How To Stop Spam Bots From Adding Me?

[Jakey]

Does anyone know? I get like 5 a day so I have to report, block and ignore all of them, how can I stop them from adding me every day without hiding my account?

[crunchyfrog]

Bascially, you can't stop them TRYING to add you. You don't have to accept though.

However a word of caution - ONLY report them if you ABSOLUTELY KNOW they are spambots. Many people I've seen claim that on here (and give examples) only to find they're assuming. It's not only poor show, but it can clog up support with needless work.

That said, just deal with it - I never trade (as I don't really play much of those games) yet I get tons of friends requests every day. If you don't mind doing it, you can just add them and see how they behave. Merely having them hurts none.

However, I do know how irritating it can be especially if there's a lot. All I can say is it seems to go in waves - just be diligent in investigating, reporting and moving on and word generally gets around amongst them I guess, as it goes away for a while (or at least reduces).

I also have found that adding a few suspicious ones, and when they DO contact you and try it on, a simple "I'm sorry but I don't fall for scams" and then a quick kick also seems to get the message round too.

[Ineffable Anathema]

The real problem lately seems to be that they aren't actually spambots at all, but actual user accounts which have been infected with malware that forces them to spam-message everyone on their friends list with the phishing links - in essence using innocent, and often oblivious accounts to do the spamming.

If someone who is already on your friends list is sending you these spam messages, it's too late for them - they've been infected and likely had their inventory cleaned out, and are now being used as drones to do the dirty work for these thieves. Advise them to disinfect their machine and change their passwords afterwards.

Really, the safest thing to do right now is simply not to open ANY links from ANYONE even if they are your brother or best friend. All it takes is one tiny mistake for them to be infected, them they're spamming without their knowledge and consent. I wish Steam would have an option to disable link clicking because it's badly needed at the moment.

[diego]

Just block ´em ...

[crunchyfrog]

Ineffable Anathema eredeti hozzászólása:

The real problem lately seems to be that they aren't actually spambots at all, but actual user accounts which have been infected with malware that forces them to spam-message everyone on their friends list with the phishing links - in essence using innocent, and often oblivious accounts to do the spamming.

If someone who is already on your friends list is sending you these spam messages, it's too late for them - they've been infected and likely had their inventory cleaned out, and are now being used as drones to do the dirty work for these thieves. Advise them to disinfect their machine and change their passwords afterwards.

Really, the safest thing to do right now is simply not to open ANY links from ANYONE even if they are your brother or best friend. All it takes is one tiny mistake for them to be infected, them they're spamming without their knowledge and consent. I wish Steam would have an option to disable link clicking because it's badly needed at the moment.

Now this is VERY, VERY true.

So ,yes, this is very much why I urged you should ALWAYS check thoroughly before reporting (you do check their account before trading anyway). You really don't want to be adding trouble to a victim's problems, nor do you want to add extra work to support.

That's very well put Anathema. Kudos :)

[Chris P. Bacon]

I thought steam already had posted warnings that you were clicking a link outside of steam and that you could lose your account and all your games etc. etc.

[7ON1K™ ☢]

thanks, helpful

[Jakey]

I guess I am on some kind of database for these hackers :( Every account to send me a friend request is either private, has 1 or no games, or has the name "[unassigned]". Only then do I choose to report them. And it always seems to happen while I am playing Counter Strike which is very strange :/

[rayleigh]

thnks

[crunchyfrog]

Pop'N'Lochness Monster eredeti hozzászólása:

nothing


literally nothing you can do but sit there and be spammed
nothing you did got your account on a special list they just spam every account


and steam knows this but they havent done anything to prevent it. you cant make your account not accept friend requests so even going private wont make a difference


but guys valve does no wrong

It's not a question of "Valve doing no wrong" - they're a number of things they do wrong, but this isn't really one of them.

They CANNOT really do anything. Could they block IPs? Yes, but it's utterly ineffective and can be detrimental.
They can't do anything legally, so what do you expect them to do?

Yes, it cna be annoying to be on the receiving end, but you might as well rail at your ISP for not blokcing malware or other stuff.

[Gucek001]

well (I know it's an old thread, but it still appears on top of Google's results) ..they [Steam] could add to their "messenger" an "Advanced" option "report phishing/scamming/spamming", after which you would confirm that you agree for "third party" to read your correspondence (legal stuff). In *basic* Steam agreement there would be a clause that after 5 people report you in this way in short amount of time "third party" may read your messages without your such explicit agreement.. and.. on the other side it would be verified - first automatically (for similarity of messages), then manually (by people - when the bots get smarter), then the sender and his email would be blocked. not perfect - I know. after some time his email domain / IP could be blocked etc. in any case - it would be 'less worthy' for them after some time.

at least the attachment was automatically removed from such message I just received today again - seeing that attachments are already being recognized to be phishing software or other such crap? isn't it a good way to flag such culprits?!??). :(