Anti-stalking / anti-harrassment measures

[tenshi_a]

Someone I know is being stalked on steam by someone who is harrassing her, and roping in their friends to harrass her too.

Can you implement some things to help her escape?

I am thinking -

When one user reports another for harrassment:

a) if the accused is using the "follow" feature of profiles on the victim, automatically sever that link.

b) Create some kind of protection program for victims of harrassment, which changes their steamID and disassociates their new steam ID with any of their old social content (e.g. community messages, discussion messages, review comments etc).)

She's changed her username enough times that her original username doesn't show on her profile, but these people still turn up, so I am guessing it must be down to them finding her by way of her steam ID, or through some form of social interaction on steam that she's lost track of.

Please help. Thank you in advance.

[Start_Running]

Block the offender. Report where necessary. That's it. COnsider telling your friend to set their profile private and exercise more care on who they add as friends.. YOu emasures really won't work because any other account can be used to spy on the target in question.

[=Snappy=]

Item A seems common-sense and relatively simple to implement.

Item B I'm not so sure.

But overall, if simply "reporting" doesn't solve these sorts of problems ..... IDK steam has problems.

I'm sympathetic but this seems such a niche concern so as not to require a permanent feature to address it.

[tenshi_a]

@=Snappy= I'm thinking they could implement b) by either :

1. Duplicate the user's account then lock / delete the original

Or

2. Create a new account, link all the victim's licenses / transaction history / achievements / badges / inventory .... and everything *except social* to the new account. Don't duplicate, just re-map.

But I can't make any real / detailed implementation suggestions because I don't know enough about the internals of how Steam works.

As far as I am aware, she reported and blocked at least a week ago, and has done as much as she could to change her identity but they're still following her around.

[Gwarsbane]

Originally posted by tenshi_a:

@=Snappy= I'm thinking they could implement b) by either :

1. Duplicate the user's account then lock / delete the original

Or

2. Create a new account, link all the victim's licenses / transaction history / achievements / badges / inventory .... and everything *except social* to the new account. Don't duplicate, just re-map.

But I can't make any real / detailed implementation suggestions because I don't know enough about the internals of how Steam works.

As far as I am aware, she reported and blocked at least a week ago, and has done as much as she could to change her identity but they're still following her around.

This is useless unless the person goes under a totally new name because then stalker will just see the name in the friends list and then follow them again on there.


Blocking someone should 100% block them from seeing anything you are doing on steam. BUT then all they have to do is log out. Or create a new account, add the target as a friend and pretend to be a good person with that account and use that account to watch them while the other account is more public. while showing up places that the victim is.

There are always ways around it, and forcing the victim to change stuff isn't right, but there really is no way to stop the person.

[cinedine]

Step 1: remove from your friends list, block
Step 2: set your profiles to friends only, restrict commenting to friends only
Step 3: stop getting involved with them at all

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by cinedine:

Step 1: remove from your friends list, block
Step 2: set your profiles to friends only, restrict commenting to friends only
Step 3: stop getting involved with them at all

Step 4: Report the user for harassment.

[tenshi_a]

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

There are always ways around it, and forcing the victim to change stuff isn't right, but there really is no way to stop the person.

Just because you haven't thought of a way, and you don't think my suggestions will work, that doesn't mean that there is no way.

We need to find a better solution because simply reporting and blocking and changing name (x10) and avatar just aren't working.

[=Snappy=]

Originally posted by tenshi_a:

But I can't make any real / detailed implementation suggestions because I don't know enough about the internals of how Steam works.

Exactly. why I said "not so sure" it would be easy. Steam ID is tied into your game ownership, install configuration, etc., and even if it's something Steam could do, I feel like it's something they won't want to do.

Originally posted by tenshi_a:

As far as I am aware, she reported and blocked at least a week ago, and has done as much as she could to change her identity but they're still following her around.

Well, like I said, if "reporting" doesn't handle this, then I tend to blame steam as it seems they are not taking the issue seriously enough. And of course they say they will take such issues extremely seriously, so I just wonder what the problem is and why they can't enforce this properly. I mean .. I assumed -- and maybe my fault for assuming -- ppl who are going to be consistent stalky harassers like this are looking at getting their account(s) banned if not IP banned.

OTOH if there really is a network of ppl carrying out this behavior, I could see a real "investigation" taking some time. maybe they are just gathering evidence -- seeing just "who is doing what", and how they are related socially -- and then going to ban all at once after that is done. could easily see the end result taking several weeks or more if this is the case.

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Originally posted by cinedine:

Step 1: remove from your friends list, block
Step 2: set your profiles to friends only, restrict commenting to friends only
Step 3: stop getting involved with them at all

Step 4: Report the user for harassment.

re: the above...
Step 4 -- assuming there really has been a pattern of this stalky behavior (which may be as simple as: 'target says "stop" and attackers don't stop') -- should be step 1. And I'm not really familiar with the details as I'm relatively well-behaved but I assume there are certain egregious behaviors where there doesn't have to be any "pattern" at all to merit a ban. (e.g. death threats.)
Step 1 common sense. I'd assume anyone who's in a real "situation" like this .. has already done this.
Step 2 why should the "victim" have to suffer by restricting their freedoms over the misbehavior of others?
Step 3 easier said than done. especially if this originates in the community of a certain game that the target likes to play. again, why should they have to restrict their freedoms? just saying.