So why does poeple have ´´hidden`` profiles?

[Sha9A]

I mean if you are a hacker and don't wan't people to see that you are a cheater... well you use hidden profile.
If you suck and don't wan't peopel to see your stats... well you use hidden profile...
But what is a valid reason to use it? i mean don't care about it but i just wonder why people does it. Please don't answer if you gonna be way to immature about my annoying discussion.

Edit:
i mean at the end of the day if payday 2 just did a better job on actually banning cheaters or stopping it then we would not have this discussion.
Whoever wants to have their profile hidden is up to them, some people might think you are cheating but after all giving people a chance to see if they are cheating or not does not hurt.
I don't understand why people would hide it, but i don't need to understand it. We got the option to do so, if some people think it is right then be it.
And no firing shots at PD2 is actually trying their best to get rid of these cheaters without hurting the none cheaters. As they say it, it just takes some time. And i would rather wait 5 more weeks or months if that what it takes to do it the right way.

[Snapjak]

Because not everyone believes that they should share everything about their lives to others at all times.

[Demoman?]

People being able to view your inventory and then setting up spambots to add you and request you click some obviously-a-virus/scam-link. People being able to see your inventory and adding you to ask you for free stuff or to buy items you aren't selling. People using your playtime/achievements to justify putting your opinion on a subject on the forums down.

[Silberfuchs]

Some people just don't like the general idea that someone can see how many and which games they own in their library, how much time they have played, what their friends write onto their wall, etc.

And rumor goes that if you have a public profile with a lot of games in your library you are more likely being picked as a victim for account theft.

All in all I think that whoever wants to go private should be allowed to, and should be treated as innocent by default doing so. Everyone who disagrees should be remembered that the times of Nazi Germany or Stasi DDR are over. And if someone says these are too serious examples, since it's only a game. Well, if it's only a game than too much money or some unlocked achievement can't be too much of an issue to justify ruining the game for innocent people.

One unjustifiedly punished person is worse than thousand unpunished criminals.

[Metaellihead]

Originally posted by Sparks:

People being able to view your inventory and then setting up spambots to add you and request you click some obviously-a-virus/scam-link. People being able to see your inventory and adding you to ask you for free stuff or to buy items you aren't selling. People using your playtime/achievements to justify putting your opinion on a subject on the forums down.

I have never had a problem with anything you have outlined above.

Worst case scenario is someone adds you to a friends list which you can ignore. I've gotten many just from posting on these forums. There is only as much personal info in your steam profile as you put there, it's not like you don't have control.

[McKillem]

There's been a good post on that by a community member who's been previously harassed by a stalker, which also had access to the person's friends list and bothered them as well. Will post it here if manage to find the original post again. More than enough of a reason.

Apart from that, privacy is anyone's personal decision. If a person doesn't want anyone to see his profile - he has each and every right to. Some cheaters use private profiles, but not all private profile users are cheaters. Remember that.

[Demoman?]

Originally posted by Metaellihead:

Originally posted by Sparks:

People being able to view your inventory and then setting up spambots to add you and request you click some obviously-a-virus/scam-link. People being able to see your inventory and adding you to ask you for free stuff or to buy items you aren't selling. People using your playtime/achievements to justify putting your opinion on a subject on the forums down.

I have never had a problem with anything you have outlined above.

Worst case scenario is someone adds you to a friends list which you can ignore. I've gotten many just from posting on these forums. There is only as much personal info in your steam profile as you put there, it's not like you don't have control.

No offense or anything, but you have roughly a third of what I have, in terms of games and TF2 items. Last week, I had three spambots message me a link the moment I responded to them adding me to see what they wanted. It's definitely a thing that's made me consider switching to private, but I don't want people getting the wrong idea about my legitimacy as a player.

[Magpie]

Originally posted by Metaellihead:

Originally posted by Sparks:

People being able to view your inventory and then setting up spambots to add you and request you click some obviously-a-virus/scam-link. People being able to see your inventory and adding you to ask you for free stuff or to buy items you aren't selling. People using your playtime/achievements to justify putting your opinion on a subject on the forums down.

I have never had a problem with anything you have outlined above.

Well, I guess if you've never had any of those problems then no one has.

[Metaellihead]

Originally posted by Sparks:

No offense or anything, but you have roughly a third of what I have, in terms of games and TF2 items. Last week, I had three spambots message me a link the moment I responded to them adding me to see what they wanted. It's definitely a thing that's made me consider switching to private, but I don't want people getting the wrong idea about my legitimacy as a player.

