Open discussion on rules for trading with scammers

[KTXO]

2 hours ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

The reason you got a ban is because you chose to ignore advice about manually checking trades above 15 keys

Yes, this was 100% my fault, after the first ban I noticed that the rules had changed but then I spent 3 weeks in a hospital praying every night not to die from kidney pain and didn't manage to finish my filters because I was greedy enough to miss good deals. Although now I lose 1/2 of my month income because of ban I feel like the punishment is fair.

 

But I personally don't think permanent(or at least 6 months) ban is a fair punishment. Maybe you are lucky to live in a family which doesn't not need to save every penny to be able to afford bread for breakfast, so you don't quite understand what does it mean to lose 6 months income. You can say go get a job then but you probably don't live in a city with average salary 300 usd per month(no joke). Even losing 1/2 of month income is a very serious punishment which should be enough to make any person think about their mistakes and make changes. 

[zol]

3 hours ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

 

Our rules have been the same since before I joined this site. They're not new, they're not aimed at bots, and they're not remotely unreasonable. You only get banned if you trade a banned/marked account or an OBVIOUS scammer alt. You get multiple chances before a permanent ban, and you can appeal a permanent ban after so many months. 

 

The reason you got a ban is because you chose to ignore advice about manually checking trades above 15 keys. The account you traded with is extremely obviously a scammer alt:

 

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198830377634

https://backpack.tf/u/76561198830377634

 

Between creation date, level, backpack history/spike, there is no way a reasonable and experienced trader would look at this account and think it was anything but an alt. I'm sorry but you're banned because you prioritised getting quick, good deals over following the rules. If you'd checked, I don't think you would have done the trade. And that is YOUR responsibility. We would penalise a random trader for this trade, so it's in no way fair to allow users who use bots an advantage. 

 

 

They are, but that doesn't mean we should just give them free reign to do so. By your logic there's no point banning for trades with banned/marked accounts either. 

 

So, I banned for 2 weeks for trade 20 keys hat with this account https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198367171082 is it rly looks like "extremely obvious scammer alt"?

I think Julia offered a good thing with poits which will be expire in agreed time. This is popular thing on others forums. Also there are alot of other ways to do it more fair then now. Scammers can buy good account with hours/level/friends and then just sell it to bots and they will be banned? Its rly weird.

 

Btw here it is. I found this items very fast through compare. And im sure if you rly want, you can find this trades on ALL bots. So you will ban all? wont you just change anything or do any fair solution? Isnt it site for traders? Looks like scammers mean more then traders there now. and its very sad...

https://backpack.tf/issue/5b55c51bcf6c755d4d7f8047

 

its 2018 guys. When this rule was created ppl trade on servers and so on. Now almost all use scripts/bots, coz manual trading dead now. So i think this rule have to be reviewed. (I think ALL rules have to be adjusted to market conditions, but this is other discussion).

 

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

30 minutes ago, Kate said:

Yes, this was 100% my fault, after the first ban I noticed that the rules had changed but then I spent 3 weeks in a hospital praying every night not to die from kidney pain and didn't manage to finish my filters because I was greedy enough to miss good deals. Although now I lose 1/2 of my month income because of ban I feel like the punishment is fair.

 

But I personally don't think permanent(or at least 6 months) ban is a fair punishment. Maybe you are lucky to live in a family which doesn't not need to save every penny to be able to afford bread for breakfast, so you don't quite understand what does it mean to lose 6 months income. You can say go get a job then but you probably don't live in a city with average salary 300 usd per month(no joke). Even losing 1/2 of month income is a very serious punishment which should be enough to make any person think about their mistakes and make changes. 

 

I'm sorry that your personal circumstances are difficult but that really has nothing to do with anything. The rules aren't about you, they're the same for everybody and they serve a clear purpose. The rules didn't change, we have always banned bots for trading with obvious alts. A permanent ban only comes after you've had TWO warnings, and we go further and still allow people to appeal it. 4 chances is more than fair.

 

20 minutes ago, zol said:

 

So, I banned for 2 weeks for trade 20 keys hat with this account https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198367171082 is it rly looks like "extremely obvious scammer alt"?

I think Julia offered a good thing with poits which will be expire in agreed time. This is popular thing on others forums. Also there are alot of other ways to do it more fair then now. Scammers can buy good account with hours/level/friends and then just sell it to bots and they will be banned? Its rly weird.

