Steam Just Lost A Customer

Wargfoot

Tried to recover my father's account for him; couldn't get past the Captcha.

I guess I don't know if the faint red signal in the background is technically a crosswalk or not, or if a Vespa is considered a motorcycle or a bike, but after 20 minutes of repeatedly failing and various images fading in and out, as far as I'm concerned Steam can go to hell.  No company that actually cares about its customers would do that to a person - is the 3 pixels of review mirror on the bike considered a bike picture?  We'll never know.

Again, go to hell.

finefluff

It could be broken. I think it happened to me with epic games store once. I would try again later.

Sovrath

Wargfoot said:

Tried to recover my father's account for him; couldn't get past the Captcha.

I guess I don't know if the faint red signal in the background is technically a crosswalk or not, or if a Vespa is considered a motorcycle or a bike, but after 20 minutes of repeatedly failing and various images fading in and out, as far as I'm concerned Steam can go to hell.  No company that actually cares about its customers would do that to a person - is the 3 pixels of review mirror on the bike considered a bike picture?  We'll never know.

Again, go to hell.

They might have been having issues. This has happened to me before. Heck, it's happened to me on this site. Try again later or contact customer support.

Angrakhan

The picking images captcha is absolutely the most obnoxious and human unfriend version of it. The weird font word version is much easier for actual users and likely just as effective at stopping actual bots. 

Bottom line the most effective security is some form of MFA because it requires the hacker to have physical possession of your phone if you use SMS MFA. That's highly unlikely. In that case it's someone you actually know that's hacking you. Like someone who lives with you. (Eyeballing my son right now)

Captcha is super annoying for users and likely will be rendered obsolete by AI soon if not already.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Asm0deus

Wargfoot said:

Tried to recover my father's account for him; couldn't get past the Captcha.

I guess I don't know if the faint red signal in the background is technically a crosswalk or not, or if a Vespa is considered a motorcycle or a bike, but after 20 minutes of repeatedly failing and various images fading in and out, as far as I'm concerned Steam can go to hell.  No company that actually cares about its customers would do that to a person - is the 3 pixels of review mirror on the bike considered a bike picture?  We'll never know.

Again, go to hell.

It's not just steam some of these image captcha's are getting effing ridiculous....

Gorwe

Yeah, these image captchas can go straight to hell. They are quite ridiculous!

cameltosis

I recently had to sign into my own steam account, but at my brothers house, and had similar problems. Even though i knew my own password, I had to do the captcha thing. Took me about 15 minutes before it finally let me in!

The thing that pissed me off the most was the lack of feedback. OK, so you asked me to pick all the squares with a motorbike in them. I selected them all, and u said I got it wrong. Why? How? Which square was wrong? Did that moped not count as a motorbike? Does the square with only the handlebars of a motorbike in it count or not?

Another thing I really dislike is how Americanised they all seem to be. Kinda hard to understand what they want me to do on some of them when the terminology is written in butchered English!

mklinic

not sure what route you took, but if I try to recover an account, I've just gotten the checkbox captcha (though I did stop short of having it send me the email). That said, looks like they are using Google's captcha solution so, while its easy to blame Steam, they may not be the actual issue. Additionally, appears a number of other things from browser cache/extensions/DNS can cause problems with Captcha so may also be client side as well.

I know that's little consolation and doesn't solve the issue you're having. Also, not trying to be a Steam apologist. People have plenty of reasons for not patronizing Steam and there are certainly other store fronts out there.

Regardless, I hope you get in and your father can access his Library even if you don't intend to expand on it further.

Sovrath

cameltosis said:

I recently had to sign into my own steam account, but at my brothers house, and had similar problems. Even though i knew my own password, I had to do the captcha thing. Took me about 15 minutes before it finally let me in!

The thing that pissed me off the most was the lack of feedback. OK, so you asked me to pick all the squares with a motorbike in them. I selected them all, and u said I got it wrong. Why? How? Which square was wrong? Did that moped not count as a motorbike? Does the square with only the handlebars of a motorbike in it count or not?

Another thing I really dislike is how Americanised they all seem to be. Kinda hard to understand what they want me to do on some of them when the terminology is written in butchered English!

I agree. I look at these things and I  wonder if  the head with a helmet is "really" part of it or if I should just pick the bits  with a bike. And yeah, I've noted those handles before. Just at the edge. Is that part of the test or is  that wrong?

If I pick  the traffic light does that include the pole as well?

grrrrr!

Kyleran

Sometimes they offer the option of an audio captcha, not sure if Steam does though

maskedweasel

Hang on guys... Before we blame the captcha how sure are we that he's not a robot? 

ValdemarJ

Worry not, attestation is on the way. Captcha will be a thing of the past. What could possibly go wrong?

Wargfoot

Kyleran said:

Sometimes they offer the option of an audio captcha, not sure if Steam does though

I tried that once... where it gave a phrase and part of a word so I didn't know how many letters to type on the partial word.

Give me liberty, or give me dea....

I uninstalled and we bought the game through the Microsoft store - where it took less time to find, purchase, and install the game than it did for me to finally give up on Steam.

Wargfoot

cameltosis said:

The thing that pissed me off the most was the lack of feedback. 

Thank you, that is another frustration that I had failed to put into words.

I got to the point where I was happy to get an easy one, like just pick the buses, and I was extra careful and still failed.  It had me doubting my sanity because I would have put $$$$ that I'd gotten it correct.

Nanfoodle

Their customer service is the bomb. Every issue I have put before them, they always did the right thing. Just my 2 cents. 

mklinic

Saw this and reminded me of this thread.

https://www.pcgamer.com/new-research-shows-bots-beat-people-at-convincing-computers-theyre-not-bots/

Basically just highlights the exercise in futility:

"It turns out bots are both faster and more accurate at completing CAPTCHA tests widely used by websites to filter out the machines from human users."

ValdemarJ

mklinic said:

Saw this and reminded me of this thread.

https://www.pcgamer.com/new-research-shows-bots-beat-people-at-convincing-computers-theyre-not-bots/

Basically just highlights the exercise in futility:

"It turns out bots are both faster and more accurate at completing CAPTCHA tests widely used by websites to filter out the machines from human users."

That's why I mentioned Attestation in a post above. Between Attestation and Assertion, a lot (most or all?) of our remote validation will be behind the scenes. People will love it and not care about all the side effects and consequences that will come with.

Adamantine

Why, you may ask an AI to solve the captcha. They are much better than human beings at solving captchas.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/captcha-test-bots-better-humans-b2389998.html

P.s.: Hmm now my posting looks like a typical AI spam posting. but its really just a link to a wellknown news site, as anyone can easily check. I dont endorse that site at all by the way, I just found that one article interesting.

Damn AI spam.

P.p.s.: Oh and actually reading this thread I'm not the first one to point this point out. LOL !

maskedweasel said:

Hang on guys... Before we blame the captcha how sure are we that he's not a robot? 

Wait, what ? Because he cant solve captchas ? Not funny.

Scot

Don't let your dad go without gaming, otherwise you won't get to say "Are you winning dad?"

Kyleran

Scot said:

Don't let your dad go without gaming, otherwise you won't get to say "Are you winning dad?"

As a gaming father myself I support this message.