Your Hobbies Are Giving You Away, or How I Found Your Steam Account
Today, I’m going to reveal a secret: how I found your Steam account!
That’s right! I know all your secrets. Well, that’s not quite accurate, but let’s pretend for a moment.
Introduction
In this information age, our data is being collected all the time. Countless computers in the background are analyzing who we are, what we want, how we feel, and so on. Ad networks often use this data to target ads precisely, hoping we'll click on them more often.
You might think not every piece of information is valuable, but the opposite is true. Data is often used to deanonymize anonymous users on the internet. No one is completely safe! That includes you and your Steam account!
For those unfamiliar with Steam, it’s essentially a digital game store and social platform. You can buy games on it, add friends, and view their game libraries and wishlists.
Unlike many social media platforms, a Steam Wishlist is usually public, even if your profile is private. This means anyone can see which games you hope to buy.
This is where the fun begins.
How I Found Your Steam Account
To find your Steam account, I needed to do some detective work. I had to figure out what you were interested in. How, you might ask? By simply asking you! After all, this is a little game.
I asked you for a few games you were particularly keen on playing, and you—a lovely gamer—gave me a list of 10 games. You were very cooperative and didn’t try to mislead me with some irrelevant games (I appreciate that).
Then, I used these games to search on Steam. Each game has a community hub, and I looked at all the users who had added all of these games to their wishlists. There were a total of 12,000 users. If you think about it, this number isn’t huge, but it was a great start because you were hiding among them!
Next, I found all the public game libraries among those 12,000 users. I then discovered that 152 of those users all owned Cyberpunk 2077, a game you had mentioned was your favorite in a chat.
A Breakthrough
I still couldn’t pinpoint which one was you.
Then I had a sudden flash of inspiration! You once told me that you are an achievement hunter, always liking to challenge those super difficult achievements, like those in the Dark Souls series.
This might not sound like a big deal, but it’s actually very crucial. When you want to remain anonymous on the internet, you have to be careful not to stand out too much. And as an achievement hunter, you were doing exactly that!
I checked the Steam profiles of those 152 users and found that 4 of them had all earned a particularly difficult achievement in Dark Souls 3: "The Nameless King." The other 149 users had not.
The scope was narrowed even further! I was almost certain your account was one of those four.
Since this was a game, I decided to ask you directly: Does your Steam username contain the word "Dragon"? You answered "yes." Among those four usernames, only one contained that word.
That's how I found your Steam account!
Conclusion
If you want to stay anonymous on the internet, please be careful. While this was just a little game between me and a friend, linking data from different sources can indeed reveal who we are.
I hope you enjoyed this little story, and remember: don't make yourself too unique!
