Jakebob Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 (edited) Good morning. I've got a backpack that I set to private some seven years or so ago. I'd done that as I'd had enough of getting random friend requests from traders, and intermittent comments from traders on either my profile or my latest TF2 screenshot asking if I was trading or selling my stuff. I've had a notice on my profile for many years telling people I don't trade, I don't sell, all that kinda nonsense, but I still get these people sniffing around and being a nuisance. I believe backpack caching websites like backpack.tf and TF2Items keep giving them the idea that I might still have these items. I've tried looking around a bit on backpack.tf, and I've not found anything related to clearing this cached page, be it a button to press or a way to request it with a form. It's possible I've not pored over every option, but I would like to know, is it possible to have my TF2 inventory fully purged from this website? I imagine I'd be able to purge it manually by giving friends my stuff to hold, making the backpack profile for long enough to update the page, then re-enabling the privacy setting and having my stuff returned to me. But this is immensely faffy, and I figured I've got nothing to lose by just asking here if a manual purge can be done. If this is in the wrong part of the forum, let me know and I can make a thread in the right location (provided it's not moved manually, of course ) ===== With thanks to most folks who've responded, I have my answer on what to do with this going forward. It's admittedly not what I wanted to hear, and the workaround is rather faffy, but needs must when the devil vomits in the kettle, I suppose. I'unno how to request a lock on the thread, but I've edited both the first and last post I made on this, so I imagine the only person that'll respond now is the village idiot aspirant before a member of staff locks the thread. I appreciate the help and commiserations! Edited August 18 by Jakebob Thread complete, please close. Chris Hansen Dateline NBC and Forgivable 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heidecker Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 As far as I know backpack doesn't do any manual clearing your on the site loaded inventory even if requested.(at least I haven't seen it being done yet, maybe I am wrong though). If I'm not, I recommend just going here: https://backpack.tf/top/backpacks and blocking everybody with "buying" or "selling" in their name down to #1000 or sth. Should get rid of a good chunk of those people. JayTuut 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AwesomeSause Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 (edited) good point actually, theres probably a "hurr durr but steam says we can use it!!!!" but youre right, if you could do that thatd be great, sorry youre getting pestered! Edited August 17 by AwesomeSause message below lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IceKwibby Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 https://next.backpack.tf/help/privacy-policy Section "GDPR and You". In short, we don't. AwesomeSause 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakebob Posted August 17 Author Share Posted August 17 Hrm... I had a bad feeling that would be the case. It's a bit disappointing - is there at least a way to just hide my profile page on backpack.tf, if a cache clear isn't possible? The latest guy who's tried to bother me makes bold claims about their inventory and trades, but their account is completely blank here, and I'm not sure how believable it is that someone could have their inventory set to private since this website sprang up. Melancholy Sky 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heidecker Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 3 minutes ago, Jakebob said: Hrm... I had a bad feeling that would be the case. It's a bit disappointing - is there at least a way to just hide my profile page on backpack.tf, if a cache clear isn't possible? The latest guy who's tried to bother me makes bold claims about their inventory and trades, but their account is completely blank here, and I'm not sure how believable it is that someone could have their inventory set to private since this website sprang up. That is to 99.99% a scammer. If somebody with a private profile/inventory, cheap copy paste animated artwork, afk farmed game hours, etc. adds you, just block them. A majority of those "people" are automated bots though, so I dont think this was from your inventory being loaded on bp. Everybody on steam gets those bots adding them. Lost, Malibu and Chris Hansen Dateline NBC 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakebob Posted August 17 Author Share Posted August 17 Just now, Heidecker said: That is to 99.99% a scammer. If somebody with a private profile/inventory, cheap copy paste animated artwork, afk farmed game hours, etc. adds you, just block them. Oh I have no doubt in my mind that this guy's not worth dealing with. I've had to deal with these guys since 2011, they just never seem to get the idea that "I DON'T TRADE" on my profile is for them to read and understand. Just barging past, either posting on my profile or on my latest TF2 pic saying "hey i know you say you dont trade but i wanna shoot my shot" in so many words. And I could go with the nuclear option, just making my profile private, but I like showing stuff on there! Just not TF2 stuff. Heidecker and RussellSproutz 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OFWGKTA Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 Unprivate your inventory and move your Unusuals to steam market for the max amount of money (so that no one would buy it), wait til your backpack.tf inventory is updated (without the unusuals / other items that you want to hide), private your inventory again and then delist your items from steam market, that might help a