 

Btw here it is. I found this items very fast through compare. And im sure if you rly want, you can find this trades on ALL bots. So you will ban all? wont you just change anything or do any fair solution? Isnt it site for traders? Looks like scammers mean more then traders there now. and its very sad...

https://backpack.tf/issue/5b55c51bcf6c755d4d7f8047

 

its 2018 guys. When this rule was created ppl trade on servers and so on. Now almost all use scripts/bots, coz manual trading dead now. So i think this rule have to be reviewed. (I think ALL rules have to be adjusted to market conditions, but this is other discussion).

 

 

Yes it's an obvious alt. The account had nothing in it's backpack besides the unusual you bought, which had come directly from another banned scammer alt. It has 0 hours in tf2 and minimal hours in CSGO. If you'd actually done a background check, I don't doubt that you would have picked up on that. If a scammer buys a normal looking account that won't be an OBVIOUS ALT so you won't be banned. Your arguments don't even make sense.

 

The fact that bots are way more common than they used to be is absolutely no reason to loosen the rules or requirements for our users. You say scammers mean more than traders, but the entire purpose of this rule is to make it harder for scammers to offload their stolen items. I don't really get what you don't understand about that. All you need to do is background check trades over 15 keys. Plenty of users AND bots manage to do this. If you choose to prioritise deals over avoiding scammers then be aware that not using this site anymore may be a consequence of that. 

[KTXO]

6 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

the entire purpose of this rule is to make it harder for scammers to offload their stolen items.

Having a permanent ban instead of 2 weeks maximum ban for this violation will not make it harder for scammers to offload their items They can still offload stolen goods on automated trading sites just for a little bit less than if they sell them in classifieds. It only make it harder for traders with automated trading systems to work. This is pretty much the whole point of this 3 months lasting discussion.

30 minutes ago, zol said:

https://backpack.tf/issue/5b55c51bcf6c755d4d7f8047

This is insane.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

4 minutes ago, Kate said:

Having a permanent ban instead of 2 weeks maximum ban for this violation will not make it harder for scammers to offload their items They can still offload stolen goods on automated trading sites just for a little bit less than if they sell them in classifieds. It only make it harder for traders with automated trading systems to work. This is pretty much the whole point of this 3 months lasting discussion.

 

Traders refusing to trade with them, via bots or manually, will make it harder. If they can offload them to automated sites so easily for the same price why do they ever sell to you guys?

 

Honestly, have a think about what you're saying in this thread. You want to avoid doing background checks and buy cheap items from scammer alts so you can make profit. We're not talking about forgiving errors here, you're literally asking us to okay you buying stuff from scammers. How does that seem okay to you?

[HarryG]

       Seeing some of the responses in this thread just solidifies my opinion. A lot of responses just indicate to me that most of the people that want this changed are just after extra profit as opposed to worried about being banned. 99 percent from what i can tell aren't worried about being banned on accident, they're worried about being punished for doing it (a common theme in this community for years, it's never "is this person a scammer" it's "i know this person is a scammer, will i be banned for trading with them" and if the answer is no they of course rush to go do it).

 

    Saying you're "too tired" or you're worried about "competition" aren't good excuses, it's easy enough for anyone (myself included, especially people with a big financial stake in the game) to tell at a glance if someone is a scammer or an obvious scammer alt and if you can't make that distinction you shouldn't be trading and might deserve to be banned in the first place for being so careless with your own money and with your own reputation (assuming that's not the case and you're not actually doing it on purpose which I find more likely in most cases).

 

    There's no reason the rules need to be made more lax over something as obnoxious as this. In fact, personally, I think it's a terrible mindset for a community to have, focusing on being profit-oriented and not caring whether or not scammers profit as opposed to just wanting to trade with them. End of story.

 

-HG

[Essence]

I'd like to add a couple points to this discussion:

 

1) The main thing that feels unfair about the rule is that people do not follow it to the same extent. For example I manually check most trades over 15 keys on my bot, but other traders just accept everything besides marked scammers. So basically you end up losing all of those trades. This rule effectively gimps people who actually follow it, while people who choose not to follow gamble every trade over 15 keys.

 

2) IMO, the rule should only apply to "buying" items with pure and not selling items. I can understand why buying items off of scammers is bad, but it does not really make sense why selling an item is not allowed since you are not helping them profit in any way. Also, scammers trying to buy items in general is much more rare. Again, the main impact of this is hurting people who follow the rules and giving their trades to those who do not check.

