Ask a SteamRep admin

[Lava]

Hello backpack.tf, I'm Lava, an admin from SteamRep. You can verify me by clicking the picture below my avatar.

I haven't frequented this place very much, and neither have the other staff as far as I know, but I've noticed some misinformation going around. Since our primary objectives at SteamRep are to raise awareness and community education to prevent fraud within the Steam trading community, I decided to host an AMA (ask me anything) thread here, after some prior internal discussion. If you have questions about SteamRep policies, how things are run, or whatever, ask them here. Same goes for suggestions on how to improve SteamRep. If you want to ask me personal questions (within reason) that's fine too I guess, but I don't really consider myself that important or special so you might find it boring. I will try to answer every question posted in this thread, but bear in mind there are a few potential topics where I may need to decline to answer if they venture into areas we don't discuss publicly, such as methods for finding alts, phone numbers/addresses for staff members, or specific status on applications or ongoing investigations.

To be clear, as some people have formed this misconception, SteamRep does not and will not retaliate against comments critical of us. If you write up an essay on why SteamRep is a scourge of the trading community, how the admins are corrupt, or whatever else your imagination comes up with, your reputation won't be affected. Same is also true in our discussion board, but since I suspect many if not most of you don't frequent there you're free to ask here instead if you feel more comfortable.

[Repose_]

Why wont SR MiddleMen ever accept my add when I need them.

 

I added about 3 and they all ignored it.

[Дебра]

Why have half the mods been inactive for months?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

etc

 

Also can I see your privacy policy?

[rafiozol]

what's up with people getting marked for trading with people who traded with someone who traded with someone who traded with (mostly) not so obvious alt of marked scammer?

[fluffyy]

Have you guys basically abandoned the shitton of unsolved reports? Barely any admins are active, and when they are, they have the nerve to ask for 2-3 year old screenshots or some shit. Why not just put a banner at the top saying "SEND ALL REPORTS TO FORTRESS OF GAMERS"? They would certainly help more than you can, since they handle reports in less than a month most of the time.

 

Edit: and the only time their reports AREN'T handled properly is when they are "sent to SteamRep" for further review

[λngelღмander]

What happened to the Moe and Phantoml0rd reports that were forwarded to steamrep (from FoG)? Were they ever handled?

 

Also, why is it that steamrep is doing nothing about the CS:GO betting sites? None of them ban scammers, and I'm pretty sure cAre bets on one of them all the time. Is it not the responsibility of a website owner to make sure his bots aren't trading with marked accounts? Why is a website owner whose bots are trading with scammers above the law? Bots are alts any way you look at them.

 

One final question, on a more personal note, do you feel steamrep benefits the community? I don't want your professional answer, just tell me what you think.

 

 

 

On a second note, I do respect what you guys do, and I think you all do want to help the community, but lately more than ever I've found myself questioning the decisions steamrep admins make, 

[Mengh.]

Who are the team that choose who the moderators are? I've heard many incidences where SteamRep admins/moderators have been mean to one another and sometimes have been biased to some in their reports. 

 

Plus, this:

 

Have you guys basically abandoned the shitton of unsolved reports? Barely any admins are active, and when they are, they have the nerve to ask for 2-3 year old screenshots or some shit. 

[Дебра]

What kind of questions are you legitimately expecting to receive? The way SteamRep operates is incredibly simple and any questions you'll receive are either regarding your massive backlog which you just dismiss with "we're working on it" (as you have for the entirety of SteamRep's existence), or are questions that you brush off as being unable to answer to avoid assisting scammers.

 

How can you claim to be a professional antifraud organization when your method of reporting and managing reports/appeals is a message board software? Are you simply not aware of the light this shines upon you and your organization?

 

Further, how is having a backlog acceptable if you provide a real-time API? You clearly desire to be an up-to-date source of information regarding the trustworthiness of a user; this is further evidenced by your requirement that partner/friend communities lock steamrep-marked users out. How can you justify attempting to expand into CSGO and Dota2 and the entire Steam universe in general if you cannot even handle your current workload? Are you simply in denial about the fact that SteamRep cannot, will not, and should not be trusted with any real responsibility until you are able to actually do the jobs that you have put upon yourselves?

