Steam, the popular PC game distribution service faced a severe downtime today with a lot of users signing in from their own accounts were shown account details of other users rather than their own.
The error had exposed the database of Steam and is the busiest platform during holidays. The service is now back online and working normally. Valve issued the statement on Gamespot following the outage, “Steam is back up and running without any known issues. As a result of a configuration change earlier today, a caching issue allowed some users to randomly see pages generated for other users for a period of less than an hour. This issue has since been resolved. We believe no unauthorised actions were allowed on accounts beyond the viewing of cached page information and no additional action is required by users.”
A number of users first noted about the glitch and started talking about it on Reddit, NeoGAF and Twitter and how they were able to see full names, addresses, and credit card information of a random profile while they logged in from their own accounts. One could not make any purchases from these profiles or modify account details, but the visibility of details can be severe and can be compromised later.
Valve has issued a statement about the gaffe but is showing no remorse over the fact that user accounts were compromised and serious user information is leaked. But to be on the safe side, it demands you remove your payment details and billing information from Steam. In a message on Steam’s forums, a moderator earlier today said, “Steam is not hacked, and that credit card info and phone numbers are, as required by law, censored and not visible to users.”