bit, idk. Melusine, truezyoungblood, `Yahiamice and 9 others 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RussellSproutz Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 15 minutes ago, OFWGKTA said: Unprivate your inventory and move your Unusuals to steam market for the max amount of money (so that no one would buy it), wait til your backpack.tf inventory is updated (without the unusuals / other items that you want to hide), private your inventory again and then delist your items from steam market, that might help a bit, idk. Yeah that's probably the way to do it. It'll be tedious but that's the closest way to have a nuclear option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AwesomeSause Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 1 hour ago, OFWGKTA said: Unprivate your inventory and move your Unusuals to steam market for the max amount of money (so that no one would buy it), wait til your backpack.tf inventory is updated (without the unusuals / other items that you want to hide), private your inventory again and then delist your items from steam market, that might help a bit, idk. And who knows someone might buy it for a ludicrous amount of money too by accident so it works both ways Chris Hansen Dateline NBC, Xaeriel and Maelstrom 1 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApothicЯ Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 1 hour ago, OFWGKTA said: Unprivate your inventory and move your Unusuals to steam market for the max amount of money (so that no one would buy it), wait til your backpack.tf inventory is updated (without the unusuals / other items that you want to hide), private your inventory again and then delist your items from steam market, that might help a bit, idk. Premium users / scammers / sharkers (boundaries can be quite blurred) might not be after his unusuals (except for the Scorching Bonk, which is not marketable either due to its high value), but after his spelled items. Unfortunately some of them aren't marketable, so he'll keep being harassed... Kwas 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
`Yahiamice Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 Create new steam account, add 5$ to it, set up steam mobile authenticator on the fresh account & Steam guard, make sure it's profile & inventory stay private. In 15 days when trade holds are up, trade all your valuables to it, confirm the trade on your mobile Set your main account's inventory to public, use this script to forcefully send requests to backpack.tf to refresh it Once it's refreshed and said valuables don't pop up in your backpack anymore, private your backpack, THEN trade the items back to your main, and you should be in the clear. Enjoy! BONUS: If you wanna waste the scammers's times, make the new account's backpack public but ONLY when the items are in there, (private it before you move em back) and then log off steam on your mobile for that account. Said sharks and scammers will spend months trying to contact that unavailable account to no avail, and you'll be eye-to-an-eye with those time wasters neonfishingrod, Onion-Turtle, Bentry Suster and 8 others 5 1 3 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakebob Posted August 17 Author Share Posted August 17 That this appears to be the agreed-upon method of handling such stuff definitely puzzles me. I have to imagine others have wanted their inventories hidden in the past without working through all this convolution; like even just a "User has hidden this backpack" option that allows for cached results from years ago to be hidden as well. Buuut I'm not a website designer so the best I can do is grouse and moan about it. 13 minutes ago, `Yahiamice said: Create new steam account, add 5$ to it, set up steam mobile authenticator on the fresh account & Steam guard, make sure it's profile & inventory stay private. In 15 days when trade holds are up, trade all your valuables to it, confirm the trade on your mobile Set your main account's inventory to public, use this script to forcefully send requests to backpack.tf to refresh it Once it's refreshed and said valuables don't pop up in your backpack anymore, private your backpack, THEN trade the items back to your main, and you should be in the clear. Enjoy! BONUS: If you wanna waste the scammers's times, make the new account's backpack public but ONLY when the items are in there, (private it before you move em back) and then log off steam on your mobile for that account. Said sharks and scammers will spend months trying to contact that unavailable account to no avail, and you'll be eye-to-an-eye with those time wasters This, however, I can get behind. Convoluted stuff purely to shake idiots is one thing; convoluted stuff to spite idiots? Oh you know I'm up for that. I'll need to sort something out later, but in lieu of a more sensible solution, this will have to do. Xorfizz 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
`Yahiamice Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 16 minutes ago, Jakebob said: That this appears to be the agreed-upon method of handling such stuff definitely puzzles me. I have to imagine others have wanted their inventories hidden in the past without working through all this convolution; like even just a "User has hidden this backpack" option that allows for cached results from years ago to be hidden as well. Buuut I'm not a website designer so the best I can do is grouse and moan about it. This, however, I can get behind. Convoluted stuff purely to shake idiots is one thing; convoluted stuff to spite idiots? Oh you know I'm up for that. I'll need to sort something out later, but in lieu of a more sensible solution, this will have to do. Unfortunately, even if backpacktf were to allow people to opt out of having their backpacks scanned, there's still several other services out there where people can backpackscan/see items/cache items from other sites, with no guarantee on them being lenient enough to let you