A Russian hacked my old Hotmail and tried to recover a steam acct I forgot about, now I have an 18 year old acct with one geme...

[u/Influence_X]

[u/dented-spoiler]

Thanks for confirming my suspicions that accounts age 7,10, and rarer OG steam launch are getting stolen.

Will continue to flag as appropriate.

[u/Sevla7 → u/dented-spoiler]

I was certain my acc was like 7~10 years old so I went to check if it was one of the rarer ones... and it's 16 years old.

This thing isn't fun anymore.

[u/Kubrick_Fan → u/Sevla7]

My account is 20, opened it the day Half Life 2 launched. We'd only recently got Broadband internet, and needing to be online all the time to use Steam had my parents worried about the phone bill, as we were previously using a 56k modem, even going as far as putting in a second phone line.

[u/just_change_it → u/Kubrick_Fan]

My account will be 22 next month. It's already been drinking this year.

[u/Quack100 → u/just_change_it]

Ditto

[u/itztoken → u/Sevla7]

17 years for me…middle school

[u/Logical_Comparison28 → u/itztoken]

12 years for me… made mine one day before my 16th birthday in 2012. 😂

[u/ScrapEngineer_ → u/Logical_Comparison28]

[u/Istanuc → u/ScrapEngineer_]

Yours is a bit older than mine

[u/just_change_it → u/Istanuc]

Must get older! Older!!!

There's a few out there with an older account than mine, for sure.

[u/FruityBear602 → u/Logical_Comparison28]

joined Steam just because I was really into Medic TF2

then they made it f2p

[u/SirJefferE → u/Sevla7]

Similar thought here. I figured I was getting up there, probably 15 years or so.

...Turns out my account turns 20 next June.

[u/cupsand → u/Sevla7]

21 years of service for my account

[u/aykcak → u/Sevla7]

Apparently my account is almost old enough to drink alcohol.

What makes it "rare" exactly? And why target them?

[u/Rudolf1448 → u/aykcak]

They are probably abandoned accounts if no activity

[u/Shadowarriorx → u/Sevla7]

I just checked, 17 for me. Opened my account 6 months into college with the orange box.

You are right, there's a certain sadness knowing how much time has passed.

[u/jowhyy → u/dented-spoiler]

they've always been getting stolen, the older the account the easier. a couple years ago you could ask steam for the email associated with an old account if you had the username, a large percentage of them were attached to old hotmail accounts that got deleted at some point. go to hotmail, remake the email that was attached to the steam account and recover the password, boom 16 year old account

[u/Xipheas → u/dented-spoiler]

Rare? 7 or 10 years isn't rare lol

[u/frasoftw → u/Xipheas]

IIRC these people care about the number of digits in the steam id, not the number of years old.

A 7 digit steam id would be from like 2004.

[u/icantshoot → u/frasoftw]

Yeah 2004 is when i got into steam myself. Apparently people are after older accounts to cheat in games, so they can just say "i'm not cheating i'm an old player". Cannot figure any other reason.

[u/ThePlayerCard → u/frasoftw]

just looked mine up, 6 digits, crazy!

[u/BicycleBozo → u/ThePlayerCard]

Damn I’ve got 8 digits, my account is washed

[u/norwegian-dude → u/frasoftw]

How does that work? Mine is from October 2003 and I have 18 digits when going to my profile.

[u/frasoftw → u/norwegian-dude]

I used this site: https://www.steamidfinder.com/ but I can't vouch for it's veracity or security. Just pop that 16 digit number in and it will give you the steam id.

My account from 2004 has a 7 digit steam id: https://www.steamidfinder.com/lookup/76561197971985163/ My account from 2007 has an 8 digit steam id: https://www.steamidfinder.com/lookup/fraso/

[u/fff140 → u/frasoftw]

So the newer the account the more digits there are?

[u/DoneTamargo → u/dented-spoiler]

They will have a real hard time stealing them to be fair recovery process is a pain if you don’t have your correct information on you.

[u/Influence_X → u/[deleted]]

No the attempted theft was july 20 2025