Links / URLs in profiles names

[Lady Noire🌸]

This is only a simple question, and I hope you have more experience so you may be able to help about how to interpret the rules. :(

In the Rules and Guidelines For Steam, there is a rule:

Do not post any content on Steam containing the following:
- Soliciting, begging, auctioning, raffling, selling, advertising, referrals

Are links in the profile/player names considered advertising in all cases?
Is every URL an advertisement or are there exceptions to this rule? (e.g. some people use twitch, instagram or youtube links: channel or video links)

I'm asking this, because I reported some profiles earlier and Steam Support did not always remove the links. And I've wanted to understand how to interpret the rule(s).

Thank you,
Lady Noire a.k.a. Lady Black Heart

[Zekiran]

Yes, it's advertising. That's why you see censored names, and renamed entirely when they're to known scam sites.

Just because you report something doesn't mean you will ever know what happens with them. It might be that they get a warning, it might be that their name was changed and they annoyingly changed it back, it might be the next step to that site being valid in steam's eyes, you just don't know.

And, you shouldn't. Report and move on. Anything else is creepystalker.

[Jarek has quit gaming]

The website advertisements will sort itself out. Most of the times when they have such a name it takes about 2-3 weeks until they are creating a thread about losing their valuable items because they logged in through some shady key/drop/trade website. Then they learn from their mistake and choose a "normal" name.

[( ( < < <🤖> > > ) )]

from my enquires with support...

steams response seems to be if no one reports
the advertising then they arent going to do much about it...

if you have a problem or concern with advertising reaching
the wrong audience your probably better to seek external
avenues for your complaints like consumer affairs or the
government organisations that are available to you in your area...

[[N]ebsun]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lady Noire:

Do not post any content on Steam containing the following:
- Soliciting, begging, auctioning, raffling, selling, advertising, referrals

Are links in the profile/player names considered advertising in all cases?
Is every URL an advertisement or are there exceptions to this rule? (e.g. some people use twitch, instagram or youtube links: channel or video links)

If a URL in the profile name was advertising, then that same URL in the forum (or anywhere else) would also be advertising.

If URLs are allowed in the forum or anywhere else on Steam, then in the profile name would have the same expectation applied to it. I don't think that every URL I see is advertising, therefore a URL in the profile name is not necessarily advertising.

A random definition I found is: "Advertising is a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea." so if your URL is not used for that purpose, I would guess it is fine.

[J4MESOX4D]

A few months ago Valve were enforcing this heavily with users being banned within minutes of being reported. Now it seems they aren't even bothering even with users who are bypassing the filter to add scam site names to their display name. With this lack of consistency and reports being ignored, the community may as well not even bother. A couple of old sites were also filtered (only took 6 years) in profile names this year but there are still stacks which aren't even though they are filtered in the forums.

It's amazing how you can advertise a site linked to fraud, gambling and phishing but if you upvote a review that gets taken down, you get banned.

[Lady Noire🌸]

Thank you for the answers!!

I agree with what Miss Ann Thrope said. What I see is that these rules are applied quite inconsistently. Furthermore, the rules themselves have inherent inconsistencies too.

As an example: Begging is not allowed on Steam. But not removing the links consistently (both from user names and user profiles) leads to strange situations.

For example, I can see users who are not begging directly on Steam but they set up innocently-looking Steam profiles. They just include some twitch (or linktree, etc..) links in their profile name or description. And when you go to those webpages which they advertise, you may find more links, e.g. patreon, ko-fi, or even onlyfans. Those websites have basically been created to beg / to ask for support, etc.

So even if Valve does not allow begging, if they don't apply / enforce their own rules, then there is going to be begging (and stealing too, as Zekiran mentioned the scam sites). And Steam serves as a perfect place for malicious users to find a userbase to beg / steal money from.

Let me mention two examples which happened months / years ago.

1. A person - who set Georgia as home country on their Steam profile - was adding a lot of users from Steam groups and later they targeted those users by sending private messages to them asking / begging for Steam gift cards and paypal transactions. Finally, I reported that user, and they have been offline for many months so I think Steam Support did something. But this was still a dangerous situation. And how many alternative accounts do such users have?

