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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.

Hey everybody, Most of you probably not even know who I am. I've been on the backpack.tf forum since the beginning, and stayed on it for a few years. There are several reasons why I don't get involved into the forum and/or discord anymore. First off, I got graduated. This means that I currently have a job and most of the time I'm working in a foreign country. This means no more TF2 for me, because the hotel WIFI is always shitty. I also doubt that my laptop could handle the game. Secondly, I was already out of the trading game for a longer time. The feeling of making good trades and gaining profit has disappeared, apparently. I never thought that would ever happen. And finally, I discovered other games to play. Yes, I am talking about Fortnite, but then again, I cannot play it unless I am home. I also play Tekken 7, it's the best game in the world, because there are also hats. And we all know hats are important, hats are life. But seriously, I play TF2 for only about an hour a week while I'm home. I hope you all have a great time and never give up on your dreams. Kisses, hugs and much love. ∞Ramses PS. I still have a lot of Puddingkip-crafted stuff, so I might give it away in the future. We'll see... That stuff is really really valuable.

I log in from time to time because I always tell myself that I need to cash in my backpack for like ~$200 since I'd be better off with that money rather than a bunch of cool hats, a shit ton of white paint, and a bunch of Quackenbirdts, but I haven't made a trade in years and I'm pretty fucking lazy to do anything about it. $200 covers gas for a month y'know? But man, looking at this website again takes me back. I made most of my suggestions when I was 13-14. I don't know what got me hooked but it was pretty fun to fuck with the market and make some decent money at the same time since I couldn't get a job at the time. This suggestion was made after my first year here and I can't believe I priced over 600 things in that time. I wanna say that I have a bunch of memorable moments from my "suggesting career" or whatever the hell I should call it, but I can hardly remember shit and I didn't wanna sift through 120 pages of price suggestions, especially when I have a dozen pages of Dota 2 suggestions that I abused super hard to repwhore when Dota 2 pricing was briefly a thing. I think I made 2 suggestions for currency like keys and buds, which I felt was my peak. The thing that I remember the most was being the #6 top contributor on the list and that felt pretty good. I'm still on there now, but at #71 l0l. Basically, I had a vague memory of having a good time. I think I stopped price suggesting since I started high school and it was a stupid college prep type of thing so that ate up most of my time. I also got a bit bored of tf2 since most of the servers I was a regular on died and Steam added that stupid 2-step authentication shit which pissed me off. I had also been playing since tf2 went f2p, so I had been playing for a good 2-3 years at that point. I got a PS4 so I play on that pretty regularly and I got an actually good PC now. I also started playing League of Legends around this time too, so if you ever saw a guy named NotPan on League that kicked your ass (or fed), that was me. I remember I used to play all my games on some shitty budget laptop but I was still pretty fucking good (not on league though, I'm a gold scrub). I think I logged into Steam every once in a while as well and I definitely felt bad as some of my old friends hit me up and I didn't remember them too much. A lot of life shit happened and I don't remember a lot of things anymore (or maybe my memory is just incredibly shitty), but all those names on my friends list are pretty familiar and I'm sure I had some good memories with them back then. I've been wanting to write something like this for a while and I finally got around to it. I don't know if anyone will read this, but if you did then I hope you enjoyed it. I'll probably come back to write more shit about going to college. forks up bois ps: I gotta put a pic of myself meeting the voice of the sniper somewhere down the line. he acted in a play I watched with my class 2 years ago and I saw him walking down the street and booked it out of the bus and got a pic with him. Man of La Mancha was sick too btw I'd recommend it

