Someone follows me across servers
Written from what actually worked for people in the same spot, and what did not. Rust and Wardogs. Nothing here costs money.
There are two completely different ways a stalker finds your server. They need different fixes, and most advice online mixes them up. Work out which one you have before you change anything.
| Path A: your Steam profile | Path B: BattleMetrics | |
|---|---|---|
| How it works | Steam shows "In-Game" and a Join Game button on your profile while you play. One click lands them on your server. | Server owners who link BattleMetrics RCON hand it your name and Steam ID. Your profile there lists every server you join, live. |
| Who can use it | Anyone who can open your profile. With a public profile: the whole internet, no login. | Anyone. The player search is public. |
| Fix | Steam privacy settings. Free, immediate. | Avoid linked servers, or a new account. Steam settings do nothing here. |
| Wardogs | This is the only path. Official servers never reach BattleMetrics. | Only on community servers whose owner linked RCON. The Wardogs servers page marks official servers and collects player reports on community ones. |
| Rust | Applies too. | Most community servers are linked. Facepunch official servers are not. |
Step 1. Find out which path they use
- Open battlemetrics.com/players and search your in-game name. Open your profile there.
- If it lists servers you have played on in the last days, with times, you are on Path B. The stalker has that page bookmarked. Changing your name does not help; the page follows your Steam ID.
- If it shows "no sessions" or nothing at all, BattleMetrics is not how they find you. You are on Path A, or the leak is a person: a friend, a Discord, a squadmate.
- Run the checker on your own profile while you are in a match. It tells you whether Path A is open right now.
Step 2. Close Path A. Everyone should do this.
Steam, click your name at the top, View Profile, Edit Profile, Privacy Settings.
- Game details: Private. This removes "In-Game" and the Join Game button for everyone, friends included. This is the setting that matters.
- Friends list: Private. A stalker's second account usually sits on your friends list. Then go through the list and remove anyone you cannot name in real life.
- My profile: Friends Only.
- Status: Invisible while you play (friends list, your name, status). With this on, Join Game is unavailable even to friends.
Check it worked: open your own profile URL in a private browser window while in a match. It must say Currently Offline, with no game.
Rust's streamer mode does not do any of this. It only changes names on your own screen.
Step 3. If you are on Path B (BattleMetrics lists your servers)
Be honest with yourself about what does not work here, because people will tell you otherwise:
- Changing your name: no. The profile is anchored to your Steam ID.
- Private Steam profile: no. BattleMetrics never reads your Steam profile.
- Invisible on Steam: no, for the same reason.
- Rust streamer mode: only on servers whose admin enabled streamer mode detection in BattleMetrics. Most have not.
- Asking BattleMetrics to delete you: they have refused, including under GDPR.
What does work:
- Play only on servers that do not feed BattleMetrics. Start from the server list on this site, which shows every Rust server whose public player query leaks real names; pick one marked CENSORED or HIDDEN. Then confirm the other half after joining: search your name on the BattleMetrics players page with "Only show online players" ticked. Empty means safe. Facepunch official servers are safe. Community servers with "hide player list" set in their RCON settings are safe. Send the owner of your regular server the owners page; the fix costs them nothing.
- Move to a server with active admins and tell them, with screenshots, before he arrives. Several people in these threads ended it that way: he followed, he got banned. Choose a server where he has no status.
- A second Steam account, if you can afford a second copy. It only stays clean if nothing links it: a new name that shares nothing with the old one, no old friends added, no playing alongside people he already tracks, private everything from day one. Family sharing is disabled for Rust.
About the paid "private profile". BattleMetrics sells a setting that hides your new sessions for as long as you keep paying. We do not recommend it, and we will not link to it. It asks the person being hunted to pay the company that built the hunting tool, it stops the moment you stop paying, and every subscription tells them the model works. The three options above cost nothing and do not depend on their goodwill.
Step 4. If he finds your base every time, not just your server
Knowing the server does not give anyone your grid square. If he walks to your base on a fresh wipe with no scouting, he is using ESP or a radar cheat. That is a Facepunch matter: report in game with F7 every time, and tell the server admins the pattern. Several people in these threads had the stalker banned this way.
Step 5. Report it, and keep evidence
- Steam: report the profile for harassment (profile page, the flag icon). Block him. Blocking also removes him from your friends' "friends of friends" view of you.
- Facepunch: F7 report in game every time, and support.facepunchstudios.com. They will tell you to talk to server admins first; do that, but file anyway so a record exists.
- Server admins: a short message with dates, screenshots and his Steam ID. Ask for a ban for harassment or griefing. If they protect him, that server is not yours anymore. Leave.
- Keep everything: screenshots of chat, his profile, his BattleMetrics page showing him joining minutes after you. Dated. If it ever moves off the game, into threats, doxxing or messages about your real life, that becomes a police matter in most countries, and the folder of evidence is what makes the report stick.
- Do not engage. Every reply is a reward. Every raid on his walls is a reason to come back. People who did this for months said the same thing: silence plus a server he cannot follow you to.
Being DDoSed while you play
A flood on your home connection looks exactly like a server crash from your chair. Afterwards, open the server's BattleMetrics page and look at the player count graph and Downtime History. If the server stayed full while you dropped, they hit you, not the server. Then: never join voice calls with strangers, reboot the router for a new IP, and ask your ISP about it. If the server itself went down, that is the owner's hosting problem, and paying anyone to "hide" you fixes nothing.