2. Some months ago, I saw a person who set up a fake instagram profile (with stolen / edited photos), and collected thousands of followers from Steam. And who knows what they were doing on instagram and what kind of private messages they sent? begging for awards and gift cards, etc? And this person is still active. Instagram is doing nothing, I'm afraid they don't even investigate my reports.

So what I want to say, Valve (and Steam support) is not innocent in this situation. They just close their eyes and let this harmful behavior slide. And this shouldn't happen, in my opinion.

The exact word to use here (to describe the situation) is Fraud. And fraudsters both break criminal and civil law. At least, this is the situation in my country, but I'm quite sure, it is the same in the USA too and in EU countries too. :(

ragefifty50 mentioned to seek government organisations and external avenues in my area. But this is not so simple, here are some theoretical questions to think about:

a, How do I even know the country of those users who commit fraud? Where should I contact the authorities? What do I tell my lawyer in such cases?

b, Do you think Valve will release the information about the fraudsters? For example, location details (IP addresses used), transaction and billing details which the fraudsters used for purchases, email addresses? So, will Valve release any information that the police can use to conduct an actual investigation? Because I have doubts that Valve will just give me such information if I want to sue a fraudster. And the police is helpless too.

c, And there is the financial aspect too. If you assume someone stole 200 EUR from me, contacting a lawyer may simply not worth it for me. My lawyer won't even find those people who 'allegedly' committed fraud. I say 'allegedly' because without information from Valve, these are just simple words. And in a civil lawsuit, I should prove everything. This is an impossible situation..

If I think too negatively, please let me know.

And thank you once again for the answers. But I think Valve is doing something terrible if they just let the harmful behavior slide. They should absolutely act strictly and consistently in such situations. :(

Have a nice weekend,
Lady Noire a.k.a. Lady Black Heart

[( ( < < <🤖> > > ) )]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lady Noire:

ragefifty50 mentioned to seek government organisations and external avenues in my area. But this is not so simple, here are some theoretical questions to think about:

a, How do I even know the country of those users who commit fraud? Where should I contact the authorities? What do I tell my lawyer in such cases?

b, Do you think Valve will release the information about the fraudsters? For example, location details (IP addresses used), transaction and billing details which the fraudsters used for purchases, email addresses? So, will Valve release any information that the police can use to conduct an actual investigation? Because I have doubts that Valve will just give me such information if I want to sue a fraudster. And the police is helpless too.

it doesnt matter what countries scammers/fraudsters/advertising come from...
its what laws are representing you in your country... consumer laws advertising laws
and so on...

Steam is a store front in your country and has to follow your laws for
trading in your countr.... so.....
if they are presenting situations that put you at risk or greater risk for fraud
then that is what you need to be presenting to the resources in your country
if you are not getting heard by steam.

[Mad Scientist]

I can't tell if you keep happening to run into these things, or if you're looking around for these things.

Either way, here's a few common things:
Report advertising, move on. You're done, it's that simple. Do not bookmark, follow the person, or constantly look back to see if they got moderated; that's when you become the issue.
Reports do not get dealt with instantly, and can vary from minutes to 1-3 Days quite easily. Again, do not look bookmark, look back for, or keep visiting something you reported. One report, move on. You're done.
Instagrams issues are instagrams, report what you believe to be theft of others photos or pretending to be someone to instagram, instagram issues are not steams issues.
Valve doesn't let "harmful behavior slide" and this is usually something said by people who gave access away to their account, lost items/skins, and Steam told you that they wont replace them because account security is on you.

You don't need to put "Lady Noire a.k.a. Lady Black Heart" at the end of every single post you make. You can literally put that in your username.

Report, move on. Do not bookmark, do not continually go back or lookup someone/something you reported

Also stop assuming Steam is doing nothing or is allowing these things. They're busy with Account & Billing issues, they'll get to it when they get to it, but there's a lot of people that compromise their accounts and then Steam locks the account if they find out its been stolen until the owner comes to reclaim it.

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lady Noire:

a, How do I even know the country of those users who commit fraud? Where should I contact the authorities? What do I tell my lawyer in such cases?

None of your business. You can't really involve a lawyer easily when your case is "I left the front door open, told them to help themselves, and complained after I let them do this"

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lady Noire:

b, Do you think Valve will release the information about the fraudsters? For example, location details (IP addresses used), transaction and billing details which the fraudsters used for purchases, email addresses? So, will Valve release any information that the police can use to conduct an actual investigation? Because I have doubts that Valve will just give me such information if I want to sue a fraudster. And the police is helpless too.

