This is a post I wish I never had to make. Forgive my grammar and spelling as I am a bit emotional.
My Steam Deck was stolen and I just had it for less than 2 months.
It has been more than 2 weeks since it happened but it still hurts the same. I wanted to make this post because it was a very costly mistake from my side and I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.
<story>
It happened when I was shifting from one house to another house and there were lots of maintenance workers at the destination house. After I kept my luggage inside the house, I left to buy some essentials. My mom was the only person left who was watching over the stuff. By the time I came back, the workers had left. I thought I have some free time so decided to pull the Steam Deck out but it was missing.
<vent>
I was absolutely devastated; I can’t even begin to explain in words what it felt like. I asked, through the person who hired the workers, if they took it. But all the workers refused. I was just crushed; I could feel my heart dropping into my stomach. Even now, as I am typing this story, that emotion is replaying.
</vent>
After this happened, I removed all payment methods from my Steam account (Steam Guard 2FA was already active). I saw after 5 days that the Steam Deck was online for a brief period of time, via Steam Guard. I purposefully didn’t sign out of the device because I wanted the thieves to make the mistake of signing in and giving me some clue about their location; the Steam Deck was still inside my city. I took the IPs and submitted it to the police and asked them if they could track it. They said they will try their best since getting the customer details from an IP is a “lengthy and time-consuming process”. But at this point, I can’t do anything; it’s not possible for me to visit all the worker’s home individually and check as I don’t have the authority. I gave up and convinced myself to move on.
</story>
This taught me a lot of things and I wanted to share with the community, now that I have slightly recovered mentally.
Secure your luggage when moving
When you are moving, you usually have a million thoughts in your head. This can cause you to neglect your luggage’s safety. If you are going to unload your luggage temporarily, KEEP IT IN A SECURE MANNER FIRST and then do everything else.
A secure manner could mean
- Under someone’s watch
- Putting it far away from the exit
- Putting a lock on the luggage
- Putting it inside a cabinet and locking it
Don’t just unload the luggage and start doing something mentally involving.
Be wary of outsiders
Sometimes, there will be outside people in your home. It’s crucial to keep the Steam Deck out of reach of everyone. Not everyone is a thief but different people have different moral standards. Don’t create a tempting scenario for others. Keep it secure when there are guests/workers at your place.
Put some form of tracking on the device
The Steam Deck is like a traditional laptop; it has no SIM or GPS. Once it’s lost, it’s really hard to get it back. There are methods by which you can track the Steam Deck (Steam Guard) but it involves IP and it’s not enough to get an exact location. Other than law-enforcement, no one can find the customer details associated with an IP address.
An alternate approach, which can be slight pricey, is to put a Tile tracker on the device. There are tutorials on how it can be attached to the device.
Note: I’m not associated with Tile in any way.
Get the official Serial Number and MAC ID of the device
It will help you to uniquely identify the device IF it gets stolen. You may find the serial number on
- The bill of purchase
- Inside the Steam Deck settings section
- On the Steam Deck package
- You can ask Steam support for the serial number once it’s associated with your account The MAC ID is present on the Steam Deck settings page (and also on your access point logs if it has connected even once).
I hope this post is educational and makes you wary of the physical dangers around us. Please keep your handhelds or any valuables safe
<vent>
What hurts even more is that the Steam Deck, which was the 1 TB OLED model, was a gift from a very special person and I feel like I have betrayed that person by losing it. I had lots of plans with the device, like making a couch plug-and-play setup, a retro gaming setup, a productivity device by using desktop mode, etc. But all my plans were shattered in an instance. I’m now convincing myself to move on to something else.
</vent>
Edit: As of 20th August, I can see via Steam Guard that the device was logged into a few hours ago (2 weeks post the burglary). I know the risks involved in keeping my device signed in. I’m counting on the person’s stupidity. Any proper thief would have formatted the device.
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lots of maintenance workers at the destination house.
Did these people work for a specific company? Complaining to the company directly about stolen items or leaving negative review of the company might help.
Either way it really sucks though, I’m sorry you went through that.
