Requested to be closed

[Moonchild]

Requested to be closed​

 

[pwiz]

I think people may take this as a naive post considering a lot of this is conjecture - yes, there were valve employees that locked accounts based purely off watching this forum (Burton for example) but that was many years ago. I don't see any "low" digits being banned left and right, most "low" digits, if we are talking low I assume 2-3 and some 4 digits. Most of these accounts are being vac banned due to the player, not locked from steam. There are only around 100 or so within the 2 and 3 digit range that are still free from any ban - let alone new one's being locked. If there's anyone here that can attest to their 2 or 3 digit accounts being locked recently, please do so. I'm only speaking off of pure experience here, speaking to sellers since they began selling them back on KeyHunt.

The only "at risk" steam accounts, would mainly belong to sellers, active or past, and also people that are cheating ingame, or people that are trying to hijack. There are many russians on this forumn, alot of them recovering accounts without HL1, or OE. It i possible, but you need to know who is able to do it, and who isn't.

The most important rule of all is buy from a trusted seller, that's imperative. Most locked and retrieved accounts being reported, were retrieved from the seller themselves.

Unless you have information that (we) being collective past sythe users have, and have tried to collect over the past 10 or more years, it's difficult to say what steams agenda with low accounts is now.

 

[rock superstar]

​

The Dangers of Buying Steam Accounts​

If you’ve bought a low-digit account before, even if it was 5+ years ago, all it takes one quick report, and all of your Steam accounts could be gone, forever, regardless of how much time or money you’ve spent on them.

All it takes is 2 minutes of someone’s time to send in a Steam Support ticket with the claim that you’re an account hijacker and stole the account, and there’s a high probability Valve’s newly-evolved anti-fraud & theft team will look into the reported account, particularly the IP address history on the account. If anything seems off, such as if the account, after years of inactivity, suddenly becomes active again on an IP address located across the world of the creation IP address, Valve will ban the account and all accounts associated it via phone number, which many users share across multiple alts for SteamGuard Protection. In addition, if you already have a previous record of owning stolen accounts or attempt to fight Valve for the account back with unconvincing ‘proof of ownership’, Valve’s new anti-theft & fraud team may go so far as to ban all Steam accounts associated with your IP address and then label you as a social engineer / account hijacker in their database for daily monitoring.

Valve has also been looking into the friendlists and groups of stolen accounts, so even if you stay low-key and feel confident no one will ever report you, you might have a friend added on Steam who has a bought low-digit account, and Valve could look into your accounts if your friend gets banned.

How can I keep my low-digit account safe?
You most likely can’t. At least not without an excessive amount of information about the account which very few sellers are actually able to provide. But if your goal is to be 100% safe, you shouldn’t be buying accounts in the first place.

There’s an even higher risk of buying accounts (99% of low-digit accounts being sold are stolen) than hijacking them yourself because Valve will clearly be able to tell someone else hijacked it and then sold it to you, especially if they’re from Russia where Valve knows most account hijackers are located. Valve likes to keep daily tabs on ‘known’ account sellers.

What if I still want to buy an account?
If you do buy ANY account, always prepare for the worst and unlink it from your other accounts as much as possible. Definitely don’t re-use the same phone number or e-mail address across multiple accounts if you want to avoid chain bans.

Ensure the bought account comes with full, secure access to the original e-mail (OE) address used to create the account, in addition to the Half Life Pack CD key if it is a low-digit account. Valve almost always prioritizes the CD key over OE access, and physical image proof of the CD key written on the HL box is always preferred, which is why some account hijackers fabricate proof by writing or printing the CD key on a fake HL box/paper. In some cases, Valve may still indefinitely lock the account and/or ask for original receipt proof that you bought the HL pack because many account hijackers buy tons of HL boxes on eBay for their CD keys to recover low-digit accounts with which is against TOS and is considered buying/selling proof of ownership.

If possible, you should also have the location the account was registered in and the date the seller hijacked it and their location so that you can come up with a plausible story of the inconsistent IP address history in the case that something happens. And then, only then, with an amalgamation of plausible information and OE access and CD key, I’d say your chances of keeping the account safe are pretty good, but most account sellers unfortunately can't provide all of that information because it’s quite difficult to get.

Epilogue
Bought Steam accounts, especially low-digit accounts, have been getting banned left and right everyday now. You can even see many account sellers today saying you shouldn't even change the e-mail address on the account because it could automatically flag the account and lock it, and they refuse to insure you / refund you if this happens. The sellers know this, which is why they want to get rid of their high-level low-digit mains. Don't buy from such sellers because these accounts are bound to get recovered and/or banned eventually.

I could write lots and lots more about this, but I didn’t want to make it too wordy, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

The market is pretty much dead anyways, dont you think so? Whats the purpose of your post anyways? Do you wanna sell something? Or have you been scammed and want to report someone?

