Scamming in the Steam Community. Will it end? How can we help?

[Gren]

I don't think the original point of the discussion was where to assign blame, and it's pretty much irrelevant anyway.  I think the question was basically "How can we do more against scamming".  We already have a database that tracks scammers (SR), we have a trust system for cash trades (e.g. bp trust) and there's a lot of guides which don't take very long to read.  What else are you going to do?  You can't actually force anyone to educate themselves and no matter what the community does to a scammer, the scammer still has access to victims.  Only Valve has power here, and they do exercise it through VAC bans.  Of course only a small minority of scammers get VAC'd which means that there will always be scammers around (as opposed to phishing bots which are now pretty much absent as a result of action on Valve's part).  

 

Education - that is the only weapon against scamming.  And as I said above, you can't force people to educate themselves. 

[A Delicious Cashew]

I think one way we could combat this is to explain these few things to newbies:

 

Don't click on any links anyone sends you.

 

Don't give your items away in exchange for things you won't receive in the trade window.

 

People aren't always who they say they are. Ask a friend for help identifying people you know by name if they randomly add you.

 

Honestly, this is just plain common sense, or at least it should be. It's the same thing as the "Never tell anyone your password" that pops up in chats. Aren't we always taught to never trust strangers? The Internet is no different, and frankly, these newbies should just block/ignore the person instead of accepting and getting themselves scammed if they were to follow that logic. The problem that I see is that people don't make the connection that the Internet is just like real-life. You can lose stuff on the Internet (identity, money, etc) just like how you can lose it by a guy pointing a gun in your face. If you're falling for that, then you have to figure out for yourself how to overcome it and not fall for it again. No one can tell you how to deal with it.

[kaytradamus]

A few thoughts id like to add on this subject;

Valve is a corporation, its all about money. They dont make money from it, they dont care. Sounds dumb but its true that they make a lot more cash now than before these fairly recent trading restrictions.

No we cannot stop scamming, people find ways around every security system implemented, as long as two accounts on steam can interact in trade there will be victims.

People who get sharked do so on their own venture, there are many resources available to clue up newbies on the worth of their items, if they choose not to use them, that is on them. Saying that i do think we should make it easier for people to know the worth of their items.

Basically what valve is going to do is implement restrictions that irritate the community until there is no community left, or they may even just nuke trading all together as they threatened to do in their last statement about escrow. Either way no we cant stop it, greed is relentless.

[TRR-O Damon1174]

 

 

We could, I suppose, have community volunteers who give advice to newbies, I don't know how we'd set it up. I think we could probably condense the rules well enough that they make sense and are detailed enough to save people.

 

Change the volunteers part and i'll happily do it (for a fee of course :3)

 

But yeah, I agree. Unfortunately steam wont respond to any scam stuff as it's not in their interest.

[Lava]

Wait, so you're telling that it's Valve's fault for not making any anti-scammer system?

It's the user fault that he got scammed, god damn it. It's 2016, dude. Every trade forum, every trading site, even on Steam - you can find there info about scammers, scam attempts etc. If the users are ignorant and can't read it properly like they should then about what are we even talking? After so many years of trading in TF2 and CS:GO people still are getting scammed. How an active trader don't knows about those guys? 

 

Imo - People who are still getting scammed are ignoring stuff like help, guides etc until they get scammed. After this they are "och no, got scammed, help me". Salty; now hate me.

 

Think about this from a new user's perspective. Most the people who fall for these scams aren't just new to CS:GO or TF2, they're new to Steam altogether. Many don't even know you can change your name, but they heard these rumors about knives worth thousands of dollars or wanted a skin just like their favorite streamer showed off, so they saved up cash to buy it. Once they run into a "trusted friend" imposter, or a fake middleman scammer "introduces" them to SteamRep, they really don't stand any more of a chance than a TF2 sharking victim who got a salvaged crate within their first week of playing. Some of them are admittedly resistant to reading guides, but usually they had no idea such guides existed. They're not even easy to find within Steam unless you already know they exist and you specifically look for them. Also, it's hard to believe, but unlike TF2, CS:GO is still growing. By growing, I mean new people who have never run Steam creating Steam accounts just for CS:GO to try and get in on this user-profitable microtransaction and esports/betting thing.