opt out (See Steamcollector for instance) God knows how many CSGO backpack site or cash trade marketplace cache every steam item without ever informing their users. Steam just offers the freedom of information (as they should) and malicious actors act upon that info. It sucks, i agree there should be an easier method of handling this, but sometimes you just gotta fight fire with fire Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JayTuut Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 Yeah I'd just transfer all the items to an alt, then refresh, then trade back tbh. Or you can do SCM like others have said which is maybe faster Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakebob Posted August 17 Author Share Posted August 17 Eh, still feels like it should be an option, especially for the bigger sites. I know TF2Items's functionally abandoned, and TF2B doesn't have any of my backpack info. I've been off of trading for years, so I might be wrong in thinking that this website is one of the go-to's for trading; but if they offered that option, it'd certainly push away a healthy number of the greedy [REDACTED]s, even if some smaller pages still had it. Better good than perfect, after all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chatterbox- Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 Ironically the easiest way would be to actually list your items for sale, comically high and say "Pure only, price is firm and non-negotiable". (The other option would be to trade your stuff away and let backpack cache an empty inventory, as you already mentioned) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Spoon The Second Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 6 hours ago, Jakebob said: they just never seem to get the idea that "I DON'T TRADE" on my profile is for them to read and understand ya thats trading, most people only have 1 braincell between them and there 2 siblings this is quite literally people in this community at one point i had on my profile "i don't trade warpaints" pasted 8 times with 1 of them right by the add friend button....people still added me its sadly the community we are in, we have 86 billion braincells and people are unable to use 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucak Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 5 hours ago, `Yahiamice said: Create new steam account, add 5$ to it, set up steam mobile authenticator on the fresh account & Steam guard, make sure it's profile & inventory stay private. In 15 days when trade holds are up, trade all your valuables to it, confirm the trade on your mobile Set your main account's inventory to public, use this script to forcefully send requests to backpack.tf to refresh it Once it's refreshed and said valuables don't pop up in your backpack anymore, private your backpack, THEN trade the items back to your main, and you should be in the clear. Enjoy! BONUS: If you wanna waste the scammers's times, make the new account's backpack public but ONLY when the items are in there, (private it before you move em back) and then log off steam on your mobile for that account. Said sharks and scammers will spend months trying to contact that unavailable account to no avail, and you'll be eye-to-an-eye with those time wasters Yea I was going to suggest this, basically pretending like the hats you have have been either lost, or untraceable outside of your control Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs TS Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 Or, you could just ignore any and all friends requests. That has worked for me for years. SpotlightR 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakebob Posted August 17 Author Share Posted August 17 Just now, Mrs TS said: Or, you could just ignore any and all friends requests. That has worked for me for years. I've also done this for years, and today I got annoyed enough to start looking into more permanent ways of stemming the flow of idiots. Cause it's not enough to send me a friend request or to comment on my profile; they're commenting on pictures I post to go "hey i wanna pay real money for your stuff pls respond and have good day :)" and I'm frankly rather tired of it. At least I can report these guys for trying to engage in RMT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lexi Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 12 hours ago, IceKwibby said: https://next.backpack.tf/help/privacy-policy Section "GDPR and You". In short, we don't. Its a real shame. If someone wants to be forgotten and not stalked/harassed by scammers,phishers and sharks who might target them for what they have, they should have every right to without hopping accounts. As long as they're not a scammer themselves. Jakebob 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sonic Posted August 18 Share Posted August 18 17 hours ago, Heidecker said: As far as I know backpack doesn't do any manual clearing your on the site loaded inventory even if requested.(at least I haven't seen it being done yet, maybe I am wrong though). If I'm not, I recommend just going here: https://backpack.tf/top/backpacks and blocking everybody with "buying" or "selling" in their name down to #1000 or sth. Should get rid of a good chunk of those people. yeah but nobody's gonna want to spend their time just blocking 1000 random people LMAO Jakebob 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deller Posted August 18 Share Posted August 18 You can have an empty inventory/inventory not found and scammers will still find a way to pester you anyway. JayTuut 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JayTuut Posted August 18 Share Posted August 18 6 hours ago, Mrs TS said: Or, you could just ignore any and all friends requests. That has worked for me for years. Jokes on you, my friends list is full! Mrs TS 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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