 

How exactly are you attempting to rectify these issues? We're well aware that you "are working on it" but are YOU aware that no TF2 community actually takes you seriously when you make such a claim? What are the methods you are implementing to chug through your backlog? How many new people are you bringing on directly as a result of your lack of action in the past? Have you updated your screening processes to more efficiently review staff applications?

 

Finally, why should anyone trust you when you have no accountability? When all you do is seemingly brush issues under the rug, why should we trust that a massive database of scammers cannot and has not been tampered with for someone's personal gain?

 

I look forward to your detailed responses to these legitimate concerns.

[ЩĄ Horse]

Why wont SR MiddleMen ever accept my add when I need them.

 

I added about 3 and they all ignored it.

 

Perhaps they are busy? They do have lives of their own - they do the service to help out and offer their time as they can. I can't speak directly for them but this is something worth a thought as a reason for that.

 

 

 

Its not hard to move a thread to the right section. Also this shows that you dont really care. I provided valid proof that your head admin indirectly traded with a scammer and all you did was close it. If you really cared you would have looked into it immediately and forwarded it on...not closed it

 

You can't just "move" that type of post to the report section. It needs to be done properly. You are welcome to do it the proper way like all the others and jump in line with all the rest. I'm busting thru as many as I can when I can just like the others. As with other GF posts that were someone posting about a report needing to be made they were directed to to make a proper report in the correct location.

 

 

 

Have you guys basically abandoned the shitton of unsolved reports? Barely any admins are active, and when they are, they have the nerve to ask for 2-3 year old screenshots or some shit. Why not just put a banner at the top saying "SEND ALL REPORTS TO FORTRESS OF GAMERS"? They would certainly help more than you can, since they handle reports in less than a month most of the time.

 

Edit: and the only time their reports AREN'T handled properly is when they are "sent to SteamRep" for further review

 

You can make reports on other Partner Communities not just FoG - Just FYI. I own and operate another Partner Community as in WickedAfterlife..I take them and deal with them myself but I also Moderate for SR and have been going thru as many reports as I can get to as I have time. This is the same for the others as well.. we have a way to track what reports we are working on but I can't just throw 100 reports in my Q and hash them out over night. It takes time for sure but we are putting a little dent in them. We get 100+ a day so its certainly not easy.

[OverduePixels]

-snip-

 

 

Its pretty clear that csgo community has no interest to accept steamrep in the community itself. The sites themselves should tell you the answer to the question. If I recall correctly, Steamrep admin tried to do a PSA on csgo community on reddit and Almost all of the people in the csgo community instantly pushed them off.

 

There are tons of streamers on Twitch (including YouTubers) who bets and trades without even clicking on steamrep. The csgo community does not recognize steamrep as a validate site. Yes, they may have reports from csgo in their site but its not the community reporting others its bunch of people reporting other players or ex-tf2 players, yes there are a few who knows what steamrep is.

 

Not to mention, tons of users does not even know that a site like this (steamrep) exist.

[ЩĄ Horse]

what's up with people getting marked for trading with people who traded with someone who traded with someone who traded with (mostly) not so obvious alt of marked scammer?

 

Please provide examples of this occurance if you can...I'm not aware of someone down so far of the trade chain getting marked for this.

[Дебра]

Please provide examples of this occurance if you can...I'm not aware of someone down so far of the trade chain getting marked for this.

http://backpack.tf/item/388225931

[ahola]

No one gives a shit about scammers/trading with scammers in CS:GO. At all. Lots of people buy items of scammers, doesn't mean anything.

True, Not even the SR head admin Mattie does, as mattie bought a $100 item from "cAre" using opskins as the middleman. They preach to us to check histories when buying (and have marked people for buying off scammers from the SCM) but when it comes to them checking it they dont bother

Proof: http://csgo.exchange/item/1334212680

[Lava]

Is there anything my friend can do to get unmarked?

I can't paste links here for some reason, if you add me or something I can give the link to him

Write an appeal. If the appeal is denied, there is an "appeal review" process, per our FAQ. If he can address a different appeals admin with one of those 3 points as a reason, and the appeal admin agrees, he will be allowed to write a 2nd appeal. Other than that, or if the appeal review is denied as well, then no he stays marked.

