How do people get scammed.

I honestly don't understand how people can get scammed. I've definitely hit a few scammers since joining the trading scene a month ago, but when I do, all red flag goes off almost immediately. I can honestly tell you that 99% of the time I can pick out a scammer, that 1% where I can't really tell (do to lack of rep or history, I give myself the benefit of the doubt). Half of the time I don't even need to check steamrep to know.

It's not rocket science.
The basic idea is feel sorry only for yourself.

Here's a few rules I logically/naturally follow:
1. If someone adds you, ask them what they wanted from you

• If they say, "what do you have" or "I forgot". This is first redflag. Which is almost always an indicator of scammer
• Next, instead of telling them what you have, tell them that you are looking for a specific game. I like to make up some s✿✿✿, "I'm only looking for Greg's Galaxy Adventure... key or tradeable", because you said "I'm only looking for", they won't say no. They'll most likely say they have it. If they said they've never heard of it, they "probably" aren't scammers. They may continue to offer you something that may catch your attention, usually something big but as a key. If the items you have to offer don't mount up (in terms of price, year it was published, demands, metascore... ) to the game he's offering, he's probably trying to bait you.

2. Never go first, unless you're the one who asked for a trade, or you don't care about losing a key.

• If someone offers you a game and asks you to go first, don't. Doesn't matter if he's got good rep, there's absolutely no reason. Due to the presence of "rep", they'll most likely say "I only get reps on my steam profile, they don't use trading forum reps" since this is unmoderated. STEAM PROFILE REPUTATIONS are worth NOTHING. These are easily forged.
• They'll also come up with a sob story about how they got scammed in the previous trade by going first. No, remember that other peoples problem isn't yours. You are not obligated to provide charity.
• At which points, they'll reply with something like "I can provide proof of purchase/receipt". I've even had one guy saying "I can give you all of the characters in a key except for the last one". Trust me, it ain't even worth your time brute forcing that last character before you send your offer. They're wasting your time. Scammers will follow the rule that they NEVER go first simply because they don't actually have it.
• Online "promises" mean jack squat. "I promise I'll be online, if the key doesn't work, I can send the gift back to you". Being "online" means nothing unless you can punch him in the face.
• Even if the guy has good reps on non steam profile page and asks you to go first, use your judgement. If you have tradeable and the guy with awesome reps have key and asks you to go first purely on the basis of reps, negotiate for him to go first. For all you know, he could've gotten that key from someone else who traded it to multiple people. Even your trader doesn't know if the key is valid or not. Even if you bought a game from GreenManGaming and you're given a key, how do you know the key works? How do you check? By redeeming it. The difference with GMG and a person with awesome rep is that GMG will give you a refund, the guy with awesome rep probably will not.

3. When someone gives you a forum link to his profile with reps, double check with the profile of the user you are talking to.

4. Scammers are not good negotiators. They have one goal, to scam you. But at the same time they want to make it appealing for you. If you don't tell them what you want, and ask them for offers and they give you big items for small games on your list.

5. Nobody is your friend, not before a trade, not during the trade, and NOT after the trade. Again, don't feel sorry for a stranger. This is strictly business. Once you are done, rep them, that's it. Making a successful trade with one individual does not make him your friend. If you have another trade with him, he's still a potential scammer.

6. Even when you are not too sure if the person is a scammer or not. There is no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. Don't trade with them. Tell them you are not comfortable trading. You're not in a rush to trade your games away. Someone else will come along at some point for the trade.

Welcome to the Forum! Thanks also for taking the time to compile a helpful post!

Sadly, common sense isn't all that common, and many players fall victim to greed, inattentiveness and social engineering. There will always be people who fall prey to scammers, best we can do is help to make the Community more aware and try our level best to educate and help prevent them finding new victims.

Yah, I see too many people with screenshots of their chat session and majority of them does not make much sense to me. You are correct, social engineering is a key aspect. Scammers tend to like to talk like average joes. By adding "lol" here and there usually makes people fall into prey.

Me and my llama approve of your post;

Very nice, but I wouldn't say repping a person you know nothing about is a good idea. This is where the fake rep comes from. I'd add: "Only rep other trader if you've actually traded with them and the trade was somehow risky (cash trades, middlemanning...)"
But otherwise very good!

i approve this message

Hey, even people who seems legit can scam, i have been chargebacked from a guy who was legit, 4 pages of rep for buying selling, old account ,no scammers as friends etc, and you see even with this s✿✿✿ happens
The worse thing is that i was selling stuff for another trader, and I lost 90$ not him...I should have asked him to give me the half of 90$, I'm too kind i bet....
Secondly many people join the trade market without even knowing that scamming methods or scammers exist, that lack of knowledges is an advantage for scammers.

Before this scam took place to this poor individual,
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/76561198020503011-sgt-nick.22829/

The scammer added me from steamtrades.com, I had a Crysis 3 for exchange, he was interested. After he added me, he wanted to me to go first since he had 70+ rep on his profile. I told him no, he had zero reps on steamtrades and we're going with a traditional buy & sell rules (money first, then item). I don't think a lot of people realize that you can selectively delete comments made to your profile. This guy could've made 140 trades, 70 of them were legitimate, 70 are scammed, he just ended up deleting anything he scammed and blocked them from future negative reps. Eventually, no trade was done with my deal as I was not going to go first.

Too bad that individual who got scammed fell for that.

I remember trading with an individual who was suspicious that I was a scammer. I have a trading / playing account, trading account have like 5 games in it. He decided to go first and informed me that the chat log would serve as proof if I scammed him. I wondered why he had mentioned that?

1. Did it make him feel better that there's a fallback? No that's not a fallback, it's a useless reassurance.
2. Was it suppose to make a scammer scared? If scamming people on steam can put you behind bars, maybe, but it can't. Scammers don't care if they get reported.

Again, feel sorry only for yourself. Think of what would happen IF the guy was a scammer.