 

By the time a community admin explains how impersonation scams work, or that there is no such thing as "item checking", victims have already lost their "birthday" knife or lucky unbox, and will just rage at the thought their items and the money they spent is gone. At that point, as mostly broke children, many will either swear off the game completely and abandon their account, or to turn to scamming themselves believing scammers like the one they met are untouchable, starting the cycle anew.

 

I don't think this is really a fault of human stupidity as much as naivety. Things like name changing are a really foreign dynamic, when every place else you've seen same username meant same person. When I was new, a certain someone taught me how unusual trading works; years later as a SteamRep admin I chatted him up, and learned he himself ended up falling for the "trusted friend" impersonation scam, with a backpack worth probably 20 times my own. It's really not intuitive. On top of that, once potential victims figure out how impersonation works, there's a problem with trust and reputation; and don't kid yourself, whenever you deal with real world money someone will have to go first. CSGO Lounge reputation scores, number of profile comments, and Steam level are effectively the de facto way of determining who is more trustworthy and who should go first in CS:GO right now, and it's an uphill battle to change that mindset, especially with as many scammers there are spreading misinformation about it. If people knew not to trust someone for having "more +rep's than me" we'd have a whole lot less wallet code and PayPal scams.

 

We could, I suppose, have community volunteers who give advice to newbies, I don't know how we'd set it up. I think we could probably condense the rules well enough that they make sense and are detailed enough to save people.

 

This is actually something SteamRep is working on. Not long ago I wrote up a shortened version of our guide to common scams and got it stickied in the CS:GO Steam forums. It's also why I periodically drop in here to give input when I see something dangerous, but I can really only do so much and we need others in the community to try and spread awareness about common scams, especially to newcomers who make prime targets and are harder for us to reach. The vast majority of our pending report backlog consists of throwaway accounts by the same people, who nobody should ever have trusted to begin with. It's tough, but community outreach and awareness is really the only way we can curb this, and for all those who still give SteamRep flak about the report backlog, it wouldn't be half as bad if people knew to not trust "+rep" comments and check who they're trading with. I know it's easy and fun to point fingers at victims, but you can't really blame them for not reading guides nobody ever told them existed.

 

I have an official guide on this, covering just about every scam type, but it's kind of long. Mattie wrote a really short one for identifying admin imposters, which links to my longer one at the bottom, and the one in the CS:GO forums is my best shot at shortening the long one. There are more specific guides posted in some of our partner subreddits as well. We had some YouTube videos up, but they got them taken down as "deceptive"; hopefully we'll have more videos uploaded soon for that demographic. We're also working on new guides, but if you're looking to help what we really need is for the community to point back to our guides. We can have all the documentation in the world, but it doesn't do any good if people don't read it, and nobody will read it if they don't know about it. We're really trying to raise awareness about these, and if you have any ideas on getting the information out there besides helping out yourself, I'm all ears. 

 

Valve is talking about HACKERS there, not scammers, different things. Plus Angelmander talks about how Escrow (despite the many community complaints about it) did basically shut down the hacker issue.

 

Although Valve is specifically talking about hijackers here, other scammers are just as organized. Scammers are working hard, often binding together, to spread misinformation about trading and take advantage of nuances in the Steam platform newcomers won't recognize. We're even finding "guides" in Steam, sometimes with doctored screenshots/videos explaining how SteamRep does "item checking" and works with Valve or how items are "duplicated" and "checked", upvoted by scammers' alts/partners for visibility and cited before trading as a pretext to convince unknowing victims the scammer isn't lying. I've actually helped shut down several scamming groups, with upwards of 700 distinct members working together to scam in unison. It's like scammers have become more organized than we are.