 

[Moonchild]

I think people may take this as a naive post considering a lot of this is conjecture - yes, there were valve employees that locked accounts based purely off watching this forum (Burton for example) but that was many years ago. I don't see any "low" digits being banned left and right, most "low" digits, if we are talking low I assume 2-3 and some 4 digits. Most of these accounts are being vac banned due to the player, not locked from steam. There are only around 100 or so within the 2 and 3 digit range that are still free from any ban - let alone new one's being locked. If there's anyone here that can attest to their 2 or 3 digit accounts being locked recently, please do so. I'm only speaking off of pure experience here, speaking to sellers since they began selling them back on KeyHunt.

The only "at risk" steam accounts, would mainly belong to sellers, active or past, and also people that are cheating ingame, or people that are trying to hijack. There are many russians on this forumn, alot of them recovering accounts without HL1, or OE. It i possible, but you need to know who is able to do it, and who isn't.

The most important rule of all is buy from a trusted seller, that's imperative. Most locked and retrieved accounts being reported, were retrieved from the seller themselves.

Unless you have information that (we) being collective past sythe users have, and have tried to collect over the past 10 or more years, it's difficult to say what steams agenda with low accounts is now.

Naive? Conjecture? I wouldn't say something unless I was 100% sure of it. This is all based on my own, verifiable experience after locking many accounts and having been locked myself and having seen and dealt with many tickets recently. Nothing I've said hasn't been confirmed by Valve themselves at one point.

You bring up Valve employees coming to this market to lock accounts as if I made that claim, but I never said they do that. I specifically said locks through reports or automated locks after certain activity is detected. There's a high chance changing the e-mail address on a somewhat active account and then logging into it with a different IP address will get it locked. And account hijackers who log into an age-old inactive account with a blacklisted proxy/VPN IP address might get the account flagged, but not locked. They don't know this, though, and will sell it to a customer.

However, even if Valve doesn't stalk the market, there ARE people who go through the market and send in the reports themselves because they get a kick out of getting as many accounts as possible banned.

"I don't see any "low" digits being banned left and right"
Note, when I say "low-digit", I am generally talking about any 10+ year old account, so not just the niche few hundred very-low-digit accounts. You seem to think only 2, 3, or 4 digit accounts can get locked, but literally any account can get locked if reported properly. Though obviously, the older an account is, the higher chance there is of it getting locked, and recovering it will almost be impossible without at least the HL pack CD key. I have seen like 20-30 low-digit mains banned the past month after they were reported. My entire point is, if you buy a low-digit account, don't expect to keep it forever, so don't be in a rush to spend so much time and money on it if all it takes is one report to lose it all.

"Most locked and retrieved accounts being reported, were retrieved from the seller themselves."
You yourself said "most" which is my point -- you can never be 100% safe. There's always a risk buying accounts, especially if someone wants to desperately target you for some reason and masquerade you as a big account thief. Also, it's been worse as of lately since Valve is taking account theft a lot more seriously.

The market is pretty much dead anyways, dont you think so? Whats the purpose of your post anyways? Do you wanna sell something? Or have you been scammed and want to report someone?

The market might not be as active as it once was, but many people still do buy low-digit accounts everyday with the expectation of keeping them forever, so they end up putting valuable groups and URLs on them and spending lots of money on games and levels. Is there something wrong with my post? I couldn't find one like it, and I spent a while writing it. It's also a nice source of information to have to reference. But I can understand how it might anger certain sellers and hurt their business. That's on them though for not being transparent with their buyers about the risks.

 

[rock superstar]

The market might not be as active as it once was, but many people still do buy low-digit accounts everyday with the expectation of keeping them forever, so they end up putting valuable groups and URLs on them and spending lots of money on games and levels. Is there something wrong with my post? I couldn't find one like it, and I spent a while writing it. It's also a nice source of information to have to reference. But I can understand how it might anger certain sellers and hurt their business. That's on them though for not being transparent with their buyers about the risks.

Yea I agree but its like saying "smoking is bad" in a tobacco store. Its not news, it has been against ToS of steam ever since steam existed, or am I wrong? I dig your post but I think it will soon disappear due to not getting bumped / not getting stickied like some other similar posts before and people will not notice it too much / care too much about it after some days. I also think quite some of the people who use these low digits kind of seeked the ban because they used their accounts for game-hacking / hijacked (other) accounts or participate in other shady activities. Hard to explain but not many of the "casual" steam users got banned afaik.

There is also nothing wrong about your post in general, its basically the same with csgo sales - I keep preaching that 90% of these dirt cheap accounts are hijacked but yet noone WANTS to listen because the prices are too good. And most people end up getting scammed rather than investing a bit more and buy from someone trusted who knows what they're doing. Some even after they added expensive stuff to their accounts, yet they still dont learn and grab the next 9.99$ account...