 

Why was this post deleted so quick. Especially when your head admin indirectly cash traded with a scammer

First off, post is not deleted, it's locked and moved to discussion archive (no new replies in that board). Anyone here is free to look at it. We don't delete posts from general discussion, with the exception of spam (e.g. malware links, we get those occasionally) or the occasional "reputation thread" where people try to host their fakerep in our discussion board. The later case is one of the only situations where you can earn a tag by posting in the discussion board.

 

As to the content itself, there are several things wrong. First off, you don't report a scammer through the discussion board. Second, the evidence is lacking or sketchy at best; csgo.exchange is a nice tool to prompt further investigation, but similar to backpack.tf (in an earlier, more premature state) not everyone views it. A scammer may be in the item history, but there may be backpacks in between trades the item visited - private or simply not viewed/indexed by csgo.exchange. Those types of cases, while seemingly straightforward to a lot of vigilante/axegrinder trade-with-scammer-reporters, are some of the more difficult and complicated to work with; because of the incomplete nature for this type of report, a lot more time and investigation needs to invested into the legitimacy. Third, as Horse pointed out, it's posted from a brand new account on an anonymous proxy. Given point 1 and 2, it looks like a troll post, and either way it doesn't belong in the discussion board.

 

Fill the report form out like anyone else, and it will be given fair consideration. We don't advertise this a lot, but any time a green-tagged admin gets reported, it gets flagged for priority review on the backend, so I guarantee the report wouldn't be reviewed.

Report a scam: http://forums.steamrep.com/forms/scam-report.2/respond

 

first sjru and then you

why are most SR admins bronies ffs

 

GEEL PLS FIX

2 brony admins, 11 active(-ish) total admins. You have a very loose definition of "most", but I would like to see more of the admins "join the herd" so to speak, but I don't really press it on them out of respect, nor do I usually press it on people.

 

Why wont SR MiddleMen ever accept my add when I need them.

 

I added about 3 and they all ignored it.

First, a clarification: SteamRep does not have any middlemen. All middlemen are designated by partner communities. Em/Petey made sure of that when he, wearing a SteamRep middleman tag, went brokering for scammers and then scammed one when their arrangement went south. Since then, all SR middlemen tags have been revoked and no new SR middlemen will ever exist.

 

As to your question, I can't speak for middlemen not adding you because I'm not one of them. However, much like us and other community admins, they are all volunteers and can only do so much. Each one receives hundreds of friend requests per day, and sadly it's just impossible to get to every one. There are very few middlemen listed, and many, many people looking for middlemen.

 

The people knowledgeable enough to do it safely, and trustworthy enough for a middlemen tag, by and large do not want a middleman tag because they know what it entails; this sadly means there will probably not be enough middlemen to go around for the foreseeable future. Middlemen receive numerous impersonators, and with each successful impersonator comes a flood of hard-headed victims who absolutely insist it was the real middleman who scammed them, and will "fight to the death" to bring the "scammer" down, and refuse to look at anything suggesting they fell for an impersonator. Admittedly those are more CSGO than TF2 traders, but TF2 traders like that exist. These victims wind up flooding middlemen with fake reports (hence you often see "unconfirmed reports" on middleman profiles) and surprisingly often trade bans from Steam Support not paying attention to the scam reports they receive from victims. I've seen middlemen removed from that list after permanent trade bans, which they themselves were able to prove to us did not happen, but we all know how Steam Support is. Some who have contacts with Valve have been trade banned repeatedly - as many as 4 times, for various lengths of time, because of their impersonators. Experienced community admins are all too aware of the cost for their service to the community if they go this route, and hence very few of them are willing to put their account in that line of fire.

 

Why you take so damn long?

Lots of reports, not a lot of staff. I had a report recently where I spent 5 hours fact-checking between victim and accused, after the moderator pre-processed it. Between 11 admins, there's just not a lot of us to go around. Appeals take even longer.

 

Why have half the mods been inactive for months?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

etc

 

Also can I see your privacy policy?

 

We've had internal discussions about inactive staff. With as few staff as we have as it is, it's kind of hard to remove any more, but the ones who contribute nothing are subject to removal. I cannot comment about the standing of specific staff members.

 

Privacy policy is being worked on, but we only keep information on profiles that is publicly available. It will look remarkably similar to Valve's, because we're hosting what's available through the Steam API.

