guide How to background check (THE ULTIMATE GUIDE)
Entry posted by Abstract in Guides
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Getting started
Hey there, since I know that not everyone knows how to do background checks, I thought I'd make a guide on how to do it based on what I personally do myself.
In this day and age where anyone can pretend to be someone they're not, it's important to do a minimum amount of research on the people you trade with, especially if you trade on a regular basis and/or do any form of cash/risky trades.
Installing and configuring the tools
What you'll need to install :
- Augmented Steam (https://augmentedsteam.com/)
- Tampermonkey (or any equivalent userscript manager, such as Violentmonkey/Greasemonkey) https://www.tampermonkey.net/
- Steam Trade Offer Enhancer (aka Julia's script, Tampermonkey required to install) https://github.com/juliarose/steam-trade-offer-enhancer/blob/master/steam.trade.offer.enhancer.user.js?raw=true
By default, Augmented Steam offers handy links and the ability to have third-party links of profiles for websites such as Backpack.tf. On top of this, any SteamRep banned profile becomes much more obvious when you visit their profile (see screenshots below)
While this is a good start, it's not enough to do thorough background checks. We'll go in the Augmented Steam options in the top right corner to do a few adjustments.
Once that's done, download this configuration file (I will keep this updated if necessary): https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZ1QsWXZJW7YGLkvcuh40uLI6f1gHXTnaIGy
then click on Import in the bottom right corner of the configuration page (see screenshot below)
Select the downloaded configuration file and click on Open. Augmented Steam should tell you that the import was successful.
Basic background checking (the fun part)
Now that we've gone through the process of installing Augmented Steam and Julia's script, I will now show how easy it is to background check someone.
Let's say that you get a trade offer from someone. Julia's script gives you two easily accessible buttons to use along many other features (which are not the main focus of the guide).
The first button links to that person's backpack and the second button links you to a rep.tf page of that same person.
If someone has been banned on backpack.tf and or on SteamRep, you will see that their name was striked through. On rep.tf, it will show that the person was banned from one or more communities.
Please note that some bans aren't always related to scamming offenses but will still show up for you to see and judge for yourself.
Deep background checking (highly recommended for cash traders and experienced traders)
Why am I recommending this "deep" background check? While some scammers are obvious and already banned, some try to stay under the radar and pull off large scams (typically exit scams, paypal scams, etc)
Let's take this person for example. They posted that they were buying and selling keys, however there were multiple signs that an exit scam was going to happen months before it even happened.
If you take a quick look at his backpack and old trust, you would think that person is fine. However, if you take a closer look at his backpack and trust, you can notice that he quickly gained trust and was buying/selling keys exclusively (no unusual trading, etc)
https://web.archive.org/web/20201216201319/https://backpack.tf/trust/76561198038550904
On top of this, this account was purchased/stolen to look like a normal old profile. You can tell just by the sudden surge in activity after all those years.
You can tell by using these websites: steamid.uk, vacbanned.com, SteamRep
The account is 10 years, suddenly starts doing high tier trading and history on Backpack.tf and SteamRep only goes back a few months.
From all this information, we can tell that this user is highly suspicious and cannot be trusted even if they're not banned anywhere.
In summary, you can use the links from the Augmented Steam extension to check a person's presence on other websites like the ones I mentioned above. This guide is not 100% complete (as you can tell from all the links below), but this should help tremendously weed out any bad actors.
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