Steam guard code doesn't arrive - steam is blocking email forwarding!

Post by **Sethioz** » Tue Nov 08, 2022 4:33 am

////////////// UPDATE //////////////
///////////////////// 10-Nov-2022 ////////////////////

I don't know if this is direct result of me finding a way to message Gabe Newell (CEO of Valve), but I finally received a reply from support agent who owns brains, here's what he said (ignore the part about steam mobile authenticator, I asked some stuff about it too, which is not related):

I fucking knew it! I just didn't know what change they made, but I was 100% sure they made some change that prevents email forwarding. Other brainless support agents were just wasting my time and insulting my intelligence. I strongly suggest all other support agents to learn from Ignatius, this is how support should reply, first read what is said and reply accordingly.

All this wasted time and stress could have been avoided if all of their support agents were as competent and informed as Ignatius. Those others really made my blood boil with their ignorance and stupidity. I should get paid from their salary, because I did all the testing and analyzing, while they were sitting their thumb up their ass and writing non relevant replies .. or should I say paste?

////////////// ORIGINAL POST //////////////

Recently I have had problems with steam guard codes not arriving, in fact some accounts don't receive ANY emails from steam at all. I got locked out of my own accounts (yes I have multiple) and support is worse than talking to a wall, they have some total autistic idiots work there who have no idea what SMTP even is or how it works.

ISSUE & DETAILS:
Steam guard code does not arrive when email forwarding is being used. I use email forwarders to hide my real email, as you may have guessed, I own the domain "sethioz.com" and I can make [email protected] and make it forward to [email protected]

So I have specific email for each of my steam account, they all forward emails to my inbox. For example "[email protected]" would forward all emails to my actual email.

I've had steam guard enabled since like 2013 on all of my accounts:

Everything has been working fine since .. until 1-3 months ago when Steam made some changes to their services and systems, they added that autistic mobile garbage shit and those QR code pop-ups, this is when steam guard codes no longer arrived.
I was analyzing the issue and I've WASTED 14 hours on it .. and NO I don't get paid for this! Professionals like me charge 50-100usd per hour, so steam owes me minimum of 700 dollars for troubleshooting their incompetence!

I have determined that their email system has problems 100%. Here's what I did:

went to steampowered.com
clicked on login (top right corner)
clicked on "Help, I can't sign in" at bottom
I forgot my Steam Account name or password
Typed in a non-existing email, such as "[email protected]"
Then it says unable to find and offers "Search with my account name" clicked that.
Typed in my account name and clicked on "search"
clicked on "I no longer have access to this email address"
typed in my email that is linked to my steam account (one that is @sethioz.com)
Now at bottom I clicked "send"

Here's the result:

As you can see, steam fails to identify it as "valid email". So how do they even run this check? How can you possibly identify if email is valid or not, if you're not sending anything? They MUST have some kind of "probe" method to test if email is valid or not and their "probing system" is what fails, because I assure you, my email is VALID. I receive emails there every day and I even sent several test emails to that email address to test, it works fine! Emails arrive within seconds. I even used different providers, I sent emails from gmail, outlook and my own SMTP, they all go thru within seconds, yet NOTHING from steam.

I furthermore noticed another bug that steam has, here's screenshot of it:

YES I entered my account name correctly (I tried my other accounts too, same error), but it doesn't work .. WHY? because those morons have made changes and it no longer supports search by account name, instead it expects email or phone, but those autistic idiots forgot to remove "account name". That's my guess .. either way it gives FALSE INFO, it tells you to enter account name, but it won't recognize it.

Finally I deleted my forwarding address, like "[email protected]" and replaced it with an actual inbox.
and what do you know? steam guard code arrived instantly.
So I can confirm 100% that steam is blocking email forwarding, whetever it's on purpose or by accident, they are blocking it for sure.

My guess, is that their incompetent idiot programmers have made some "email validation check" and it fails to identify email forwarder as actual email, so it thinks it's invalid email and it doesn't work.

I contacted their support with all my findings and explained in detail what is going on, but as expected .. it's like talking to a wall, here are some replies from their autistic support:

I specifically included the screenshot that I showed above, where steam clearly says it weren't able to send verification email. Support completely ignored it, I asked again and they just closed the ticket ... what a professionalism!
I have opened a new ticket, but I doubt I get any real info from those braindead autistic farts.

