Friend Request Spamming Issue

[AOD_SK451]

Lately I have been getting a lot of random friend requests from new and private accounts on steam for the last month or so. A few of the people I know on steam have been getting them as well. I'm sure this is not a new issue, and I'm sure that others have had a similar issue.

I never accepted any of these requests since I only accept requests from people I know, however, there has to be another way around this (Blocking/Reporting as they occur).

I believe that many of these are an attempt to hijack accounts. I have already seen 2 friends of mine have their accounts hijacked as a result of this. So far only 1 of them has gotten their account back and only after 3 weeks of waiting (Loosing all inventory items in the process).

As far as I know, you can not send a request without owning at least 1 game on steam, perhaps there could be a way to further limit friend requests and deter people from spamming them to other users in an attempt to hijack accounts or whatever else they are trying to gain access to.

I'm posting this in the hopes of further bringing this issue to Valve's attention and to possibly come up with new ideas to prevent it in the future.

If you have experienced this issue, please feel free to post about it as well as any suggestions you may have.

PS: In the time of writing the original post I have already gotten 3 request.

[Zorzu]

I also noticed a influx of these random requests. Usually some new account set to private who wants me trade with them through a link.

I havn't noticed a huge amount only about 4-5 in a few months.Some of my friends also have this same issue.

The first time i noticed this the account was not a level one but it asked me to trade with its friend who later added me (I had reacuring messages seemingly sent by a bot which didn't stop tell i blocked them).

Havn't had one in a bit seemed to slow down when i get off games that are active on the steam market place. tf2 for example.