No, they wont. You would need a lawyer to even request it, or authorities but if the basis of you demanding it through either is "opened my door, let people help themselves, got stuff stolen and got upset after the fact" they're going to respond to both with the agreement that account security is on the user and they wont return anything. Such an authority figure or lawyer would basically tell you that you're wasting everyones time and wherever the scammer is from likely has no international agreement in regard to punishing for internet crimes or based upon where the individual is.

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lady Noire:

And in a civil lawsuit, I should prove everything. This is an impossible situation..

And if they asked you how it happened and it starts with "I gave them my account login", then that's when they will respond with "well what did you think was going to happen when you did that?"

[Lady Noire🌸]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Mr. Gentlebot:

I can't tell if you keep happening to run into these things, or if you're looking around for these things.

I don't know what you wanted to say here. But I also remember you from our previous conversations! :) It's always nice to see a familiar name.

I try to keep my eyes open and have a quite good memory. And when I sometimes see a strangely-looking profile, I might look up its history to understand what was happening there. This is all. I prefer understanding things..

I admit I occasionally look back to understand whether Support took an action or not. Because I never understand why link X is removed when link Y is not. Sometimes one twitch link is removed and another is not. And I don't want to spam reports unnecessarily if I see that they don't do anything. :(

Początkowo opublikowane przez Mr. Gentlebot:

:health: Report advertising, move on. You're done, it's that simple. Do not bookmark, follow the person, or constantly look back to see if they got moderated; that's when you become the issue.

If you want, please explain why I would become the issue. I would never want to break any rules or cause any issues. I'm not that kind of a girl. And I said I may sometimes look back but not constantly. It wouldn't be healthy behavior.

I understood the rest of your answer and thank you. I think we've discussed why I sign my posts, I can clearly remember it. :)

There is a thing I would like to mention here: Don't skip words when reading my posts. When I say something is theoretical, it is just a question. Nobody stole money from me and I don't even have problematic friends because I don't add strangers. I rarely run into issues, some of which I mentioned above. But I've never fallen for any tricks.

And, Mr. Gentlebot, I would never give anyone my account login. :)

Also thank you for ragefifty50 for the answer. In the near future, I may consult my lawyer for some information about how these things work exactly. But this is only due to my own curiosity.

I sometimes post here on the Forums when I want to understand something (and I need help from more experienced users). Honestly, I'm really scared seeing the amount of those fraudsters / tricksters. And they can register new accounts so easily. :(

This post is just a word of warning that there are really fraudsters and malicious users on Steam. And it would be better if those problematic links were consistently removed. It's really bad that I can't even understand why one link is removed and the other is not. This is all I wanted to say.

P.S. I don't understand sarcasm (ReBoot) and I think it shouldn't happen on a public forum where we are from different cultures. Sarcasm may be offensive in some cultures.

Thank you for all the answers,
Lady Noire a.k.a. Lady Black Heart

[Mad Scientist]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lady Noire:

There is a thing I would like to mention here: Don't skip words when reading my posts. When I say something is theoretical, it is just a question.

Theoretical response doesn't need to notate "theoretical response to theoretical question".

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lady Noire:

This post is just a word of warning that there are really fraudsters and malicious users on Steam. And it would be better if those problematic links were consistently removed. It's really bad that I can't even understand why one link is removed when the other is not. This is all I wanted to say.

Those are never really looked at 99.9% of the time as people come to the forums almost exclusively after this happens to them, to lookup that sort of thing.

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lady Noire:

P.S. I don't understand sarcasm (ReBoot) and I think it shouldn't happen on a public forum where we are part of different cultures. Sarcasm may be offensive in some cultures.

Not understanding or it being offensive to other cultures doesn't mean people shouldn't use it. If people will be offended by things said by individuals in the host country of the service which might be said on the forum, they may choose not to use the forums for that reason, use a section in their language if applicable, or make their own Group(s).

We don't do "shouldn't because it might offend a culture" on the forum. We don't post to appease other people, we post what we do based on the scenario and sarcasm is often great at pointing out flaws within someone elses post as example. Public forum does mean if people are not up for potentially seeing things they may be offended by or want to control aspects of others responses; it's an optional thing to use, there is the option not to use it.