Yo, shoutouts to anyone that remembers me all these years ago LOL. It's been awhile, or rather sup to those that have heard of me for the first time. I hope BP.TF has been flourishing well and that the newer generations have been outclassing the old guards like me. I just felt like posting random things that I have been reminiscing about. I'm not sure if the demographics really changed much in this website, but I remember back when I around, fairly good amount of people were in their high school years or below 18. I and probably many others that were top contributors had so much free times in our hands that we would spend absurd amounts of time on arguing over prices of a few pixels. Idk if I reflected my maturity during my years of activity, but I definitely was still in high school at my prime. I remember wanting to be a mod so badly, but I couldn't for awhile because I wasn't old enough. In fact even when I retired, I actually still wasn't old enough to be a mod. Now I am, but damn there were some things...that I quite don't know what to express. First off, maturity. I was told that I was pretty mature for how I expressed things, but upon further evaluation, I definitely had holes. While I addressed many things in a professional and a matter-of-fact way, I definitely got provoked easily. If I felt like I got attacked or got emotional, then I wouldn't hesitate venting or saying some things that I regret. Restraint is definitely a skill that potentially gets easier as you age, and that has definitely applied to me. I cringe at some things I said as a result of certain things, but at the end of the day I do appreciate all the warnings cleverpun has given me as a learning lesson. Is cleverpun still around? Clever was such a good mod in retrospect heh. Another thing was that overall, I was a quantity over quality guy in making suggestions. Ok sure, I actually put some effort for my quantity unlike some people (d0 and Pyroman comes to mind, are those guys still around and pop some names? Or am I old?), but at the end of day, they were just quantity suggestions that quite frankly didn't require much extensive effort. Sure I was the first suggestor to achieve black belt status when they decided to implement that, but at the end of the day looking back at my achievements, all those hundreds of hollow suggestions are next to meaningless to me. While I did hold the #1 Top Contributors part for a little while, it's not really that great of a feeling when majority of those votes came from blind votes and superfluous suggestions. The suggestions that really do mean a lot to me though are the ones where I put in hours into crafting and thought into. The ones that come immediately to mind was when I suggested to change the Loose Cannon to a scrap price range when I was merely an orange belt, which was an incredibly ballsy and an unheard proposal to do when it was universally accepted that all weapons are only worth .05. https://backpack.tf/suggestion/52153a974bd7b8171200000b Suggestions like these resonate with me the most. I went against the conventional wisdom and trends because I wanted to do what I felt was right. It encouraged me to think outside the box and make sure my argument wasn't bullshit or else people would rip me apart. And when my extremely hard work got accepted, I really felt like I accomplished something. Suggestions I did like these, doing key suggestions when shit was really vitriolic and dealing with hate (damn keys are worth 27 ref+? Are they gonna be 50 ref when I come back a year later?), and doing suggestions on all unusual variants of the Fez are my proudest accomplishments. They made me learn things and actually contributed to the site the most even though the contribution points or whatever don't really properly reflect that. I don't remember my suggestion trains like when the latest halloween items were dropping in value or when they required little thought, but suggestions that required hard work and critical thinking are something I recommend every prospective suggestor to do more often. To me at least, they're the most fulfilling. I guess the biggest thing I would like to highlight though is towards the end of my prime years. I'll just say it out there right here in the open since I honestly have little issues expressing this: I was dealing with pretty bad depression at the time. I will not go into details as to how it occurred, but if you just looked at how I phrased things towards the end of 2014 and some of my blogs, it's pretty obvious that I was just really sad and tired. With things that were going on IRL that transpired through my contributions, I complained and was pessimistic more often than not. I attributed part of my depression to little enjoyment towards suggesting so I announced my retirement. That clearly didn't actually help, and if anything it made my depression worse as the years went on. I went on to have suicidal thoughts and being afraid of my future. I was extremely vulnerable and self-deprecating. I was pathetic, which I thought of myself all the time before. Soon though, I ended up getting some help, and I was doing things that slowly but surely got me out of depression. I started addressing the root of my problems. I started meditating to get me to think clearly. I started to eat better and exercise once in awhile. I started smiling more. After a year of getting out of my hole, I was pretty much out of the woods, and I'm so grateful to be out of that state of mind. To all of you currently struggling, try to find someone that will support you. Try to find motivation in one thing that you find dear to you and cling onto it as your reason to keep going. If you don't have that one motivation, make something your one motivation. Set goals. Meditate to have a clearer state of mind. Address the root of your problem and resolve it. Things WILL get better if you address it in due time as it did for me. Perhaps y'all should go outside for a little while and get some Vitamin D, since I know you probably spend a little too much time on the computer than we should. Depression isn't a simple topic and everyone has their own problems, so I'll leave it as that, but I will say to those that are struggling: why not start now to get better? Welp, I guess that's the most I have in my mind right now. If you're wondering why I don't return to the main site or really hang around here that often, it's because my interest has long past TF2, suggesting, and trading. The fire in me is long, long gone, and TF2 is incredibly stale to me. I tried coming back when my depression has significantly subsided, but my heart really wasn't in it. Nah, most of my current interests are stuff I'm doing in college and Melee, so coming back here in my prime days is pretty much out of the question. It's a bit sad that I'll never be able to come back to my peak, but the memories of my experience is still there, and I'll probably check back here every once in awhile to see what's new and old. Feel free to comment and asking me whatever and I might come back in an appropriate timely matter to answer, but yeah that's what's up to me.

So i got accepted in Jordan, while it wasn't my plan, I am still really excited, especially that I will be able to live and go to the same university as my childhood friend! I will be attending Civil Engineering, YUY I always loved Saudi Arabia, i will always love it, it just really fits my way of life. My Mom is my everything, i love her more than myself, it saddens me a lot that i will have to leave her for like 4 years (i will visit from time to time) .. i will miss my dad too .. but not as much as my Mom :/ Uni starts 6th of October, i probably won't have a good internet (or any at all) so i might be more inactive than ever. I'm not a good student and i admit it, i never cared about school nor studied hard for it .. and now im going for the hardest university in Jordan, it will be a challenge, and hopefully i will do good in it Wish me the best