Security in our electronics is obviously becoming more and more important. Yet we continue to hear about hackers obtaining our credit card information from places we thought we could trust such as Target and Home Depot.
One of the places that I have come to trust is Steam. Steam is a platform on the computer for purchasing and playing video games. There's more to it than that, but if you think of it as a video game mega store on the computer then you will have the basic idea. Steam has my credit card information as well as my purchase history and personal information like my address.
Apparently my password was not secure enough because someone was able to get into my account. This was my reminder to stop breaking password rules that I knew about. Rules such as
- don't use the same password for many sites.
- use a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols in your password
- change your password from time to time.
I broke the above rules with my Steam account but thankfully Steam was looking out for me. I received an email that someone was accessing my account. In that email they listed the IP address that was accessing the account and where that IP address was from (Russia).
On the Russian side of this, the hacker was possibly looking at a screen that was asking for an access code to complete access to the account. The access code was in my email. Also in that email was a link that gave me the option to completely lock down my account until I had a chance to get to a computer and call Steam to resolve what was happening.
For Steam to recognize that my account was being accessed from a place that was different than usual and then hold the account until I verified it was awesome. I have since changed my password and followed the general password rules that I know (and hate).
Although I have learned we can't trust the places that most often gets our credit information I'm happy to say that the gaming mega store of Steam is one I can trust. I think I'll have to buy a new game to celebrate.
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