All Discussions > Steam Forums > Help and Tips > Topic Details

This topic has been locked

Sleepy Yoshi Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:15am

Just curious if anyone can explain how the login history actually works. I'll share my example.

Sometimes it will show I logged in from a city that's about 40 miles away. That's not bad accuracy, even though it's not my city, it's close enough.

Other times it will give me cities that are various distances. The highest of which I've seen is 1000 miles away. That's a degree of inaccuracy that is rather mind boggling to me as I would assume it's using your IP address for geolocation and while various. I'm curious if it's that said technology is in fact that innacurate, but that begs the question why it's right one day, but then not another even if the IP address is the same.

inb4 someone else is accessing your account. I can assure you, this is not the case.

Last edited by Sleepy Yoshi; Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:17am

Something went wrong while displaying this content. Refresh

Error Reference: Community_9708323_

Loading CSS chunk 7561 failed.
(error: https://community.fastly.steamstatic.com/public/css/applications/community/communityawardsapp.css?contenthash=789dd1fbdb6c6b5c773d)

Showing 1-13 of 13 comments

cSg|mc-Hotsauce Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:20am

Distance within a city or just around it, ISP.

Everything else, check Computer names in Account Data as well.

zZzooey.exe Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:24am

Keep track when you logged in and compare it with times it shows you logged in at.

Sleepy Yoshi Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:25am

Originally posted by ん:
Keep track when you logged in and compare it with times it shows you logged in at.

The login's are accurate. I'm well aware it is me. It just strikes me as odd that one day it's accurate within 50 miles and the next log in, it's 1000 miles away.

cSg|mc-Hotsauce Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:27am

What about mobile app logins?

zZzooey.exe Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:27am

Originally posted by Sleepy Yoshi:
Originally posted by ん:
Keep track when you logged in and compare it with times it shows you logged in at.

The login's are accurate. I'm well aware it is me. It just strikes me as odd that one day it's accurate within 50 miles and the next log in, it's 1000 miles away.

I would go take a wild guess and say its because you have dynamic ip

gwait Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:31am

Originally posted by Sleepy Yoshi:
The login's are accurate. I'm well aware it is me. It just strikes me as odd that one day it's accurate within 50 miles and the next log in, it's 1000 miles away.

Then you most likely have a dynamic IP address. If I remember correctly, the geolocation of an IP address is just the origin point of the connection/ISP location and is nothing to worry about. Since you get assigned a different IP address, the location also changes. I have the same thing and it will keep changing.

Last edited by gwait; Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:32am

Sleepy Yoshi Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:31am

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:
What about mobile app logins?

:qr:

I don't really log in from mobile unless I need the authenticator, but that's a pretty rare occurrence. I did check though and logged into mobile and it gives me the correct city, while my desktop shows me logged in at a completely different city. Yet they're both using the same IP as my phone is using WiFi, which is quite amusing and perplexing.

cSg|mc-Hotsauce Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:32am

I guess it is a good thing my ISP is in the same city. Even with dynamic IP I have it all within 20 miles.

Phantom Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:33am

It can be wildly inaccurate - but within the same city.

Note, if your getting login history from another continent, then that's a red flag.

Sleepy Yoshi Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:37am

Nah that's originally what made me look to begin with. I traveled to another country, but I couldn't remember the exact date and Steam was on hand so I checked the login history as I had used Steam at the time.

It did help me with that, but otherwise they're all in the same country except the dates I was indeed abroad. It wasn't something I was worried about, was just perplexed at the different cities on the list that were a wide range of different distances.

#10

Cathulhu Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:37am

Within the same city? Nope. I have a login that shows 450km from where i actually live.
Considering i use the Steam Mobile Authenticator and are the only person with access to my account, i'd say that Geolocation is a bunch of male cow excrement.

Even in the best of cases, it never actually nails the city i live in, instead it selects one nearby.

#11

gooner3000 Nov 18, 2023 @ 11:08am

See if changing password changes this behaviour. Ive been recently victim of phishing and looking my login history it sure does look weird. But i do agree that it used to be very inaccurate at times. Even when i do stuff with Apple products and it asks me to confirm myself - it gives really weird locations but i know its me because im working on something.

#12