Stalking and Blocking.

[Pocahawtness]

With many social sites, if you decide to block someone, that’s it, you disappear. But not so with Steam. There are various ways to track someone, even if you have blocked them. Not least of which, the blocking system itself can be used to permanently highlight a person so you can always find them, no matter what they change their name to.

Most guys perhaps won’t care about this issue, but for women, or even children, it most certainly can be a problem. I have seen cases were people have changed their profile completely in an attempt to get away from the person hassling them, and it hasn’t worked because the first thing the weirdo did was create a profile and block them so they have a permanent record of who that person is - any blocked person appears in the blocked friends list no matter what they change their name to.

Oh and please don't tell me that Steam Support cares about this, because they don't!

I would like to suggest the following very simple change-

1. When people are added to your blocked list, you are added to their blocked list so they can see that you have blocked them.

Currently it is not possible to tell if some random new profile has blocked you which means you have no idea that someone is potentially tracking you.

2. Click on a name in your block list and you can block them, un-block them or permanently block them. The permanent block effectively blocks and deletes them from your blocklist so it is impossible to undo the block. Importantly, you are also deleted from their block list, so they can't track you.

What this means is that you can now permanently block someone who is tracking you and by removing your name from their list they can't track you anymore..

And yes, I know that the Steam ID is another issue, but lets just do one at a time!

[Felix]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Twinsunian:

Steam thinks it's a great idea to give your email address to anybody and everybody you gift anything to.

Mostly because for the most part you are gifting items to your FRIENDS. You're not meant to give gifts to people you don't know nor are you meant to accept gifts from people you don't know.

[Pocahawtness]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Twinsunian:

Diposting pertama kali oleh FrazerJC:

Mostly because for the most part you are gifting items to your FRIENDS. You're not meant to give gifts to people you don't know nor are you meant to accept gifts from people you don't know.

Just because somebody is your friend at the time doesn't mean they stay that way.

Completely agree with that. Most stalker types do start off as friends. And Stalker types often love to exchange games.

It is completely pointless giving someone your email. It serves no purpose. To make matters worse, often people use their email as their Steam logon.

I once accidentally typed in my password for my email account in to a Steam chat box instead of my email account, and the guy worked out in seconds what it was and hacked in to my email. He got the email address from Steam. Luckily, I don't use my email as my Steam logon.

[Tito Shivan]

Stalkers and harassers are a pesky issue on any social network, and a difficult one to deal with.
About your measures, i believe #1 would do more harm than good. Think about the 'mutual block' notification working both ways.
You are notified if a random profile blocks you, but it ALSO notifies the person you are blocking of your action. That can easily trigger aggressive behaviours on the person you want to cut communications with.
By avoiding one fire you are fueling others.

[Pocahawtness]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Tito Shivan:

Stalkers and harassers are a pesky issue on any social network, and a difficult one to deal with.
About your measures, i believe #1 would do more harm than good. Think about the 'mutual block' notification working both ways.
You are notified if a random profile blocks you, but it ALSO notifies the person you are blocking of your action. That can easily trigger aggressive behaviours on the person you want to cut communications with.
By avoiding one fire you are fueling others.

That would be the point of being able to make the block permanent. When that happens, there is no visible record of the block ever being made. And also the simple fact is that blocks are very obvious now anyway. When you visit a profile that has blocked you, it tells you that you have been blocked.

I think the way you would do things is to block them. Pop in to your block list, permenantly block them. Then, if you were really worried, change your profile name. At the moment if you do that there is nothing to say that they haven't blocked you already which means they can still access you. Or worse, as I said in the original post that they created a new profile and blocked you. At least with the new system you could see that some random person has blocked you and you could permanently block them.

[[TAW] Derisat Hartfelt]

Here's my question, if I block someone, lets say for being an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on a forum post over and over, does it block all my posts from to them? So they can't comment on my threads, nothing weirder then missing conversation gaps.

[Jade]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Derisat:

Here's my question, if I block someone, lets say for being an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on a forum post over and over, does it block all my posts from to them? So they can't comment on my threads, nothing weirder then missing conversation gaps.

There is no way of blocking people in the discussions. Blocking someone's profile won't stop you from seeing their posts or vice versa.

[Dagnabbit]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Tito Shivan:

That can easily trigger aggressive behaviours on the person you want to cut communications with.
By avoiding one fire you are fueling others.

And when that happens, Valve should step in and say "No es bueno, chuckles" and either ban them from *ALL* community features (Discussions, Chat, Friends, Market, etc) or, preferably, terminate their Steam accounts under the unlawful behavior clauses.

[Fox]

Diposting pertama kali oleh (N☆G) Pocahawtness (C❤A):

With many social sites, if you decide to block someone, that’s it, you disappear. But not so with Steam. There are various ways to track someone, even if you have blocked them. Not least of which, the blocking system itself can be used to permanently highlight a person so you can always find them, no matter what they change their name to.

Most guys perhaps won’t care about this issue, but for women, or even children, it most certainly can be a problem. I have seen cases were people have changed their profile completely in an attempt to get away from the person hassling them, and it hasn’t worked because the first thing the weirdo did was create a profile and block them so they have a permanent record of who that person is - any blocked person appears in the blocked friends list no matter what they change their name to.

Oh and please don't tell me that Steam Support cares about this, because they don't!

I would like to suggest the following very simple change-

1. When people are added to your blocked list, you are added to their blocked list so they can see that you have blocked them.

Currently it is not possible to tell if some random new profile has blocked you which means you have no idea that someone is potentially tracking you.

2. Click on a name in your block list and you can block them, un-block them or permanently block them. The permanent block effectively blocks and deletes them from your blocklist so it is impossible to undo the block. Importantly, you are also deleted from their block list, so they can't track you.

What this means is that you can now permanently block someone who is tracking you and by removing your name from their list they can't track you anymore..

And yes, I know that the Steam ID is another issue, but lets just do one at a time!

I fully agree with Tito on the 1st one.

For the 2nd one, I'd fear about the "easiness" of access. If you were angry enough to be blind to your own actions, or careless enough to do the mistake of "permanent blocking" someone (say, you blocked someone and decide it's time to reconciliate, you try to unblock him and BAM, wrong click and permablock), you're pretty much stuck, unless you want to contact support. And this permablock easiness may as well mean that Steam support gets clogged, hindering other legitimate issues waiting to be solved.

I'd consider either a two-step confirmation, or a small cooldown, or both, in order to prevent this kind of behaviour.