I also run CloudFlare and I have checked and double and triple checked all of my DNS records, altho it is simply impossible that there's any error in it, because all other emails sent to my email forwarders are being forwarded correctly with no issue, I've had this setup for over 15 years and I receive emails on daily basis, they all work, except steam!
As I stated before, Steam used to work, but recent changes in their system have caused it to stop working.

Also what this moron says:

moron steam support wrote:hundreds of millions of standard Steam users are receiving their emails as expected.

What exactly is "standard steam user" and do they use email forwarders? I highly doubt that there's even 0.01% of steam users who know what email forwarder is or how it works. So why would that autistic idiot even say that? He is just trying to push the blame. It worked before, after steam made changes to their systems, it stopped working. CLEARLY issue is on their side.

NOTE that I DO NOT have any junk / trash filters setup. Those filters are only setup on my actual email address, not on forwarders. So it is NOT possible that emails from steam get blocked. Furthermore, how would they just get blocked out of the blue? I have not made any changes to my own system and other emails work. And even further-further more, I made 1 inbox like "[email protected]" and made sure all spam/junk filters are DISABLED and then made 1 forwarder like "[email protected]". I pointed that forwarder to "[email protected]" ... and nothing from steam arrives to [email protected] while they do work if they're directly sent to [email protected]. So CLEARLY not issue with any junk/trash/spam filters. I wanted to make it clear so that some idiot wouldn't say "just check your junk folder".

SOLUTION:
As per update above, solution is to enable / allow forwarding of SPF emails.
I added the following record in DNS:
Type: TXT
sethioz.com
TTL: 10800

Code: Select all

v=spf1 include:_mailcust.yourSMTPhost.com include:_spf.yourSMTPhost.com ?all

This is specific to your SMTP host, so if you don't know what you're doing, you have to ask your SMTP host about forwarding SPF emails. For me it's more complex, because I'm also running CloudFlare and for that I must use their DNS and then make forwarding entries for anything email related.

I'm not 100% sure why/how this works, but even when I didn't have this entry in DNS, some of those emails still came thru, but it was very rarely.
So if you're having same issue, then you can ask your email host if SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is supported and if not, can they enable the support.

It seems like for now it works .. somewhat. It still took me 3 login attempts before I got the email, it could have been some delay in DNS and/or SMTP settings tho, because I re-enabled the forwarder and deleted the inbox. Either way I was able to login, so I think it's viable solution.

BYPASS:
If you're using email forwarding, then only bypass I can suggest, is to delete the forwarder and replace it with an actual inbox. Whatever service you're using to create forwarders, whetever you host your own SMTP or you're using your domain's hosting services, they should all have option for an actual inbox.
This is what I did, I deleted the forwarder "[email protected]" and replaced it with actual inbox of same name.

I have analyzed this every possible way, but can't figure out what the fuck is going on. I also contacted my domain hosting and asked them to look into it, but they asked Steam to provide:

email headers
sender email address,
recipient email address,
exact date and time of the sending (including the time zone),
subject of the message ('Subject' field). sender email address,

However steam support is too incompetent or dumb to provide that, they only provided me with what I showed above (that email was sent and "success" was marked at end).

So I'm not sure if this issue can be further analyzed without steam providing the necessary info. They know it's their fault, but they're just playing dumb cuz they don't care.

However I can confirm that aliases / forwarders made via outlook.com inbox, are currently working with steam, but they're limited to 10 aliases per year and 2 per week.

This .gif has been true ever since steam's release and it remains true:

Expert advice for Steam and any other big company:
STOP FUCKING UPDATING THINGS THAT DON'T NEED UPDATING!
STOP FIXING THINGS THAT ARE NOT BROKEN!

ALL THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED AND FIXED WITHIN FEW MINUTES IF STEAM WOULD HAVE SENT OUT NOTIFICATION EMAIL THAT THEY ARE GOING TO ENABLE SPF! FURTHERMORE IF SUPPORT WOULD HAVE GIVEN ME CORRECT INFO REGARDING THIS, I WOULD HAVE KNOWN WHERE TO LOOK! I STILL BLAME IT 100% ON STEAM! NEXT TIME STOP BLAMING THE CUSTOMER AND PROVIDE ME WITH RELEVANT INFORMATION!