Hello everyone, I would like to take the time here to warn you about an ongoing problem turned rampant on steam. It's a terrible crime called "phishing".

For those of you who do not know what phishing is, it is a means of stealing your information, such as passwords, credit card info, social security number *for those of you in the U.S.*, and more. Phishing is gone about by creating a website and equipping it with certain programs that allow the site to steal this information from those who visit it. Links to this site are sent to random people in hopes that they will click on it, and their information can be stolen. These (phishing) links can come from ANYONE, even your BEST FRIEND. Now before you freak out and say "MY FRIEND WOULD NEVER BETRAY ME!!!", I'm not saying that is the case. If your friend has been phished, their account could potentially be taken over by the person responsible, and could be used to send people that TRUST them, YOU, the link to phish your information as well. Phishing links very commonly look like official links affiliated with the site that it was sent from. An example of an ACTUAL official steam link would be: "http://gtm.you1.cn/market/" which is a link to steam's community market where you can buy and sell in-game goods with money from your steam wallet. An example of a FAKE official link used for phishing would be *THIS IS A MADE UP LINK, AND I HAVE REMOVED THE . and : JUST IN CASE*: "http(colon)//steamconmunity(dot)com/market/". See the difference? At first glance probably not. One of the Ms in "community" has been replaced by an N. This means you will be lead to a COMPLETELY different webpage, and is an immediate red flag that it is a phishing attempt. Be aware however, that not all phishing links attempt to imitate an official site link. Popular sites like bit.ly are commonly used to make bad links look like a harmless short-cut link.

The only 100% surefire way to not be phished is to:

• Not click ANY links from anyone.
  
• Not put any links into your http bar that was given to you by someone.
  
• Not enter any of your information on a site that is not, or does not seem official to you.

Follow your gut instincts, 90% of the time, IT WILL BE RIGHT[/b]. Steam has it's own ways to attempt to prevent this from happening to you. When you DO click a link from steam chat, steam will ask you if you are sure you want to navigate to that site, to make you think before you act. OFFICIAL steam sites also have a badge in the http bar, to let you know it is a safe, official site.

This last bit is not to make your paranoid, but I feel it important to say. In just the last 5 days, I have had over 10 attempts from people to phish from my account. I noticed that some of these links were sent in messages from people who had sent me a friend request that I had NOT EVEN YET ACCEPTED. YES, that means that people you have not even agreed to add to your friends list can add you and send you a phishing link. I have personally contacted steam about this during a report of one of these phishing attempts, and I am hoping a steam representative will contact be back regarding this.

A few of the common examples where these links are used in both steam messages, and posts on other sites such as TF2OP:

• "Hey, my friend wants to trade with you, you can click this/add him here: *phishing link* "
  
• "Hey, I want to trade with you, add me here: *phishing link* "
  
• "Hey check this person out, they have something I heard you've been looking for/I think you'll really like them: *phishing link* ".

Last but most CERTAINLY not least... a list of steps to take if you believe you have clicked a phishing link.

• 1. CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD(s) IMMEDIATELY
  
• 2. Take a snapshot of the link and person who posted it for evidence using a program like puu.sh
  
• 3. Report the user for suspected phishing/scamming attempts.
  
• 4. Contact (usually a steam one) employees of whatever site was used to post the phishing link, as well as of whatever accounts you think may also have fallen victim, to check and see if anyone has logged into your account besides you.

PLEASE HELP SPREAD THE MESSAGE ABOUT PHISHERS. THEY ARE BECOMING A BIGGER PROBLEM, AND MORE PEOPLE ARE FALLING VICTIM EACH DAY

EDIT: ONE last thing I forgot to mention. Make sure you never use the same password on both your email account and any other account. Without access to your email, phishers and hackers have a MUCH harder time gaining complete control of any account.

This has been a PSA on Phishing by your fellow gamer/trader.

-Stratego89

This announcement is to commemorate the hard work and dedication put into finding 10 phlogs by Steam user Yohom on the night of October 19th, 2012. He put this effort into finding these to help this steam group while refusing reward. Lets give this awesome guy a round of applause for his effort and dedication!