begin. He´s stupid to not to think about what could happen.
Comment has been collapsed.
Your English is profoundly good. With that in mind, it's my third language, so perhaps you can't exactly take my word for it.
Still though, wouldn't that mean that it's their fault for being ignorant? At the end of the day the government won't care if you forgot to file special tax reports for working two jobs, it'll wait 10 good years before sending you a ticket stating that you owe it 900K in taxes (at least this is the case here in Israel) - it is said that ignorance is not an excuse.
Thank you, sincerely, for your descriptive evaluation of your opinion.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ceildric, you may as well report him as a scammer on steamrep. Pretty sure the link on his profile alone is a valid reason.
Comment has been collapsed.
2 Comments - Last post 22 minutes ago by bat0
7 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by adam1224
64 Comments - Last post 7 hours ago by NIDJEL
229 Comments - Last post 7 hours ago by pizzahut
67 Comments - Last post 8 hours ago by Reidor
47 Comments - Last post 8 hours ago by Sinthoras
16,259 Comments - Last post 9 hours ago by ClapperMonkey
44 Comments - Last post 2 minutes ago by Atro
28,194 Comments - Last post 5 minutes ago by jojo1241
45 Comments - Last post 16 minutes ago by Hawkingmeister
37 Comments - Last post 18 minutes ago by CakeGremlin
39 Comments - Last post 33 minutes ago by ELGADO26
709 Comments - Last post 46 minutes ago by Noobdynone
16,744 Comments - Last post 50 minutes ago by MjrPITA
After having 2-3 random friend requests everyday for the past week beginning with strange questions like, "How did you get so many games?" and usually ending with begging, I finally figured out where all of these bottom feeders are coming from.
Apparently, unbeknownst to me, my Steam username and avatar are being used on somebody's website for attracting Prize Rebel referrals. Not only is this person using my identity without permission (as one of his happy customers) but he also has a fake quote on his site too which he represents as coming from my lips.
I have no knowledge of who this guy is, I never have had dealings with Prize Rebel, and I most certainly did not give him a quote for his website. His website is http://freesteamgifts.webs.com/.
Now the issue is, how to find out who is responsible for this and have it stopped. I've tried using a whois search on a few different domain registration and lookup sites, but they tend to either return errors or give me the data on the domain which is hosting his free site. I have also contacted Prize Rebel just now, insisting his account there be deactivated (hopefully removing his reason for having the site in the first place) or else I will explore legal options against him and Prize Rebel.
I will contact the domain providing the free site (webs.com) if necessary, but, their complaint form requires a phone number and presumably that is how they will contact me. I much prefer handle my business by email.
If anyone knows of an alternate way of figuring out who is running this domain, or if you personally just happen to know, please let me know so I can get in contact with this scumbag.
Update:
Carefully watching his youtube videos has led me to identify this as one of his accounts.
Update 2:
Sometime this morning Webs.com was good enough to take down the offending website. I have still not heard back from Prize Rebel or from the individual (I tried contacting him by a few different methods). That all is a bit moot now (though it would of course be a bit satisfying to know his referral account was frozen as well), but I am happy with the outcome.
Thank you to everybody who has provided suggestions, information, and/or support.
Comment has been collapsed.