 

"I will not send you a link to this page. If someone sent you a link here claiming to be me, it's an impersonator.

Provided responsible security disclosures to SteamRep"

 

The irony is real.

 

I'm pretty sure that's through OpenID, linked by backpack.tf's own forum infrastructure. I myself did not link to my profile, but instead gave instructions to authoritatively verify my identity. That's a step I take, and I hope more middlemen (and victims follow) to curb impersonators. If someone came to you in Steam chat with a link, or had it on their profile or blatantly posted somewhere else claiming to be me, that's when you should worry. I pledge not to do that, and always provide alternate instructions to verify my identity (right-click and copy my profile URL, then paste into steamrep.com) which cannot be reproduced by an imposter.

 

Have you guys basically abandoned the shitton of unsolved reports? Barely any admins are active, and when they are, they have the nerve to ask for 2-3 year old screenshots or some shit. Why not just put a banner at the top saying "SEND ALL REPORTS TO FORTRESS OF GAMERS"? They would certainly help more than you can, since they handle reports in less than a month most of the time.

 

Edit: and the only time their reports AREN'T handled properly is when they are "sent to SteamRep" for further review

 

I spent excessive time researching and addressing those, case by case, in Debra's own thread (to which he simply [iurl=http://forums.steamrep.com/posts/301346/]spit in my face[/url]), but basically FoG didn't actually forward them, and we were never notified. As for the cases themselves, see my above comment about csgo.exchange and proving trades with scammers, each case will take time to review. Furthermore, compared to something like PayPal chargebacks, trades with scammers pose minimal risk to the community (especially in CSGO where much of the community does not yet follow/understand/know about SteamRep), so spending excessive time chasing people who trade with scammers for some kid on a witch hunt kind of wastes our limited resources.

 

I'm not personally going to continue researching those cases because, frankly, Debra's comment was offensive, and it makes it hard for me to remain impartial in judging the cases. If you gave up your entire trading career, save for maybe 1 or 2 trades per month, to try and help keep everyone else safe, only to have someone spit in your face and step all over the time and energy you put into your work, it would be easier to understand, but at SteamRep we have strict internal policies where staff must recuse themselves from any case they have a conflict of interest in or they otherwise feel they can't give a fair and impartial judgement on.

 

As to the question about requesting screenshots, no matter how old the report is our http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/submission-fundamentals.60254/'>evidence requirements still stand. That's how we ensure we only mark people who are actually guilty, and not just fake-reported. No evidence means no tag, so the mods either ask for that evidence or archive (close) the report.

 

Fortress of Gamers has done some great work. They've admittedly made some mistakes over the months they've served as a partner, and some innocent people have been marked (more than our own tags), to which the Reddit mobs have unilaterally blamed us for but I digress, but overall they have done more than their fair share of work and even recently had a new SCA (tagging admin) added to our backend database. However, they do not receive the same volume of reports as we do. If you want a report reviewed faster, by all means report to a partner community. There are even other partner communities you can report to who can tag, Reddit included. Many of the SteamRep admins are less active lately. I myself work 45 hours per week without internet access, and still contribute what I can to SteamRep.

[ЩĄ Horse]

http://backpack.tf/item/388225931

 

Looks like the same hat just keeps flopping around between different alt accounts and main accounts of various already tagged scammers. The dates go back years with many of those duplicate names. That last one was tagged for something else report being here

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/report-76561198061374527-tf2-team-fortress-2-items.113314/

[λngelღмander]

Its pretty clear that csgo community has no interest to accept steamrep in the community itself. The sites themselves should tell you the answer to the question. If I recall correctly, Steamrep admin tried to do a PSA on csgo community on reddit and Almost all of the people in the csgo community instantly pushed them off.

 

There are tons of streamers on Twitch who bets and trades without even clicking on steamrep. The csgo community does not recognize steamrep as a validate site. Yes, they may have reports from csgo in their site but its not the community reporting others its bunch of people reporting other players or ex-tf2 players, yes there are a few who knows what steamrep is.

 

Not to mention, tons of users does not even know that a site like this (steamrep) exist.

And that is the core of my point. CS:GO trading is completely unimpeded by steamrep, during the four months that I was cautioned, I had no one ask me about my caution, or refuse to trade with me. I turn down a lot of scammer alts, but very few CS:GO scammers are marked.

