|
Article ID: 4361-MVDP-3638
The content of this page is moderated by both Steam Support and the Steam user community - any links to outside sites should be treated with caution.
Steam Support will not request your Steam account password for any reason, nor will you ever be asked to enter your Steam account password into a website form.
Important:
We encourage protecting your PC from viruses, spyware and other forms of malicious software. However, it is not necessary to run anti-virus and other security applications while you are engaged in playing a game on Steam.
Anti-virus applications often interfere with Steam and can cause a range of problems from connection issues to games not launching correctly. Please disable your anti-virus software before launching Steam if you are experiencing issues while using Steam.
The Steam application has been mistakenly identified as a virus or "trojan" by certain software as a result of the development of potentially-malicious programs which use the same filenames as valid Steam files (this is a very common practice amongst malicious software writers - many viruses already masquerade as valid operating system files).
We are working with the antivirus and firewall software vendors to ensure fewer false positives involving Steam appear in the future.
In the meantime, please review the symptoms below to determine whether or not this issue is impacting your system:
Norton Firewall
When using the "Friends" feature, some Norton Firewall users have reported that their firewall software reports that Steam may be malicious software attempting to access their system. This is a false positive.
Occasionally the Friends server sends your computer a message asking if you're still online - if you closed Steam (especially if you killed it from the task manager), this message can be intercepted by the Norton firewall.
Since Friends sometimes uses the same port number as a known trojan horse virus, the firewall incorrectly identifies the message as being malicious - despite the fact that the traffic does not mimic a trojan in any other respect.
Kaspersky AV or Internet Security
Kaspersky AV may prevent the in-game overlay from functioning in some or all games. This may occur silently, or Kaspersky may warn you that Steam is acting as an Invader application trying to load itself in another process.
Workaround:
In your Kaspersky settings go the Threads and exclusions, Trusted Zone, and add Steam.exe as a trusted application. Make sure you check the settings to Do not restrict application activity as well as Do not scan opened files for full compatibility.
Kaspersky 7.0 users must enable the Compatibility Mode for Programs Using Self-Protection Methods option, also disable the option for Application Integrity Control.
Note:
We have had some users report that even after performing the above workaround and even after completely disabling Kaspersky the overlay would not work. Several of those users have also reported that after uninstalling Kaspersky completely the overlay did begin working. So, if you have Kaspsersky and cannot seem to get the overlay to work you may wish to try this. We are continuing to investigate and seek better compatibility with Kaspersky.
|
