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Official Policy Banning for impersonation of an Admin, MM or another user.

Discussion in 'SteamRep Guides' started by SilentReaper(SR), Sep 30, 2015.

  1. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    SteamRep Admin:
    STEAM_0:0:89705646
    Impersonating an SR or Partner Admin or Partner MM
    Those will receive an insta-ban on sight, where the following is observed:
    • Nickname matches enough, for instance if someone impersonates "Mattie!", it will also count if the scammer's name is "[SR-A] Mattie! - Selling Burning TC"
    • Avatar matches. If avatar doesn't match, and the nickname is "generic", e.g.: "Mattie" (notice no exclamation mark), we need proof of abuse of reputation of someone else.
    Notice that we don't require proof of abuse of reputation in those cases.

    Impersonating another user or pointing to someone else's reputation thread.
    Claiming to be an "alt" of a reputable user or pointing a to their reputation or profile, is mark-able. Almost invariably these users try to get the other trader to trade items first to them in a real world money trade with steam or game items. Variations also exist where another account previously added the victim, never said any, and when the "buyer" of items asks to trade items for some kind of "inspection" or "check" to a close friend, they will try to impersonate the victim to the "friend" in order to try that the friend trades to them instead of to the victim.

    There must be an intent to abuse someone else's reputation to gain advantage in the trade. This can be in many forms:
    • Full nickname, Avatar, profile texts, formatting of stuff, steam badges, etc.
    • Pointing to said account, saying they are an alt of it.
    • Pointing to said account's reputation thread(s), saying its theirs.
    • Impersonating the victim to a friend of the victim to get items traded to them instead of back to the victim. Or even impersonating the friend of the victim.
    Note:
    As I'm writing this off the bat, I probably forgot some exclusion/inclusion cases, and some cleanup might be needed for clarification etc.
    [SHADoW-93], Leves, Cyborg and 5 others like this.
  2. 404UserNotFound

    404UserNotFound Donator - Tier V

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    Nice to see changes being made to an originally very imbalanced rule that has resulted in many innocent people being tagged, myself included, though thankfully my case was handled and reversed quite quickly after I was finally able to appeal a year later. Although, as a result of that Scammer tag that had unfairly been placed on me by a corrupt former TF2 Outpost admin, I had been banned from a few servers who were utilizing the SteamRep plugin and had it set to ban labelled Scammers on connecting.

    I am a tad confused by the whole "reputable user" bit. How do we determine who is a "reputable" user? I hope it's not "well this guy made a bunch of silly hats for TF2 and has sparkly items, so he's instantly reputable" (because some community contributors are notably abrasive and rude (long story behind this image, not going to go into it, but anyone can PM me if they want to know a brief explanation)). I'm hoping that "reputable user" rule also applies to your everyday Steam user.

    Now all we need is to review the whole "If you trade with a marked scammer, you get marked as a scammer" rule because frankly, I may or may not have traded with a marked scammer in the past. I take many donations for donator ranks on my servers and as such, I do a lot of trades. I have no clue whether I ever have traded with a marked scammer or not because I don't check the SteamRep profile of everyone I trade with. I don't have time to do that. And even if I did knowingly trade with a marked scammer, well I wouldn't be stupid enough to hop on here and post a thread saying "whoops, I just traded with a marked scammer".

    tl;dr glad to see rules are being looked at and changed, but innocent people are still having their reputations ruined by this site because of silly rules that are in place and most of them have to create new steam accounts to do their trading without worrying about people avoiding them because of a wrongfully placed scammer tag on their main. things need to change.
    Enstage likes this.
  3. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

    Messages:
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    SteamRep Admin:
    STEAM_0:0:89705646
    Well, there where quotation marks around it, maybe I should have said "points to a more reputable user". Its basically assuming anybody else their reputation by pointing at its thread or w/e and claiming its theirs.

    Also, this rule was in basic like this since 2011. Admin/MM impersonation only came later in 2012 to forego the "intend" requirement. It was a shame that your case didn't get checked as should be.

    Rules don't change often. The rule with trading with scammers is in the works to be updated... but as its a lot of if's and buts and such, I'm still trying to (re)construct it in a easy to understand way for others, observing the internal discussion on what needs to be changed... also another problem with it has been brought up in it today. So that will be another delay probably. I'll manage to create a monstrosity if nothing else.
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2015
    [SHADoW-93] likes this.
  4. Salmon

    Salmon Caution on SteamRep

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    Honestly, why should we need to determine whether someone is reputable? If you're claiming to be someone's alt and you're not, that should be taggable. Not everyone has the same idea of reputation, even something like claiming to be an alt of a streamer (which isn't a form of rep) can be seen as rep to a low-knowledge user.
  5. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

    Messages:
    11,991
    SteamRep Admin:
    STEAM_0:0:89705646
    Well, the least reputable will always be a scammer... hence anybody else that is not is more reputable ;)
  6. Lava

    Lava Public Relations SteamRep Admin

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    SteamRep Admin:
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    In this context, "reputable" means someone with something that makes them look credible, no matter what actual reputation they have within the community. If someone has a reputation thread on SourceOP, and the scammer provides a link to it, that counts. If they have positive feedback on SteamTrades.com and a scammer provides a link, that counts. If they have a high Steam level and the scammer claims to be an alt of that account, it counts. If another scammer made a 3-page fakerep thread on CSGORep and this accused links to it, they're still abusing someone else's "reputation" to appear trustworthy or credible where they are not. May not qualify as reputation by our standards, but the "reputation" is what's being used by someone else to appear more credible than they really are, and that is still an impersonation scam.
  7. 404UserNotFound

    404UserNotFound Donator - Tier V

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    96
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:28177988
    Alrighty, well I'm happy then.
  8. Neon^

    Neon^ Banned on SteamRep

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    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:8114812
    I get so many adds from people for Middleman Scams So thanks for this