 

I haven't been added by a phisher in ages. Escrow, as annoying as it is, almost/completely solved phishers

 

There is less hijacking, at least until mobile malware gets a little more prevalent - and make no mistake, that will happen - but that doesn't mean the hijackers gave up. The hijackers are in fact doing quite well still. They're just scamming through other avenues. The same servers once used for phishing/malware sites are now used for fake gambling sites.

 

Only Valve has power here, and they do exercise it through VAC bans.  Of course only a small minority of scammers get VAC'd which means that there will always be scammers around (as opposed to phishing bots which are now pretty much absent as a result of action on Valve's part).

 

Hate to be that guy, but VAC is only used for cheaters. Valve issues trade bans for scamming, which is different. Sometimes community bans in extreme cases, which prevent you from signing into any part of Steam except for your already-purchased games. VAC just identifies cheaters and blocks them from game servers mostly unrelated to trading, but has no impact on trading outside that one game.

[3.50]

[...] The problem that I see is that people don't make the connection that the Internet is just like real-life. You can lose stuff on the Internet [...]

I think the problem goes deeper than that, because people are scammed, swindled, and taken advantage of in real life as well. People tend to believe anyone who sounds reasonably confident in what they're saying, even if it's fishy (or outright preposterous). It takes energy to question, so we cut corners and skip that step unless a red flag pops up. And even when there's a red flag, we may decide to take the risk anyway.

 

Also...

 

A lot of the people who are scammed are little kids. And as much as kids aren't people yet, with brains and credit cards of their own, one day they will be...so we should do what we can do direct the giant herd of cats that is new players. The poor dears just aren't good at braining, so we've got to help them out.

[Forgivable]

Getting scammed is almost impossible nowadays, when it was freaking easy a few years ago... 

 

How could you get scammed with all these trade restrictions? Which are honnestly incredibly annoying...

 

You people tend to take the game too seriously becaue yes it's a game.

 

 

 

A lot of the people who are scammed are little kids. And as much as kids aren't people yet, with brains and credit cards of their own, one day they will be...so we should do what we can do direct the giant herd of cats that is new players. The poor dears just aren't good at braining, so we've got to help them out.

 

 

As a reminder TF2 is a PEGI 16+ and Mature rated game.

[Lava]

How could you get scammed with all these trade restrictions? Which are honnestly incredibly annoying...

 

And this, folks, is exactly the type of misinformation that leads to victim blaming, sort of a salt-in-their-wounds if you will. That attitude, I'll bet, is exactly what OP was complaining about too. Contrary to popular belief, these trade restrictions do absolutely nothing to prevent scams, and that's because they weren't designed to. They hamper account hijacking, which is a very narrow subset of scamming, and some others (with much to be desired) curb credit card fraud within Steam. That doesn't in any way shape or form prevent victims from falling to admin and middleman imposters, nor does it stop them from getting scammed when trading for real-world cash outside the trade window. Compared to older days of trading, scamming methods have evolved but many similar tricks are widespread and just as doable as when trading was new to TF2. Instead of renamed items that looked identical in trade windows, we have quick-switched trade listings on websites like CSGO Lounge. Steam levels and the overall new layout of profiles makes convincing impersonation easier than it has ever been, in ways that are not intuitive to someone who isn't intimately familiar with how Steam works, hence the widespread "trusted friend" impersonators and admin/middleman impersonations.

[Tasty Salamanders]

Steam levels and the overall new layout of profiles makes convincing impersonation easier than it has ever been, in ways that are not intuitive to someone who isn't intimately familiar with how Steam works, hence the widespread "trusted friend" impersonators and admin/middleman impersonations.

Wait, how do Steam levels make impersonation easier? If anything they make impersonation harder, I mean that is part of the entire reason Valve includes them in the trade window.