 

3) The threshold is also too low/the rule impacts non-unusual items too much. I pretty much would fully agree with this rule if it were for 50 key+ trades. Primarily australiums, where they are almost pure already, so the "impact" of accepting a trade is low, and it kills trading with normal people for these items.

 

5 hours ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

 

Traders refusing to trade with them, via bots or manually, will make it harder. If they can offload them to automated sites so easily for the same price why do they ever sell to you guys?

 

Honestly, have a think about what you're saying in this thread. You want to avoid doing background checks and buy cheap items from scammer alts so you can make profit. We're not talking about forgiving errors here, you're literally asking us to okay you buying stuff from scammers. How does that seem okay to you?

As a trader who has been following the background check rules, I think the rules should be adjusted slightly because the rule itself hurts the traders who actually follow it. It's not really fair that we have to miss trades because of the background check rules, with those trades going to someone else while they are free to risk a ban. Over time all of these trades add up.

 

Also it seems fishy that this rule essentially forces scammers to sell items to ScrapTF unusual bot, which happens to be owned by the owner of backpack. So if we are talking morality that clearly is a massive problem.

 

21 minutes ago, HarryG said:

-snip-

This is more of a general comment, but most people posting this kind of opinion do not make nearly the amount of trades that bot owners do. In one day you can receive like 50+ trades over the threshold. Keeping up with these is pretty much impossible. So basically by following the rules you get screwed also.

 

Honestly I think this mainly is an issue because most of the mod/admin team are infrequent high tier traders. I do not mean this as an insult, it is just hard to realize the extent to which some of these rules have a very high impact on these kind of traders. 

[HarryG]

14 minutes ago, zol said:

i see alot of ppl dont understand main thing of this discussion

Lol then what do you think the "main thing" is? The point of the rule is to stop scammers from profiting, most people here including you seem to think its "let me trade with scammers because I dont want to be punished for it"

Just now, Essence said:

 

This is more of a general comment, but most people posting this kind of opinion do not make nearly the amount of trades that bot owners do. In one day you can receive like 50+ trades over the threshold. Keeping up with these is pretty much impossible. So basically by following the rules you get screwed also.

This is a good joke. I receive an average of 200 trade offers a work week for my stuff; if my stuff was actually listed somewhere i imagine it would be more. It doesn't take much effort to click on their steam profile, see if they're an obvious alt, and then copy paste their link into backpack.tf and see if they're marked/banned. Literally 2 seconds per person, and I imagine more caution would be taken than that if you had the intent to sell the crap. You don't get "screwed" for following the rules, that's just a strawman you've tacked onto the end of your point. It's very possible to keep up with that amount of trades, even manually, lol

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

1 minute ago, Essence said:

The main thing that feels unfair about the rule is that people do not follow it to the same extent. For example I manually check most trades over 15 keys on my bot, but other traders just accept everything besides marked scammers. So basically you end up losing all of those trades. This rule effectively gimps people who actually follow it, while people who choose not to follow gamble every trade over 15 keys.

 

Also it seems fishy that this rule essentially forces scammers to sell items to ScrapTF unusual bot, which happens to be owned by the owner of backpack. So if we are talking morality that clearly is a massive problem.

 

Everyone else in this thread is complaining that the rules are impossible to follow and are sure to get them banned, and you're right here posting that that's completely untrue. You follow the rules with a bot. And while it may disadvantage you, that's because of the other people who are breaking rules, not because of us. You're also at a disadvantage not buying scammed items from marked accounts - does that mean you wish you could? Think about the purpose of the rules.

 

The rules were in place long before scrap.tf had anything to do with backpack.tf. I am currently in charge of them and have no stake in either site, I am here purely for the community. You can see me disagreeing with the site owner in this very thread.

[zol]

15 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

I am here purely for the community. 

So, find a compromise for "community" please.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

Just now, zol said:

So, find a compromise for "community" please.

 

The compromise is you get 4 chances instead of the 2 you get on outpost.

[Essence]

4 minutes ago, HarryG said:

Lol then what do you think the "main thing" is? The point of the rule is to stop scammers from profiting, most people here including you seem to think its "let me trade with scammers because I dont want to be punished for it"

This is a good joke. I receive an average of 200 trade offers a work week for my stuff; if my stuff was actually listed somewhere i imagine it would be more. It doesn't take much effort to click on their steam profile, see if they're an obvious alt, and then copy paste their link into backpack.tf and see if they're marked/banned. Literally 2 seconds per person, and I imagine more caution would be taken than that if you had the intent to sell the crap. You don't get "screwed" for following the rules, that's just a strawman you've tacked onto the end of your point. It's very possible to keep up with that amount of trades, even manually, lol

You have 3500 trades ever on your main account. Only counting my bot I have received ~13,000 trades in the past month alone, with around 75% accept rate. That is over 3.5 times the amount of trades you have ever made in less than 1/24th the time.