 

Recently, I was viewing the profile of a scammer marked over 2 years ago, and he had seven open trades on CSGOLounge (which means he'd donated, so he also traded with the bots). This begs the question, is Steamrep actually performing a beneficial function in TF2 trading? I don't really think it does, but I'll get to that later in this post.

 

I don't really think CSGO trading has suffered without steamrep. It honestly seems to me like TF2 trading has become viewed in shades of red, because of how overbearing steamrep is. It's not difficult to check for scammers now, but I think steamrep expects unreasonable knowledge of the community from newer traders. Steamrep doesn't affiliate with valve, so it is completely possible and even plausible for a person who was not involved deeply in any trading sites to have no idea it existsed, then end up banned because they didn't follow the rules. There should definitely be more accessible and visible guides to help people avoid scammers. If steamrep will have the power to mark people and get them banned from every site, then by the same token they should be proactive in making sure the rules are known. Had there been more of an attempt to inform me about scammers, and scammer alts, I would never have had a caution because I would have known what to do. 

 

 

I don't want to drop a bombshell here, but I've been saving this picture for a long time, and I'd love to see what a steamrep admin thought about the fact that scammers are paying Steam employees to have their accounts unlocked. Somewhat recently, Penek, a notorious scammer, told me that he paid a steam employee around 6000 dollars to have his account unbanned. It had a full community ban, as evidenced by this picture

 

 

 

Sorry for the graininess, it's a screenshot of a screenshot. If anyone wants to confirm this, they can view the profile's history here: http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198221010048

 

 

 

Here is a screenshot of that same profile right now. I will explain why this matters in a moment.

 

 

 

 

 

The account has no community ban now, but it did in september. I saw the ban on this account over skype screenshare, it was dated to 2038 like all permanent community bans, to past the end of unix time. Basically it means permanently. After having been trade banned for two weeks before, there is no plausible reason that penek could have provided to steam support to trick them into unbanning this account. There would also be no reason for there to be a community ban that lasted less than a month, which this one did, especially after said trade ban. Unless someone can come up with a more plausible reason, I am inclined to believe penek's claims.

 

Penek is worth approximately 500,000 USD across all of his accounts. He remarked to me that he didn't care if his accounts were banned on steamrep, and that he thought it was funny, and only trade bans mattered to him. And he conquered those too. He's showed me trade histories that have high rep accounts in them. I won't name any names because nothing I say here will be accepted without proof anyway, but every account that penek showed me had instant spikes in backpack value after he claimed to have started trading with them. By simply keeping his inventory private, it is completely impossible for steamrep to have any effect at all on some scammers. It may stop others, but a considerable few know how to get around a ban.

 

He showed me a fellow scammer named Zer0, who apparently was community banned, but is now scamming again on a new account. Completely undetected.

 

 

My point is that SR really has little power, even with all of its powerful tools. I think people on the staff have the community's benefit in mind, but when scammers run rampant and are completely unaffected, and legitimate traders making mistakes are banned left and right, can it really say that it is helping at all? I just want to know what you all think about this. 

[ЩĄ Horse]

 

So anyone who makes a account with debra in the name is instantly me...

 

Also on the topic of offensive comments why are a SteamRep mod responding with "Why even post this stupid s✿✿✿ without any type of data to back up any type of claim? I wasted 72 seconds reading it...and yet another 34 seconds typing this just because I felt that someone had to put the record straight of how wasteful this thread is." earlier on the same thread? Doesn't this seem a little unprofessional to you? You people should speak how you wish to be spoken to, if you don't want people to be rude to your staff your staff shouldn't comment on how their post is "stupid s✿✿✿".

 

Ohh this is for me.. Well I posted that BEFORE I was a SR moderator. So I was speaking for myself at that time.

 

 

snip

 

See my previous post... I was speaking for ME before I joined on to be a moderator.

 

Edit: You ask anyone that knows me I'm a to the point straight talking guy - I'll tell you like it is, how it is and won't think nothing of it. Now I will handle SR professionaly but don't mix the two responses to reflect how SR really is. You are more than welcome to add me on steam and we can shot the breeze.