[Forgivable]

 

And this, folks, is exactly the type of misinformation that leads to victim blaming, sort of a salt-in-their-wounds if you will. That attitude, I'll bet, is exactly what OP was complaining about too. Contrary to popular belief, these trade restrictions do absolutely nothing to prevent scams, and that's because they weren't designed to. They hamper account hijacking, which is a very narrow subset of scamming, and some others (with much to be desired) curb credit card fraud within Steam. That doesn't in any way shape or form prevent victims from falling to admin and middleman imposters, nor does it stop them from getting scammed when trading for real-world cash outside the trade window. Compared to older days of trading, scamming methods have evolved but many similar tricks are widespread and just as doable as when trading was new to TF2. Instead of renamed items that looked identical in trade windows, we have quick-switched trade listings on websites like CSGO Lounge. Steam levels and the overall new layout of profiles makes convincing impersonation easier than it has ever been, in ways that are not intuitive to someone who isn't intimately familiar with how Steam works, hence the widespread "trusted friend" impersonators and admin/middleman impersonations.

 

I should have mentionned I was talking about the scamming in-game sorry, when it comes to phishing or real cash trading its another deal.  

[Lava]

Wait, how do Steam levels make impersonation easier? If anything they make impersonation harder, I mean that is part of the entire reason Valve includes them in the trade window.

 

Because now trading cards are fairly cheap, and scammers will match the level, or build a high level profile. Even if somewhat expensive for a high level, a single stolen knife (of which they get dozens a day) dropped on the community market will cover the cost. CS:GO traders unfortunately believe it when someone says their high Steam level is more trustworthy, and it's not uncommon to find level 100+ throwaway accounts just a couple months old on scamming sprees. That, and various showcases and features (like the artwork and background) make copying profiles a lot easier because they draw attention from things that are harder to copy. Most admin and middleman impersonators are created in bulk, so sometimes when researching alts we find like 20 other middleman impersonators, all with the same Steam level as the profile they're impersonating. Some higher, because that makes them "more legit" and the real one "must be a fake scammer".

 

Valve throws Steam levels around everywhere to encourage people to play their pay-to-win game and strive for a higher level, which translates to more money. It was a boon at first when trading cards costed more, but now they're cheap enough, and scammers can make enough, that it's trivial. Between Steam level, +rep comments, and Lounge reputation scores, we're really facing an uphill battle teaching the CS:GO community who to trust.

 

I should have mentionned I was talking about the scamming in-game sorry, when it comes to phishing or real cash trading its another deal.  

 

Still quite easy to scam even if cash trading is not involved. Trade holds and market cooldowns do nothing to curb item misrepresentation (e.g. list factory new in CSGO Lounge, swap out for battle scarred), fake gambling sites, trusted friend impersonation in 3-way chat, or fake middleman scams with the "item verification" con. If anything, they should have impacted the community market money laundering trick, but from what I hear that's still alive and well. The only thing it put a dent in is phishing, and the people doing that for a living mostly moved onto fake CSGO gambling sites, with some switching over to admin/middleman impersonation.

[Mr Prince]

I haven't been added by a phisher in ages. Escrow, as annoying as it is, almost/completely solved phishers

 

I was wondering why did't get random adds anymore.

[=TNW= Maximus™]

I was wondering why did't get random adds anymore.

Yeah, I've been added by one phisher in probably all the time since escrow was implemented. 

[WarmAndToastySocks]

Scenario 1:

Young Timmy unboxes a Sunbeams hat that's worth quite a few, unknowing of the TF2 economy. He is added by a Scammer who says his Holy Mackerel is worth more.

Young Timmy is suspicious of this as the person just added them out of nowhere and knows of the hat's existence, something is a bit fishy here.

Young Timmy googles his hat and gets the Backpack.tf Price, or, at the very least, an old suggestion. Using this website, Young Timmy is informed of the hat's value. Young Timmy can also look at the value of the Holy Mackerel using this website

 

Scenario 2:

Young Timmy unboxes a Sunbeams hat that's worth quite a few, unknowing of the TF2 economy. He is added by a Scammer who says his Holy Mackerel is worth more.

