Keep Your Games Safe; Scammers Now Going for Steam Accounts

If you have hundreds of games on your Steam account, you’ll want to be careful. The Singapore Police Force (SPF) recently announced that scammers have taken to popular gaming platform Steam to scam users, even resulting in users being unable to access their accounts and games.

Credit: Steam

The announcement, made on 9 May 2021, detailed the scammers’ modus operandi. The cybercriminals use compromised Steam accounts to inform their victims that they have been “accidentally” reported and that the victims’ accounts will be locked soon. After gaining the victim’s trust, they will then refer a user pretending to be a Steam administrator to the victim to “unlock” their account.

The “administrator” will request the victim to log out of their account and provide the “administrator” with their log-in credentials, including the one-time password they’ll receive in their email. Afterwards, the “administrator” will instruct the victim to purchase something from a third-party website to proceed with the unlocking process. In some cases, the “administrator” would order victims to buy Steam cards and give the scammer the redemption code to unlock their account.

The “administrator” will then mention that the victim will receive a refund once the account has been successfully unlocked. However, victims will later find that they cannot log back into their accounts and that no refunds were sent to them either.

The SPF recently warned Steam users not to give their OTPs and log-in credentials to anyone, even family and friends, to avoid being scammed. The police force also advised people to confirm the identity and the authenticity of the information shared by the scammers with official sources. If people find that unauthorised purchases have been made with their account, they should report the incident to their banks immediately.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of such a scam, please contact SPF’s I-Witness hotline (1800-255-0000) or report it on SPF’s I-Witness page.

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Written by John Paul Joaquin