I get it, but you are always going to be able to protect your account by being careful about things, which is prudent no matter the viewability of your profile.

[Demoman?]

Originally posted by Metaellihead:

Originally posted by Sparks:

No offense or anything, but you have roughly a third of what I have, in terms of games and TF2 items. Last week, I had three spambots message me a link the moment I responded to them adding me to see what they wanted. It's definitely a thing that's made me consider switching to private, but I don't want people getting the wrong idea about my legitimacy as a player.

I get it, but you are always going to be able to protect your account by being careful about things, which is prudent no matter the viewability of your profile.

Of course. It's always obvious. But it's still annoying as crap.

[Metaellihead]

Originally posted by 藤虎:

Originally posted by Metaellihead:

I have never had a problem with anything you have outlined above.

Well, I guess if you've never had any of those problems then no one has.

That's not exactly what I'm saying.

This is being brought up as a reason to hide your profile, when it's really an issue with responding to weird friend requests and clicking sketchy links, and not giving out your password that he's bringing up.

To me this is unrelated to anything having to do with your profile being public or not.

[#skavenlivesmatter]

Originally posted by McKillem:

There's been a good post on that by a community member that's been previously harassed by a stalker, who also had access to the person's friends list and bothered them as well. Will post it here if manage to find the original post again. More than enough of a reason.

[walloftext]That may have been me - I've had problems with stalkers/dedicated trolls in the past. They've stalked me, spammed my profile, spammed my friends, joining my game and harassing me there, ect ect. I got fed up with it after about a week, so i swapped my profile to friends only, and it's been like that ever since.

This is coming from my experience as a legit V-100 with a private profile- I've also had people doubt my legitimacy, (and rightly so, I know I wouldn't want any of my progress reset/tampered with after 500+ hours) but if you ever think that someone is...questionable, just ask them to set their profile to public for a short time. Or hell, ask if you can add them to see if they're legit. If they refuse to do it, you're better off just leaving to play it safe; if they go along with it, even better. But this may be painfully obvious as they (overkill) usually adds it as snippets to some announcements, but ALWAYS back up your rep save frequently, and store it on an external drive. That way, if anything actually does happen to you, you can easily revert to a point before anything happened.

just my two cents.[/walloftext]

[Benny]

Number of reasons:

1. I believe everyone is entitled to their own privacy.

2. I have hundreds of games in my steam library. This is the first game "EVER" where members of a community are vehemently insistent on everyone having public profile/its never been an issue before.

3. Same reason I quit WoW when gearscore was introduced. I do not associate with people who belittle others & judge them solely on their gear/achievements rather than their character/ability as a player.

4. As a new member of the community, I had no idea how bad cheating was until I got involved in the game. Its a problem, a big problem. That said, until Overkill acknowledges the problem & actually does something about it, nothing will get solved. Instead, everyone assumes everyone is cheating & it has become a huge witch hunt. Quite frankly, I don't have time for it. There are dozens of other games to get caught up on than get wrapped into the nonsense of inspecting every player I have join my lobby.

[Magpie]

Originally posted by Metaellihead:

Originally posted by 藤虎:

Well, I guess if you've never had any of those problems then no one has.

That's not exactly what I'm saying.

This is being brought up as a reason to hide your profile, when it's really an issue with responding to weird friend requests and clicking sketchy links, and not giving out your password that he's bringing up.

To me this is unrelated to anything having to do with your profile being public or not.

It's not what you said, but it's what you implied.

Making a profile private eliminates the issue. It's simple.

[Metaellihead]

Originally posted by 藤虎:

It's not what you said, but it's what you implied.

Making a profile private eliminates the issue. It's simple.

Implied? This discussion is about OP asking why people do or do not have public profiles.

Someone said they got lots of spam.

I said I didn't.

It was written to as comparison and contrasting experience to what others have posted, precisely because everyone's experience is different.

[Rex]

As long the player doesn't seem to be ruining my fun, I don't care. However, the only good reasons people have ever given me for why their profile is private is because they have information on it they don't want strangers to see or they are avoiding spam friend requests or something. However, the issue would be best addressed not if everyone made their profiles public but if Overkill made a decent cheat system such as a permanent CHEATER tag, but I would only support this if the following is addressed:

Fix the current bug with the new DLC.
Change how players get marked as a cheater for using DLC they don't have. It's none of my concern if they're using something they don't own, I just want to know if they're giving themselves an unfair advantage that would ruin my gameplay.