I write quite frequently about Steam scams, because there's a fair chance stolen Steam accounts can have a significant amount of money invested in them. I could simply link to the Wikipedia article describing it, but instead I'll give you a more condensed rundown - hopefully it'll give you a better idea of what's at stake.
Steam - What's The Big Deal?
If you're anything like me, you'd buy a PC game, hurl the discs somewhere and then sometime later when you came to reinstall find the manual with the license key on it was missing.
That used to happen to me a lot.
Steam is an entirely digital distribution service for PC games. Effectively, you substitute those annoying printed keys for a username and password - any games bought under your steam account can be downloaded as many times as you need to, installed on any PC and the purchase made against your username authorises the game to be played.
This means, of course, that someone with a Steam account could well have spent many hundreds of pounds / dollars / insert currency of choice on a wide variety of games. Lose your account, and you've lost a pretty big investment. Now that we've got that out of the way...
What's The Scam?
The website we're looking at today is
Steamgift.com
The website looks almost identical to the real Steam website - indeed, there is only one small (yet crucial) difference. Here's a screenshot:
Click to Enlarge
There's a large blue banner that really shouldn't be there. It reads:
"Free Steam Gift Pack! Absolutely Nothing Required!
Also including The Orange Box, Left 4 Dead, Audiosurf, Counter Strike Source, Counter Strike, Garry's Mod, Call of Duty 4 and more".
Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?
Sure enough, click the banner and you'll see a page positively stuffed to bursting point with encouragement.
Click to Enlarge
Encouragement to fall victim to a scam, that is. Hit the "Click here for free gift" button and a final piece of "DO IT NOW" harassment awaits...
Click to Enlarge
If you fill in your Steam account details and hit "Login", you've just waved goodbye to your account.
Click to Enlarge
"Success - Your account will be credited with the Steam Gift Pack within 24 hours".
I'm willing to bet good money that isn't going to be the case...
Steam - What's The Big Deal?
If you're anything like me, you'd buy a PC game, hurl the discs somewhere and then sometime later when you came to reinstall find the manual with the license key on it was missing.
That used to happen to me a lot.
Steam is an entirely digital distribution service for PC games. Effectively, you substitute those annoying printed keys for a username and password - any games bought under your steam account can be downloaded as many times as you need to, installed on any PC and the purchase made against your username authorises the game to be played.
This means, of course, that someone with a Steam account could well have spent many hundreds of pounds / dollars / insert currency of choice on a wide variety of games. Lose your account, and you've lost a pretty big investment. Now that we've got that out of the way...
What's The Scam?
The website we're looking at today is
Steamgift.com
The website looks almost identical to the real Steam website - indeed, there is only one small (yet crucial) difference. Here's a screenshot:
Click to Enlarge
There's a large blue banner that really shouldn't be there. It reads:
"Free Steam Gift Pack! Absolutely Nothing Required!
Also including The Orange Box, Left 4 Dead, Audiosurf, Counter Strike Source, Counter Strike, Garry's Mod, Call of Duty 4 and more".
Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?
Sure enough, click the banner and you'll see a page positively stuffed to bursting point with encouragement.
Click to Enlarge
Encouragement to fall victim to a scam, that is. Hit the "Click here for free gift" button and a final piece of "DO IT NOW" harassment awaits...
Click to Enlarge
If you fill in your Steam account details and hit "Login", you've just waved goodbye to your account.
Click to Enlarge
"Success - Your account will be credited with the Steam Gift Pack within 24 hours".
I'm willing to bet good money that isn't going to be the case...
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