Why does Steam now restrict profile editing?

[Rōnin]

I make one single change to my profile and I have to wait over an hour to make another one and so on. Like wtf?

[76561198407601200]

Probably because of account hijackings. in either case an hour is plenty of time between changes.

[nullable]

One possible reason would be to limit bots being able to rapidly impersonate friends of hijacked/compromised accounts, which is used in a great many trading scams.

[Rōnin]

Is it effective though? I still plenty of bots around.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

They started doing this December 2022 due to the many accounts being hijacked and the hijackers continuously changing the profile information.

The cooldown is only 4 hours.

Because of the few that can't stop giving away their account information, we all have to live with the extra restrictions and cooldowns.

[Rōnin]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

They started doing this December 2022 due to the many accounts being hijacked and the hijackers continuously changing the profile information.

The cooldown is only 4 hours.

Because of the few that can't stop giving away their account information, we all have to live with the extra restrictions and cooldowns.

:summercat2023:

The minority punishing the majority again

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Rōnin:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

They started doing this December 2022 due to the many accounts being hijacked and the hijackers continuously changing the profile information.

The cooldown is only 4 hours.

Because of the few that can't stop giving away their account information, we all have to live with the extra restrictions and cooldowns.

The minority punishing the majority again

Everytime, yes.

It's also the reason why we can no longer reset our custom URL. That was removed as an option back in 2020.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Rōnin:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

They started doing this December 2022 due to the many accounts being hijacked and the hijackers continuously changing the profile information.

The cooldown is only 4 hours.

Because of the few that can't stop giving away their account information, we all have to live with the extra restrictions and cooldowns.

:summercat2023:

The minority punishing the majority again

You assume. In my experience the clueless user makes up the majority. That majority just isn't aware of how clueless they are from moment to moment, most of the time.

[Rōnin]

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Rōnin:

The minority punishing the majority again

You assume. In my experience the clueless user makes up the majority. That majority just isn't aware of how clueless they are from moment to moment, most of the time.

Quite a cynical way of looking at things. To each his own.

[Weimu]

Originally posted by Rōnin:

Originally posted by nullable:

You assume. In my experience the clueless user makes up the majority. That majority just isn't aware of how clueless they are from moment to moment, most of the time.

Quite a cynical way of looking at things. To each his own.

i don't consider it cynical, at least if we're not commenting on humanity as a whole or in general, just when it comes to the average person and computer security/internet safety

[Rōnin]

Originally posted by Weimu:

Originally posted by Rōnin:

Quite a cynical way of looking at things. To each his own.

i don't consider it cynical, at least if we're not commenting on humanity as a whole or in general, just when it comes to the average person and computer security/internet safety

I wouldn't consider them clueless but greedy. Most of accounts compromised take part in illegal sites to monetize their inventory at least from what I've experienced with Steam users in the past.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Rōnin:

Originally posted by nullable:

You assume. In my experience the clueless user makes up the majority. That majority just isn't aware of how clueless they are from moment to moment, most of the time.

Quite a cynical way of looking at things. To each his own.

Well, maybe, but it's no more misplaced than your baseless self-serving optimism that the majority of users are completely competent and only some minority of users, as insignificant as your negative feelings require, is the problem.

Let me put it this way, if you're writing software, you cannot trust users farther than you can throw them on Jupiter.

[Rōnin]

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Rōnin:

Quite a cynical way of looking at things. To each his own.

Well, maybe, but it's no more misplaced than your baseless self-serving optimism that the majority of users are completely competent and only some minority of users, as insignificant as your negative feelings require, is the problem.

Let me put it this way, if you're writing software, you cannot trust users farther than you can throw them on Jupiter.

I meant that the average Steam user is savvy enough to enable basic protection like 2FA. Personally I believe pc gamers are more tech savvy than the average internet user.

I always hear this common complaint - " Oh I enabled 2FA and didn't tell anyone my password! But my account still got hijacked! FU steam etc." i.e I got greedy and tried to gamble my inventory for cash.

In software, you are also dealing with alot of the older generation who, yes , most of them are genuinely clueless about how tech works. I don't believe alot of boomers or older use Steam, there are some but not the majority of that demographic.