I am not 100% sure of this, but I believe that the NC Triangle Gamers group in Steam is a target for account phishing and hacking.

I say this because this afternoon, I saw my brother's account come online when I knew he was out teaching and wouldn't be online. I asked the user wtf? and got the response that someone had hacked his account. The guy then began playing counter-strike on an Ownage Clan server - a server where three other members of the NC Triangle Group were playing at the time.

Luckily, I was online and caught this, notified steam and was able to get his account reset in less than 30 mins (steam support worked extremely fast).

I removed us both from the group and changed passwords on both accounts.

Just an FYI - if you insist on staying in the group, I would recommend changing passwords and making sure they're complex and in no way related to anything in the triangle area.

3/26/2008 1:07:48 PM

what is steam?

3/26/2008 1:18:42 PM

steam is valve's online community...it's the central launching point for games like half-life, counter-strike, etc...you can also buy games from the system through digital distribution

3/26/2008 1:40:30 PM

Were you listed as an authorized user of your brother's account?

If not that's kinda fucked up that steam did that. Maybe that's the loophole that the original hackers used to get access in the first place.

3/26/2008 1:42:49 PM

i sent the message and included the info that they require thru steam support (specifics on credit cards used to purchase products through steam, e-mail addresses, etc). I was also able to send them chat logs from the conversation I had with the hacker when he was online (he bragged about it)...furthermore, I was able to pinpoint his ip to steam support

believe me, it was not just "hey, an account was hacked, please reset"

I also had to get all the reset information through my bro's e-mail accounts

in short, if someone had the info I had on my brother that was required to reset the account, they wouldn't have been playing CS, they would have gone on a shopping spree

[Edited on March 26, 2008 at 2:45 PM. Reason : .]

3/26/2008 2:45:22 PM

what the hell is the internet?

3/26/2008 2:48:32 PM

it's this series of tubes...

3/26/2008 2:59:03 PM

I find it enjoyable that people actually refer to the inter net as "the tubes" now.

I love the tubes

3/26/2008 3:16:59 PM