Young Timmy is a bit Naive and thinks the Mackerel is really cool, despite the various gates valve has instigated to prevent scamming (Mobile Auth, Trade hold etc.) Timmy goes on with the Trade only be known that he was scammed shortly after.

 

TL;DR Google is your friend. On almost every hat you google, there's a BP.TF link within the first 3 entries. Not only that but if you have Mobile Authorizing, you can final check a trade to make sure everything is okay in case of a bait-and-switch AND the various other tools Valve has put in to tell people when they're getting scammed.

[naknak]

If an account has too many outbound trades with nothing in return, that shoots up a red flag that an account might be hijacked or working together with other accounts, and that's what they pay attention to.

Do you have direct knowledge of this or are you repeating what you've heard? It gets said a lot but does not appear to be true.

 

Which scenario seems more likely:

1. Valve has an exhaustive registry of stolen items, including a way to distinguish them from their dupes, which gets scanned against every account found to be doing too many one-way trades, or

2. Valve receives hijacking reports and tracks the items through one or more one-sided trades, stopping when they find the items are being paid for

 

All of the anecdotes indicate that investigations begin with a hijacking complaint from a human. I've never heard of someone with lots of one-sided trades getting trade banned unless they were also doing buys with PayPal (or other out-of-steam currency, like TF2WH does).

[Gren]

Do you have direct knowledge of this or are you repeating what you've heard? It gets said a lot but does not appear to be true.

 

Which scenario seems more likely:

1. Valve has an exhaustive registry of stolen items, including a way to distinguish them from their dupes, which gets scanned against every account found to be doing too many one-way trades, or

2. Valve receives hijacking reports and tracks the items through one or more one-sided trades, stopping when they find the items are being paid for

 

All of the anecdotes indicate that investigations begin with a hijacking complaint from a human. I've never heard of someone with lots of one-sided trades getting trade banned unless they were also doing buys with PayPal (or other out-of-steam currency, like TF2WH does).

 

Would have to agree with this.  This whole 'prevent scamming thing' from Valve's perspective is about saving resources (i.e. human labour) rather than some noble pursuit to really stop scamming.  That's just a nice bi-product.  I'm quite confident that they're not going out of their way to investigate anything unless it's blatant, like credit card fraud.  Here's the process that would really need to happen:

 

- Valve runs a report everyday that provides a list of accounts with an unusually high number of outbound trades with no items in return

- Some human has to go through the list to identify which accounts they should investigate (unless they have a solid prescriptive analytics model which I highly doubt)

- Humans now go an research these accounts

 

The whole process would take hours if not days and a lot of the time will be a waste of time.  Pretty sure support doesn't do anything unless prompted by a report from a Steam user or blatant terms of violation like credit card fraud.  

[3.50]

On the topic of scamming and what can be done about it: I know I'm not the first to draw attention to this, but I would like to add that now at least one moderator is actively protecting this.

Take a look at http://backpack.tf/classifieds?tradable=1&craftable=1&australium=-1&item=Black+Rose&quality=6&killstreak_tier=1%2C2%2C3

 

The sellers for 200+ are almost certainly intentionally sharking. How many unusual/unusual-tier traders are that unaware of their items' value when it has their SCM price directly on them? Zero. Taking advantage of a price glitch to make people believe that an item is worth 500+ when it is only ~20ish is scamming. It's lying and misrepresentation in its purest form. And it's not a case of "they can charge whatever they want" because it's an item being misrepresented as a different item.

 

I also left -trust ratings for some of the sellers, because they're f***ing scamming. Result? -trust ratings removed by a mod; listings stayed up.

 

There's scamming going on right now, on this site, and the mod(s) have actually taken action to protect it.

 

If I'm wrong, feel free to explain how.

[TheMCBros99]

On the topic of scamming and what can be done about it: I know I'm not the first to draw attention to this, but I would like to add that now at least one moderator is actively protecting this.