While they belong to Urban Company, they were called as external agents for this particular job by my renter.
even not a specific company: mention to all of them that it was stolen while they had a pretty limited group of people at the house
you might think it’s a case of “how would they know who there’s no point”, but people who steal things like this likely didn’t do it just once… it is, or will become a pattern of behaviour. if nobody reports it, they have no chance of identifying a pattern of behaviour to narrow down the culprit… if a company gets 2 or 3 reports of stolen items from houses that an individual employee is working at, it becomes pretty clear who the culprit could be
you even have pretty good evidence that it was stolen rather than lost: the fact that it came online for a period means someone has it and has connected it to a network and then not reported it lost
do make it clear though that you’re not insinuating that their company specifically is to blame; you just want them to know in case they have future problems. you don’t want them getting defensive, because that’s not productive for anyone
Heads up, Google now has a FindMy network like Apple’s that’ll update much more frequently than a Tile due to the sheer number of users. The downside, as compared to a tile, is that it’ll notify the thief that a tracker is following them.
All the times I checked, there isn’t any hardware yet that would be worth it. Chipolo sounded promising, but the reviews really disagree. I wish Samsung adopted Google’s network. Their trackers are fantastic and offer features no other company does.
How do you mean not worth it? The pebblebees are working fine for me.
The reviews I had taken a look at as chipolo came out unfortunately made it clear that those trackers didn’t… Well, track very well. I haven’t researched pebblebees yet, thanks for the hint. One feature that I believe no Google find my device trackers have yet, though, is utilizing UWB for close-range tracking, like the Samsung ones do in their ecosystem. I’ll take a look at the trackers you mentioned, but I’d like to see some more development from other companies.
Ahh, yeah, I’d guess the ecosystem isn’t that large yet, as updates roll out to Android devices n such. I haven’t really tested mine in the real world yet. I’ve been meaning to.
One time I got a notification that someone was tracking me with a tracker. It was my own wallet that is registered to my account lol.
Can you give me a little more detail on this? How to enable it and does it work on devices without GPS?
It works like Tile and Apple’s FindMy network, mostly through Bluetooth I believe. Every single phone running android (and with the setting enabled) can ping the location of your trackable when nearby. It’s just like Tile, except with a network of every single Android device instead of just Tile users. If you’re unsure how Tile or Air tags work, then you might have bit more research to do that’s outside the scope of this comment.
I’m not sure what you mean by enable it, the first step would be to purchase a compatible trackable. Currently there are only two brands making them, unless others have started since I bought mine. Pebblebee seems to be the more popular ones, and that’s what I went with.
If you want to play around with the app, you can download it here, but there won’t be much to do in it until you have a trackable.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.adm
Thanks a lot! I wanted something like AirTag but for Android. I am convincing myself to wait for the Steam Deck OLED 2. I’ll buy the tracker and put it under a decal or something.
Yeah, it’s cool that Google has finally got their shit together with that. What’s fascinating is that Google and Apple worked together to provide cross device notifications if an Air tag is following an Android or a Google FindMy tracker is following an iPhone.
Google and Apple worked together to provide cross device notifications
One of the rare instances of collaboration where it actually matters.
Somehow this news flew under the radar for me
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Read the story. They didn’t get it back.
I deleted my comment after realizing that.
FYI, the cops will not do shit with the info you gave them. Probably never even wrote it down.
Dumb question, the Steam Deck of the image is yours or you could never get it back? In a first instace I think that the Steam Deck in the image was yours.
Its a dishonest clickbait tactic given most people assume the story would end with “i got it back smashed up”.
I was let down by the time I completed reading but not enough to downvote.
It’s not mine. Just a random image which is like my emotional state at the time of the event.
Sorry, yo. Keep your head up
Not sure which country you live in, but renter’s insurance covered a stolen item for me when I was renting. Worth a check if you have a similar thing.
I am so sorry, that is a horrible story. It is not your fault!
I, along with the rest of my family, are probably too trusting of people. At my old place, i used to leave stuff like this all the time and I never even thought that it could get stolen.