 

People want items from you because they are rare. I sell commodity items mostly. If I don't auto accept, the person will just go down the line to the next bot to sell it over and over again. It is much different than a person seeking a specific item.

 

9 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

-snip-

Mostly my point was that it is not only rule breakers who are negatively impacted by this rule. There is a lot to be lost to competition whether that be other bots or other sites when you cannot accept fast enough. If everyone actually reviewed manually instead of some people risking it, then it would be fair.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

Just now, Essence said:

Mostly my point was that it is not only rule breakers who are negatively impacted by this rule. There is a lot to be lost to competition whether that be other bots or other sites when you cannot accept fast enough. If everyone actually reviewed manually instead of some people risking it, then it would be fair.

 

If everyone followed the rules, you wouldn't be impacted. Direct your annoyance where it belongs - at people who buy from scammers. 

[KTXO]

5 hours ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

Traders refusing to trade with them, via bots or manually, will make it harder. If they can offload them to automated sites so easily for the same price why do they ever sell to you guys?

 

Honestly, have a think about what you're saying in this thread. You want to avoid doing background checks and buy cheap items from scammer alts so you can make profit. We're not talking about forgiving errors here, you're literally asking us to okay you buying stuff from scammers. How does that seem okay to you?

Backpack.tf team was never against bot trading but this new rule requires to do a background check for almost every single 15+ keys trade. A scammer could easily get a 1 year old level 4 steam account with 100 hours in tf2, with a public profile, BUT WITH MINIMAL INVENTORY EXCEPT FOR HIGH VALUE ITEMS. All anti scammer alt filters would say that this is a normal trade but a person could be banned for accepting because it is not possible to check this criteria automatically.

 

This rule maybe makes it 1% harder for scammers to offload goods, but it also makes it 50% harder for fair and responsable traders to work. We are not asking to allow us trade with scammers we're asking you to listen for our opinion and make punishment a little bit softer. Permanent ban is obviously a very serious punishment, why can't it be 2 weeks or 1 months ban? Or if you want to leave permanent ban why can't then strikes expire after a few months or so? Backpack.tf team has always been listening to the community but now "open discussion" is turning into "here are our rules, you can discuss it, but we're not interested in your opinion at all".

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

Just now, Kate said:

Backpack.tf team was never against bot trading but this new rule requires to do a background check for almost every single 15+ keys trade. A scammer could easily get a 1 year old level 4 steam account with 100 hours in tf2, with a public profile, BUT WITH MINIMAL INVENTORY EXCEPT FOR HIGH VALUE ITEMS. All anti scammer alt filters would say that this is a normal trade but a person could be banned for accepting because it is not possible to check this criteria automatically.

 

This rule maybe makes it 1% harder for scammers to offload goods, but it also makes it 50% harder for fair and responsable traders to work. We are not asking to allow us trade with scammers we're asking you to listen for our opinion and make punishment a little bit softer. Permanent ban is obviously a very serious punishment, why can't it be 2 weeks or 1 months ban? Or if you want to leave permanent ban why can't then strikes expire after a few months or so? Backpack.tf team has always been listening to the community but now "open discussion" is turning into "here are our rules, you can discuss it, but we're not interested in your opinion at all".

 

Once again, and for the last time: THIS IS NOT A NEW RULE. The rules have not changed. 

 

And once again, it's 2 temp bans and then a perm ban which can be appealed. I would consider changes to how long past bans hold for but the criteria themselves really do not need relaxing IMO. The accounts you were banned for trading with were obvious scammer alts, and whether you get 2 chances or 20 you're going to need to start doing manual checks on some trades if you want to ensure you don't break the rules.

[zol]

10 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

 

Once again, and for the last time: THIS IS NOT A NEW RULE. The rules have not changed. 

 

And once again, it's 2 temp bans and then a perm ban which can be appealed. I would consider changes to how long past bans hold for but the criteria themselves really do not need relaxing IMO. The accounts you were banned for trading with were obvious scammer alts, and whether you get 2 chances or 20 you're going to need to start doing manual checks on some trades if you want to ensure you don't break the rules.