Take a look at http://backpack.tf/classifieds?tradable=1&craftable=1&australium=-1&item=Black+Rose&quality=6&killstreak_tier=1%2C2%2C3

 

The sellers for 200+ are almost certainly intentionally sharking. How many unusual/unusual-tier traders are that unaware of their items' value when it has their SCM price directly on them? Zero. Taking advantage of a price glitch to make people believe that an item is worth 500+ when it is only ~20ish is scamming. It's lying and misrepresentation in its purest form. And it's not a case of "they can charge whatever they want" because it's an item being misrepresented as a different item.

 

I also left -trust ratings for some of the sellers, because they're f***ing scamming. Result? -trust ratings removed by a mod; listings stayed up.

 

There's scamming going on right now, on this site, and the mod(s) have actually taken action to protect it.

 

If I'm wrong, feel free to explain how.

 

If someone falls for this, they honestly deserve to get "sharked". Someone following the backpack pricing is doing wrong? 

[3.50]

If someone falls for this, they honestly deserve to get "sharked". Someone following the backpack pricing is doing wrong? 

Maybe they deserve it,

But 100% it's wrong to knowingly misrepresent an item's value like that.

And you can not convince me that someone who owns an item that valuable is unaware of its real value when it has the SCM price directly on it.

[HarryG]

Maybe they deserve it,

But 100% it's wrong to knowingly misrepresent an item's value like that.

And you can not convince me that someone who owns an item that valuable is unaware of its real value when it has the SCM price directly on it.

Who cares, they're just following the price. They're kids, they don't know better

[JackArmstrong]

Who cares, they're just following the price. They're kids, they don't know better

 

Whether they're "kids" or not is irrelevant.  Most of the sellers have expensive backpacks and long histories as experienced traders.  They know damn well that they're ripping off people by exploiting a little-known bug in a trusted site, a bug which is only obscure because backpack has no notification of any kind letting traders know it exists.  As for the buyers, they're being taken in by a price which is fraudulent.  The knives don't actually go for hundreds of keys and never have, the wrong price is being displayed.  

 

What is occurring right now is, if not outright scamming, then blatant sharking and item misrepresentation.  It's appalling that backpack mods are actively protecting this behavior while shedding crocodile tears about how dreadful scammers are.  

[naknak]

The worst thing about the SCM pricing glitch is that there's no reason for it to exist.

 

SCM provides high-quality data on actual sales and bp.tf just doesn't use it. It would be very easy to show the moving average sale price instead of the asking price.

[Bunnysaur]

Anyone who thinks that "only idiots fall for scams" is an idiot themselves.

 

Back when I was new, I was added by a scammer (or I guess "sharker" but I really fucking hesitate to call this such). See, I had a friend (one of my earliest friends in TF2, in fact), who was trade-banned because he got greedy and traded with a scammer. When his computer died and he couldn't play TF2 anymore, he gifted me a few nice items out of his backpack (as well as used some of his other items to commission some art from me). This was back when trading for anything above 10 keys got you the scammer tag, depending on how the admins were feeling that day.

 

This guy found me. I had no idea who he was, and never met him. He added me (joined my pub, in fact, and told me to accept his friend request) and told me that what he does is "brokering of problematic items", which I happened to have in my backpack. He had this "really expensive craft # hat" that was - admittedly -  a bit less than my "problematic items" but it was clean, unlike what I had. And if I could just trade him really quick, I'd have a "clean" backpack, and he'll deal with the dirty stuff for me because he knows where to offload them, easy-peasy. He even had a faked "price check" set up on both backpack.tf forums, and on reddit, as well as a faked screenshot of him trading another similar craft hat for a bunch of keys. He spent a good hour trying to convince me that I needed this deal more than he did, and then, also, that it would be REALLY problematic for me if somehow a report about me having these items ended up on steamrep. I had also, at the time, given one of the items to a friend of mine to wear, which would get him involved in this too. And no one wants that, right?

