zeroxxx: As far as I'm aware, every transaction thru online banking needs to be authorized through my physical token.
What Valve do is no different.
You sure love making things more.... dramatic, don't you?
I use online banking about 2-3x a month. And it's my money that on there.
I use Steam every day. And it's only games that's on there.
When I log into my online banking account I enter my user number and my password.
When I log into Steam I enter my name and password and then get asked for a code (every time). That said code only gets generated on the mobile app. I take my tablet, open the Steam app and type the code from there. That applies to every time I log in on any device.
My daily routine:
Start Steam client (it remembers my login), start Idle Master (have to log in there often, sometimes it remembers my login sometimes not, depends on other things). I start Firefox (my main browser), am automatically logged in there. When in need I start Chrome browser and log in Steam there (some fancy addons only work on that browser unfortunately, also I use that browser for all the spammy tasks gleam.io asks me for) - that often causes that I get logged out of Idle Master - so I've to log in there again.
Seems there's a max. # of logins you can have simultaneous. But I'm not sure, what I'm sure is that when I login in Steam via Chrome browser I get logged out of Idle Master. Can happen 0-2x a day.
When I send items to the market (about every 2nd day approx 20 items), they are on hold until I confirmed every single item on my tablet in the Steam app. Man that's so annoying. That's also new since the Steam app. Before nothing needed to be confirmed at all. My items are worth about 6 cent each.
I've to confirm trades with other players too, but luckily not for every single item. It's for the entire trade. That's not a bother, except that I've to use my tablet for that now too - before the Steam app became mandatory I could confirm that via mail.
A user that does not use the Steam app gets a hold time for 1 day, 3 days or 15 days. Depends on how long he's at Steam and what his Steam Guard settings are and what's he wants to do.
That applies for market listings (15 days) as well as for trades between users (1, 3, or 15 days).
If I would refuse to use their mobile app I'd get 15 days hold time on the market, a 1 day hold time for trades between friends and a 3 days hold time for trades between recently added people. Latter one could also be 15 days. Someone else who sent me stuff got a 15 days hold time. Means I get my stuff end of March xD ;_;
1 day is okay, 3 days are annoying, 15 days are... what the hell!
And that's all incl. the confirmation (mail/Steam app - which side uses what is also imporant), Without a confirmation nothing gets traded at all.
And there's even more, but I think it's long enough already.
When I started with Steam none of those restrictions existed. And now it gets more and more. Not all at once, they come in baby steps. But altogether they only show the path how it's going on in the future. More and more or: worse and worse.
On the Steam forum they're already joking about retina scans and blood samples. I wouldn't joke so laud about that.
Many of my friends on Steam are pissed off at Valve at the moment.
Beside those ridiculous security implementations they've still ridiculous security issues. Like there's no confirmation when you - or someone - changes your e-mail in Steam. It gets changed and done with it. Most sites I know would send a link to the old mail to have the change confirmed. Just last week I read on the Steam forum that someone who was at his friend's and they were playing, his friend then changed the mail addy of the other's Steam account to his addy, then the password and logged out - lol. Evil. Shouldn't even be so easily doable, esp. considering the tight security crap Steam uses on other departments.
And then there was this security breach in Dez/Jan when ppl could see the detail page of other users, but not access their own Steam account.
But honestly, this shouldn't be about whether I love to make things dramatic or not. I don't feel comfortable there anymore but since desired alternatives are still lacking I'll remain there until they top it off with another feature. All for security!
And thanks for full quote.