There are DRM-free games on Steam, but they really ought to advertise on the store page which ones those are, because we can currently only find out by experimentation and community wikis.
You’ll get a human in a couple of days if the automated portions couldn’t resolve your issue in full.
It’s not a monopoly.
My guess is that they’re actively purging chat logs at the same rate that they disappear off of your system. They’re storing data for over 130M active users every month, and I’m sure they’d be happy to be rid of a lot of the least useful of it.
Chat logs are stored on the clients system? First I’ve heard of that. If that’s true why the need to delete them off the client?
The reason this bugs me is that I’ve had people accessing my account when I’m not online. Which in the past 8 years, I’ve only been on 99% of the time.
I know this for many reasons, one of which is the 142 hours logged on No Man’s Sky. I only played that game for 5 minutes.
Another reason, one day someone on my friends list messaged me. They said they were an old co worker of mine, a particularly nasty individual, someone who would never be playing any video games whatsoever. This person had detailed information about about me and used it to harass / scare me. When I was offline, someone logged in and added / accepted this person as a friend.
I blocked them and reported it to support. But never received any response. Not sure what they could do anyhow but I at least hoped for some kind of response. Perhaps the response came in when someone else was logged into my account?
No matter what I do to protect my account, they’ve always been able to get in.
If I keep a chat window open for three weeks, the only one that will retain my last chat history for that long is the active chat tab. Any other tab I have open in that same window will purge the chat history after a week or two. That’s about all I know for how long it’s kept on the client, and I doubt they’re keeping it any longer on the server. The truth is I don’t know why they purge it, but if I were placing bets, my first two guesses would be cleaning up garbage on their servers that they don’t need; and preventing scams from lingering that could compromise your account security. If you haven’t set up two-factor for your Steam account, I would do so, and sharing your account with others like you’ve been doing is likely asking for trouble as well, so you might want to use the family sharing feature instead.
Yeah I’m aware of the 3 week rule. My issue with that is I have to turn off my PC when I’m not on it, for fear of nefarious actors accessing my physical PC when I’m away, remotely of course. Which has happened numerous times.
I’m only ever on my PC a few days to a week per month.
If you didn’t know, a far better way to monitor what’s happening with your Steam account than chat logs is to go to your Account Details–>Security & Devices, and you can see who’s accessed your account, from which location, and from which device. You can hit the “Sign out everywhere” button, and then no one should be able to get into your Steam account without access to Steam Guard on your own personal phone that you probably carry on your person at all times. You don’t necessarily have to shut your computer off when you’re not on it, but it’s good security practice to at least lock it (Windows key + L) when you step away. Even then, the only people who could access it if you’re not doing that are people who share the same physical space as you, like your family or roommates.
There are DRM-free games on Steam, but they really ought to advertise on the store page which ones those are, because we can currently only find out by experimentation and community wikis.
You’ll get a human in a couple of days if the automated portions couldn’t resolve your issue in full.
It’s not a monopoly.
My guess is that they’re actively purging chat logs at the same rate that they disappear off of your system. They’re storing data for over 130M active users every month, and I’m sure they’d be happy to be rid of a lot of the least useful of it.
Chat logs are stored on the clients system? First I’ve heard of that. If that’s true why the need to delete them off the client?
The reason this bugs me is that I’ve had people accessing my account when I’m not online. Which in the past 8 years, I’ve only been on 99% of the time.
I know this for many reasons, one of which is the 142 hours logged on No Man’s Sky. I only played that game for 5 minutes.
Another reason, one day someone on my friends list messaged me. They said they were an old co worker of mine, a particularly nasty individual, someone who would never be playing any video games whatsoever. This person had detailed information about about me and used it to harass / scare me. When I was offline, someone logged in and added / accepted this person as a friend.
I blocked them and reported it to support. But never received any response. Not sure what they could do anyhow but I at least hoped for some kind of response. Perhaps the response came in when someone else was logged into my account?
No matter what I do to protect my account, they’ve always been able to get in.
My account is as old as Steam itself.
If I keep a chat window open for three weeks, the only one that will retain my last chat history for that long is the active chat tab. Any other tab I have open in that same window will purge the chat history after a week or two. That’s about all I know for how long it’s kept on the client, and I doubt they’re keeping it any longer on the server. The truth is I don’t know why they purge it, but if I were placing bets, my first two guesses would be cleaning up garbage on their servers that they don’t need; and preventing scams from lingering that could compromise your account security. If you haven’t set up two-factor for your Steam account, I would do so, and sharing your account with others like you’ve been doing is likely asking for trouble as well, so you might want to use the family sharing feature instead.
Yeah I’m aware of the 3 week rule. My issue with that is I have to turn off my PC when I’m not on it, for fear of nefarious actors accessing my physical PC when I’m away, remotely of course. Which has happened numerous times.
I’m only ever on my PC a few days to a week per month.
If you didn’t know, a far better way to monitor what’s happening with your Steam account than chat logs is to go to your Account Details–>Security & Devices, and you can see who’s accessed your account, from which location, and from which device. You can hit the “Sign out everywhere” button, and then no one should be able to get into your Steam account without access to Steam Guard on your own personal phone that you probably carry on your person at all times. You don’t necessarily have to shut your computer off when you’re not on it, but it’s good security practice to at least lock it (Windows key + L) when you step away. Even then, the only people who could access it if you’re not doing that are people who share the same physical space as you, like your family or roommates.