Removing a Phone Number

[Considera Core]

Hello, my brother used my number without my permission for his steam account and now my phone number is used on two accounts. I have heard if one account gets vac banned, the others with the same number get vac banned as well.

My question is, if I remove the number from his account and if he gets a vac ban, will I still get one too? If so, is there any way to prevent this because my brother is not smart and I have the strongest feeling he will get both of us vac banned. Please help. Thanks, ng.

[The Giving One]

If you remove the number from the other accounts BEFORE any cheats are detected by VAC on any account currently sharing that phone number, then yes, you are safe.

But here is the deal....VAC bans are delayed. The accounts may be flagged right now for a ban in the future, and you will not know until you see the ban applied.

I suggest you remove the numbers from the other accounts now.

[Crystal Sharrd]

Remove the phone number from your account, get a new phone number, and link that new number to your account. As a bonus, he'll have no idea why you suddenly stopped answering his calls.

[Considera Core]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

If you remove the number from the other accounts BEFORE any cheats are detected by VAC on any account currently sharing that phone number, then yes.

But here is the deal....VAC bans are delayed. The accounts may be flagged right now for a ban in the future, and you will not know until you see the ban applied.

I suggest you remove the numbers from the other accounts now.

Yeah I did a week ago but my friends said no matter what the number will be linked in the history so no matter what we will both get vaced even if I remove the number so yeah, thanks.

[The Giving One]

Sorry, but I added "you are safe" to the end of my first statement above, in an edit. I saw that may have been confusing.

Your friends are incorrect. If the phone number is removed from an account and no cheating has taken place before the removal of that number, the no account sharing that number will be VAC banned due to sharing that phone number.

An account can still be VAC banned on its own though, of course, after phone numbers are removed.

You can see from your account menu there if the ban gets applied due to phone number sharing, when that is the case.

So if your brother cheated and VAC detected the cheats, and the number was shared between all your account(s) and his account(s) at the exact time of that cheating infraction, then VAC is going to ban all of those accounts in the future.

Because again, VAC bans are delayed. Hope this is not confusing. Thanks.

[Crystal Sharrd]

Originally posted by sir royal ricky:

Originally posted by The Giving One:

If you remove the number from the other accounts BEFORE any cheats are detected by VAC on any account currently sharing that phone number, then yes.

But here is the deal....VAC bans are delayed. The accounts may be flagged right now for a ban in the future, and you will not know until you see the ban applied.

I suggest you remove the numbers from the other accounts now.

Yeah I did a week ago but my friends said no matter what the number will be linked in the history so no matter what we will both get vaced even if I remove the number so yeah, thanks.

Your friend lied.

[The Giving One]

Here is the official text from the support page on VAC bans......

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4044-qdhj-5691#phone

"How does a VAC ban affect my phone number?"

VAC bans will be applied to all accounts sharing a phone number at the time of the infraction. Accounts that do not own the game the VAC ban is for will still receive a VAC ban and won't be able to purchase the game moving forward.

The phone number on the VAC banned account(s) will be suspended for three months and cannot be added to another account during this time. If the phone number is later added to an account that receives a VAC ban, the duration of its suspension will be extended.

Note: This feature is not enabled for all games and is used at the discretion of the developer.


As you can see, you can even use the same phone number after that 3 month cooldown, in the case of an account ever being banned due to sharing or having that phone number.

It only matters what accounts are linked by that phone number at the exact time of a cheating event, or "infraction. "