 

 

snip

 

SR brought me on board as I offered the experience in dealing with reports and appeals since I'm doing them with my Community and have been a presence with SR since its inception. I wouldn't say I'm 90degree different in handling the way I talk to people here, there or anywhere but I do feel as if I should at least try to be a little more professional - notice I dropped the DICK from my name for just a little more professional vibe. I don't have a full friends list... far from it.

 

Ask anyone that knows me... I'm a straight forward guy and a hardass but I'm as fair as they come and will always be that way regardless. So I approach reports and posts with a "from scratch" point of view.

 

 

Why was this post deleted so quick. Especially when your head admin indirectly cash traded with a scammer

 

I've moved this thread/post back to the General section for now... our internal policy is to do what I did prior to but well the last thing I want to do is stir the stink so by all means if the Op for it has more to offer to the accusations then lets have it and I'll ensure it gets reviewed properly.

[Hexlicious]

'We do not have enough staff to handle the backlog'

 

FUCKING HIRE MORE PEOPLE THEN

[ЩĄ Horse]

'We do not have enough staff to handle the backlog'

 

FUCKING HIRE MORE PEOPLE THEN

 

Myself and 2 others just came on as mods in the last month.  I think we are doing a nice dent in some reports right now considering there are over 100+ made new each day.  We don't make anything either... I offer my free time and experience to help out.

[IrW Zest]

'We do not have enough staff to handle the backlog'

 

FUCKING HIRE MORE PEOPLE THEN

Problem is that they are pretty conservative about this . They feel like they shouldn't hire people , as long as they feel strong and united, just as they are now , forming some kind of an in-game trading mafia . 

[ЩĄ Horse]

Problem is that they are pretty conservative about this . They feel like they shouldn't hire people , as long as they feel strong and united, just as they are now , forming some kind of an in-game trading mafia . 

 

I just came on... and I can tell ya right up front that this idea of some kinda in-game trading mafia is false. Most of the staff don't even trade anymore, I do very little and only when involved with my own community and servers.  SR doesn't hire anyone... people are offering up their time and if they are qualified.

[apollothelion]

To be honest 'not handling backlog cause not enough staff' is a problem. If you actually want to get through the severe amount of backlog, spend like 2 weeks going through people you think would be HELPFUL for the community.

 

These AMAs will be pointless unless you hire more staff.

 

Seriously, just hire more people you think would be a benefit to the SR community.

 

 

Why hasn't this been done?

 

 

Whatever the reason is, can't be more then the fact that that is the BIGGEST issue. Maybe stop spending time on AMAs and reports, and spend some time hiring more people.

 

More people = faster report processing speed.

[JCapps]

I have a simple question to ask. What is SteamRep's stance on people immediately trading for an item that was traded from a known scammer, and the user was not yet marked for trading with said scammer?

 

By this i mean:

Known Scammer (as in marked for awhile) >trades expensive item to> User1 (who has not been marked yet) >trades said item before marking to> User2 (who has had eyes on the prize the entire time)

[apollothelion]

I just came on... and I can tell ya right up front that this idea of some kinda in-game trading mafia is false. Most of the staff don't even trade anymore, I do very little and only when involved with my own community and servers.  SR doesn't hire anyone... people are offering up their time and if they are qualified.

 

 

I think its time they start LOOKING actively for people.

[polar]

Myself and 2 others just came on as mods in the last month.  I think we are doing a nice dent in some reports right now considering there are over 100+ made new each day.  We don't make anything either... I offer my free time and experience to help out.

 

 

Problem is that they are pretty conservative about this . They feel like they shouldn't hire people , as long as they feel strong and united, just as they are now , forming some kind of an in-game trading mafia . 

 

Don't think that's really the problem.

 

http://forums.steamrep.com/forums/staffapps/- they just hardly get any qualified applicants

 

I know they have asked some qualified applicants to apply, but most of the time these applicants turn them down because they have their hands full as admins of other communities. The other reason is that a lot of these community admins don't want to be doing secretarial work as mods for many months before being promoted to admin. When someone has been an admin on a community for years and has had a ton of experience on handling reports, they certainly don't feel like spending their time doing secretarial work.

 

Also, they ARE hiring mods, but it takes time to train people with limited experience to an admin level position where decisions can carry a lot of weight.

 

EDIT: oops, quoted the wrong post. Didn't mean to quote you, Mr. Horse, but rather the other people complaining about the hiring process.