I wish I learnt this lesson earlier but in a different manner. 😔
I’ve a suggestion that might work depending on how honest the perspn hiring the worker is and on their contract. You can tell the person to send some questionnaire or feedback form etc to all of them which will track their ip and name/email (say unique form per worker). Then you can match the ip, as home ips are mostly static for short duration. Tell them to send the form at night or sometime when they’ll be at home and give it a short deadline.
Hi there, I can see that the thief is currently using the device. Will it be possible to send a link via my friend saying “Yo bro, check this meme. This girl is crazzyyyy
<link>” which, once clicked, gets the GPS coordinate?For example, it’s possible via browser to get the location of a device. Can the same thing be done on Linux? I can create a simple nginx webserver on my spare server but unsure about how to proceed.
grabify link, hide it as a pic.
Afaik steam deck doesn’t have a gps module. You’ve to get any of their identifying information.
What you can do is perhaps sending memes with different cannery token redirects for each worker. Send them around when the device is being used. That way you can compare the grabbed ip with steam log and see which worker’s match. As the deck doesn’t have sim they either will use home wifi or mobile hotspot. Both will work this way.
This is actually a terrific idea. Unfortunately there is a high probability that the workers will use their mobile data to access the form. But I’m thinking how it might be possible to set this up in a believable manner. These workers from the lower lower middle class section of society and they don’t understand forms. Thanks for the suggestion.
Make sure to wait 5 minutes after you see them playing a game and open up a new one to kick them off in the middle of what they’re doing
It’s really insane that paid help went digging through your shit and stole an expensive item. I do not think that is something people would or could expect.
I work a labor job and had three ladders stolen from me on a single project. As I was a contractor at the time it came out of my pocket. There was actually a fourth attempt when I found mine with painter’s tape over where I wrote my name.
That’s messed up. Has that been a common occurrence?
I’ve had a couple tools go missing at other sites but all the ladder theft was at one site.
The only country I’d trust paid help in is Japan. Anywhere else and it is very likely a considerable portion are either thieves or one unlocked door away from thievery. Doesn’t matter if it’s in my home or in their shop(like for a car).
That’s really sad. Many movers could’ve stolen from me over many moves, if they wanted, but I haven’t yet found a case of it happening. That sounds like a really stressful way to live, thinking that way
You should expect it. A huge % of people are shitbags just waiting for their chance. I’ve found and returned 3 wallets in my life and every time when I mentioned it to someone else they were in total disbelief that I didn’t just steal the person’s money and calling me an idiot for it. These were people I would have thought were trustworthy otherwise.
A huge % of people are shitbags just waiting for their chance
The existence of civilization as we know it depends on this being false.
they were in total disbelief that I didn’t just steal the person’s money and calling me an idiot for it. These were people I would have thought were trustworthy otherwise.
Then you aren’t a good judge of character
Civilization exists because of strong people keeping week people in line. It has nothing to do with morality. It put Donald Trump in the white house FFS. Watch what people do when they think no one is paying attention and won’t face any consequences and they show their true colors.
I’m an excellent judge of character. I just had to learn to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. No one has gotten anything past me in years and I’ve had countless moments of telling others “I told you so” when someone I warned them about fucks them over.
You really have been hurt by a lot of people obviously, but spreading miserable amounts of cynicism isn’t helping. I know people throw around “you should seek therapy” flippantly but I think it should be a serious consideration for you if you aren’t already doing so
This is a stupid way to think. And you obviously aren’t a good judge of character. You admitted to thinking thieves were honest people
Do you have renters insurance?
The deductible is probably more than the SD is worth.
Ya sadly it might be, but worth checking
Oh that sucks.
One of the workers definitely stole it
I’m pretty sure about it. I put the Deck in the bag, put the bag in the house and leave. After I come back, it’s gone. There was no one else other than the workers.
Plot twist, it was the mother.
This is unlikely but is there any CCTV in that room?
:( I’m sorry that happened to you. That’s a sad sight
Just hugged my steamdeck
Hug it again for my sake :(
![[PSA] The terrible tragedy of a stolen Steam Deck](https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/d0025178-349f-4b06-b0c0-d068fb24e279.jpeg){kind=link}