r/Steam_Link • u/Prestigious_Wolf897 • 17d ago

Security concerns

Concerning Steamlink.. my son lives primarily with his father but will be with me most of the summer. He has a steam account on the computer that is at my house and now he wants to play at his dad's. They want to use his dad's chromebook which I guess will not download steam but can download the steamlink. They kept discussing around me that he was going to bring the chromebook over to link it. I said absolutely not..I am not having his dad's chromebook linked to my computer. Am I wrong? I think this is very much a privacy issue.?

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u/KeyboardSlappr 17d ago

I would suggest buying your son a better laptop and just letting him log into steam on his new computer

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u/Prestigious_Wolf897 17d ago

That sounds like the simple fix. I wish it was that easy

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u/Prestigious_Wolf897 17d ago

My ex insists that it works like any other account and he would just be logging into steam and only able to log into steam

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u/Zelvan 17d ago

If steam is running they'll be able to connect up and browse the PC. If steam is set to run as admin will have full access to everything on the PC and install anything.
Personally I'd be confident to setup something securely but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

If you're comfortable with managing windows user accounts you could create a normal none-admin local account and then they can link up to that account.
As long as your folder permissions are configured correctly they won't be able to access your files or install anything.

Installing software will prompt for your admin account password so youd want to setup the games in advance.

I'd also put the PC on its own isolated subnet just to be secure and prevent network snooping but this is unlikely a concern.

I would like to note steamlink isnt going to be a great experience over the internet connection. Probably not worth bothering.