 

In the end I stood my ground (despite his thinly-veiled threats of reporting me if I didn't go along with his trade).... and literally only because I have a fully-developed frontal cortex by virtue of being an adult (i.e. better gut feeling), and because google cache showed me that the reddit thread was recently edited to conveniently resemble the value of what I had. And after I definitely told him "no", he brazenly asked me how I knew that he was lying to me and how old I was, said "ah that makes sense, you're too old for me" and then bragged about having scammed at least a thousand dollars worth of items off of young kids. I checked his steamrep and he had one report against him for doing this exact thing. It was closed, on the grounds of "not price-policing" or some shit. I sent a report to valve to try and get him trade-banned but I have no idea if they even cared.

 

And if you want to say "ya but you don't get marked as a scammer anymore for trading with someone with tag" - that's not the point. The point is that not all scams are bots adding you with broken English and using scam methods from 2010. There's more than enough sociopathic, bored teenagers and young adults living with their parents who can afford to spend hours grooming victims if it gets them a nice virtual hat in the end.

[Adrian]

People who say "JUST CHECK YOUR SOURCES" are right and wrong.

 

We all know how easy it is do to some basic research for ourselves because most of us have been trading for years.  but how is someone new gonna learn about these website or guides? TF2 is a F2P game that you can make profit on. how many games do you know do that? because most of the time I would think not. so I wouldn't need to bother with it. and just buy the cases and keys for myself and the shit I get for myself. but if someone offers you a chance to get more stuff (keys) people will take it most likley.

[HarryG]

Anyone who thinks that "only idiots fall for scams" is an idiot themselves.

 

Back when I was new, I was added by a scammer (or I guess "sharker" but I really fucking hesitate to call this such). See, I had a friend (one of my earliest friends in TF2, in fact), who was trade-banned because he got greedy and traded with a scammer. When his computer died and he couldn't play TF2 anymore, he gifted me a few nice items out of his backpack (as well as used some of his other items to commission some art from me). This was back when trading for anything above 10 keys got you the scammer tag, depending on how the admins were feeling that day.

 

This guy found me. I had no idea who he was, and never met him. He added me (joined my pub, in fact, and told me to accept his friend request) and told me that what he does is "brokering of problematic items", which I happened to have in my backpack. He had this "really expensive craft # hat" that was - admittedly -  a bit less than my "problematic items" but it was clean, unlike what I had. And if I could just trade him really quick, I'd have a "clean" backpack, and he'll deal with the dirty stuff for me because he knows where to offload them, easy-peasy. He even had a faked "price check" set up on both backpack.tf forums, and on reddit, as well as a faked screenshot of him trading another similar craft hat for a bunch of keys. He spent a good hour trying to convince me that I needed this deal more than he did, and then, also, that it would be REALLY problematic for me if somehow a report about me having these items ended up on steamrep. I had also, at the time, given one of the items to a friend of mine to wear, which would get him involved in this too. And no one wants that, right?

 

In the end I stood my ground (despite his thinly-veiled threats of reporting me if I didn't go along with his trade).... and literally only because I have a fully-developed frontal cortex by virtue of being an adult (i.e. better gut feeling), and because google cache showed me that the reddit thread was recently edited to conveniently resemble the value of what I had. And after I definitely told him "no", he brazenly asked me how I knew that he was lying to me and how old I was, said "ah that makes sense, you're too old for me" and then bragged about having scammed at least a thousand dollars worth of items off of young kids. I checked his steamrep and he had one report against him for doing this exact thing. It was closed, on the grounds of "not price-policing" or some shit. I sent a report to valve to try and get him trade-banned but I have no idea if they even cared.

 

And if you want to say "ya but you don't get marked as a scammer anymore for trading with someone with tag" - that's not the point. The point is that not all scams are bots adding you with broken English and using scam methods from 2010. There's more than enough sociopathic, bored teenagers and young adults living with their parents who can afford to spend hours grooming victims if it gets them a nice virtual hat in the end.

So again, you have essentially proven the point that kids and idiots are the ones who fall for scams 99 percent of the time, because you have proved that people with common sense can see through even well thought out schemes like the one you describe. As a bored, sociopathic teenager myself, I'm not exactly sure what your point was.