 

So why you cant just create and give us a list with needed checks for our bots? 

I think its part of compromise

[KTXO]

16 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

Once again, and for the last time: THIS IS NOT A NEW RULE. The rules have not changed.

I swear I remember it was always saying until this spring something like: "We characterize an obvious alt as someone all of these qualities: 1)Steam lvl 3 or less 2) private inventory 3)something else"

Maybe my memory is playing a trick on me but I feel 100% sure that it was saying so. So basically every profile with unprivate backpack was considered as safe to trade. 

 

What is more these rules were changed one more time just a while ago. Now it is saying "a steam level of 10 or less" but 1 day ago it was level 3.

 

16 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

 I would consider changes to how long past bans hold for

This is really great to hear that you listen to our opinion and agree to think about this system one more time, I am sure everyone would appreciate that a lot!

 

16 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

The accounts you were banned for trading with were obvious scammer alts, and whether you get 2 chances or 20 you're going to need to start doing manual checks on some trades if you want to ensure you don't break the rules.

 

Yeah I know, we're are all humans and we make mistakes. This was a very big mistake from me that I didn't spend enough time working on fixing my filters so I am severing a fair punishment, and 2 weeks ban is more than enough for me to realize that I was wrong and to finish anti scammer alt filters for my bot.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

11 minutes ago, zol said:

 

So why you cant just create and give us a list with needed checks for our bots? 

I think its part of compromise

 

There is one, it's in the background check thread linked in your ban reason.

 

6 minutes ago, Kate said:

I swear I remember it was always saying until this spring something like: "We characterize an obvious alt as someone all of these qualities: 1)Steam lvl 3 or less 2) private inventory 3)something else"

Maybe my memory is playing a trick on me but I feel 100% sure that it was saying so. So basically every profile with unprivate backpack was considered as safe to trade. 

 

What is more these rules were changed one more time just a while ago. Now it is saying "a steam level of 10 or less" but 1 day ago it was level 3.

 

This is really great to hear that you listen to our opinion and agree to think about this system one more time, I am sure everyone would appreciate that a lot!

 

 

Yeah I know, we're are all humans and we make mistakes. This was a very big mistake from me that I didn't spend enough time working on fixing my filters so I am severing a fair punishment, and 2 weeks ban is more than enough for me to realize that I was wrong and to finish anti scammer alt filters for my bot.

 

The third one was game hours and we had to modify it slightly due to that now being private by default. I changed steam level from 3 to 10 based on this thread to give you guys more leeway, not sure why you're complaining about it.

[Diego Strange.Trader]

10 lvl is a leeway ? thanks, now i cant do automatically trade with 70% of backpack users, hi guys, today, all of u are obvious scammers alt.

[KTXO]

Welp yeah now more than half of users are considered obvious scammer alts.

[Mengh.]

14 minutes ago, Diego Strange.Trader said:

10 lvl is a leeway ? thanks, now i cant do automatically trade with 70% of backpack users, hi guys, today, all of u are obvious scammers alt.

 

3 minutes ago, Kate said:

Welp yeah now more than half of users are considered obvious scammer alts.

 

 

We characterize an obvious alt as someone having some or all of these qualities:

 

(1) a steam level of 10 or less

(2) private backpack or profile

(3) minimal inventory except for high value items

(4) new account with high value items

(5) low hours in the game they are trading items for or private game history

[KTXO]

Does some mean "at least one" or "at least two"?

[KTXO]

It is impossible to check automatically this quality: 3) minimal inventory except for high value items. So it will not be safe to automatically accept offers from everyone with steam level 10 or less.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

29 minutes ago, Diego Strange.Trader said:

10 lvl is a leeway ? thanks, now i cant do automatically trade with 70% of backpack users, hi guys, today, all of u are obvious scammers alt.

 

18 minutes ago, Kate said:

Welp yeah now more than half of users are considered obvious scammer alts.

 

I mean, no, clearly not. It's a combination of factors which are listed in the thread you've been linked multiple times.

 

5 minutes ago, Kate said:

It is impossible to check automatically this quality: 3) minimal inventory except for high value items. So it will not be safe to automatically accept offers from everyone with steam level 10 or less.

 

As I literally just told you we'd recommend manual checking on items above 15 keys in value. Those are the criteria to check against. The entire reason we recommend manual checking is because it requires reasoning/judgement to actually do a proper check. It can't be automated. And bots shouldn't be subject to different rules than users.

[zol]

thx teeny, looks like you are really for community there...