Rejected Appeal: 76561197969974212 - (Dawnstride / BANNED BY SR)

Appeal for BANNED BY SR

Steam profile: 76561197969974212 (Dawnstride)

Appeal Plea: I committed the offense(s), I admit it
Appeal Reason: [Accounts] Friend/Family - My account was abused by a family member or friend

Victim Repayment: Yes, I repaid the victims of my offense(s)
Previous Appeals: No, this is my first appeal here​

Alternate Accounts:

This is my only account​

Appeal description:

Alright, so I started on Steam a long time ago back when it was new for a game called Counter-Strike Beta. Everyone was playing 1.5 so when 1.6 came out, Steam was a requirement to get the new version, so... Yeah, lots of memories there. Good thing Steam has become a lot more reliable now. o.o

Anyway, I didn't really do any sort of trading for anything on Steam until I started TF2 years ago. Even then I was never what a lot of people would consider a 'serious' trader. I never had anything super rare or valuable and that was fine with me, as I didn't have the free time really to devote to it. The game was just something simple that I could do for just an hour or less a day and have fun with it.

So even after I had been playing for some time, my item collection wasn't all that impressive, and that was totally okay with me. I had fun with the few people I knew and played with, and I was really proud of a couple of weapons I had with pretty christmas lights on them... and that was it. I was still in my first 4 years of med school and I would play with a few of my girlfriends/classmates every now and then. TF2 was really the only game we did together as a group.

The problems came up when one of my classmates and friends(As well as her boyfriend who didn't go to our uni but did play with us and we all were acquainted with him) said that they needed some help. She told me in person that her boyfriend had been trading for quite some time and was very familiar with the market, which was a fact that we all could have guessed given how interested he was in the items part of the game.

But where they told me they needed my help was that he wanted to start selling valuable items for RL cash. From what I understood, the two of them playing would take the items they found in-game as well as some keys and crates purchased from the Steam shop. Then, using his knowledge of the economy and the trading market in TF2, he would make profit from trading. The problem they explained to me was that both of them had not been playing that long and that it was impossible for them to SELL the items he had acquired/would acquire for RL cash.

I was told that as my account was an old account, that he would be able to sell the items he had for RL cash. I wasn't the most knowledgeable person when it comes to the economy and how trades work, so everything that they told me made perfect sense. They said it would come at no risk to me, as the two of them would come to my place and us girls would hang out while her boyfriend is on my PC and his own laptop, using my Steam accounts as a 'seller' so to speak. I did look this up just out of curiosity and I saw where players were indeed selling items for RL cash, and I was told that it was a very common thing in the economy and that there would be absolutely no risk or harm that would be done to my account.

So, in short, they thoroughly convinced me that this would be something I could do that would be a huge help to the both of them and that there would be no risk involved. I saw nothing wrong with it, and so on several occasions over the next week they both came over. I let him use my computer, logged into my steam account, to do his business. I trusted them both, but I mostly trusted her, as we had known each other for quite some time and she had been nothing but kind and helpful to me. Everything that they told me made perfect logical sense, and I didn't feel any risk of my account being in jeopardy since I never was giving away any details about the account.

I guess to make an already long, long post/story a bit shorter: After I logged on one morning after they had been over the previous night(This had been about a week since the first time he had come over with the intent of using the account) I had someone I did not know who he had added to my friends list asking me about some TF2 items. This totally scared me to the point where I refused to let him use my account any more as I felt paranoid that maybe he had done something bad using my account. It left me with such a horrible experience with sharing and letting someone else do this, that just the feeling of not knowing what all he had done and that despite his insistence that he had not done any underhanded trades left me feeling completely betrayed and sick.

Even though I may not be as hardcore of a Steam gamer as some and I'm certainly not the most experienced when it comes to TF2 or its economy, I took a lot of pride in the fact that my account had been in good standing and was a library for all of the games I enjoyed online and a connection to my friends, both online and IRL. It was such a horrible experience for me to not only be unsure whether he had done something I was unaware of to my account to compromise it, but then when I actually did try to make a trade again just for some metals to craft a new item, that's when I found this site and that I was 'Banned on SR' for some kind of attempted scams involving RL $. And while I'm glad that it was just 'Attempted' and not 'Successful', it still has left me with not only the inability to do any future trading on TF2(I still only play the game every once in a while, but I'm sure if this was dealt with that I might feel a bit better about playing and trading on the game again) but, worst of all, it has left me with a negative mark and a label as a scammer.

I know that there's no excuse for what I did and that, when it comes down to it, it was wrong. I shouldn't have let him, her, or anyone else do business using my account, ESPECIALLY with me not being there to oversee it 99.99% of the time he was on. My own ignorance doesn't change the fact that I have to bear that responsibility for what happened....

However, after all of this, I will NEVER make the same mistake twice and I will NEVER allow anyone to use my account, period. I have absolutely no interest nor intent of ever trying to scam or cheat people online, and that will continue to stand for as long as I'm here on Steam. I love the community here and I have so many fond memories thanks to this. I would just beg that whoever reads this will be able to see that I don't want to ever be a 'Scammer' or a 'Cheater' on these games, but I want to be a positive influence on the people I play with. I want to have fun here, just like everyone does, and if possible, I'd like to help others have fun as well. I just would really like to get out from behind this black mark that is on my account, and I hope that whoever reads this will see that I've been 100% genuine here with the mistakes I made, I've admitted the fault in them, and I'd like to show from here on out just as I have been and will continue to do, that I can be a positive influence on others in the community. That's what I want more than anything.

If there's anything else about what happened that I need to explain or someone I have to talk to in person, I'm more than willing to do that.

Thank you so much to whoever took the time to read this... I'm sorry that it's been a bit long, but I wanted to try to do this the right way and explain everything I could think of that needed to be explained.

-Dawn​