SCAMMER PWNED

Theyre not silly if they are true.

Y'know, before you started regressing back to hissy fit you had something there. The problem with what you're doing is that you're oversimplifying the matter and hurling insults at anyone who wants to expand on the matter. There's really not much SR can do but mark scammers: Valve is not doing nearly enough to help police the TF2 economy, and they're not extending any ability to do that to the community. This goes beyond the scope of the game, and it's only a matter of time before the first big mannconomy related lawsuit hits, bringing with it the forced interest of lawmakers with no knowledge or care of what goes on, bringing with it even MORE issues before being able to solve the current ones.
Your intentions were admirable, but your method was ludicrously short-sighted. For someone who keeps insisting on treating things as they are in "the real world", you forgot to consider how "the real world" would and does react to people who decide that spending hundreds on dollars on pixels is a good idea.

Thank you.

I just joined. I look forward to seeing how this community is as I have never visited your forums yet.

I agree with you. And I am glad you are able to see beyond the wrong doing pointing and are touching on the topic at hand. What will it take to get some proactive action? Will it take a mega scam that will be in the hundreds of thousands? I don't know but I was hoping we don't remain passive and let it escalate to this. The germans had over 50% of asia / europe before people decided to be proactive. The new world people eliminated over 90% of the natives in north america before someone spoke up and said enough. It took riots and innocent people getting beheaded before people started fighting for equal right in the US when slavery and skin color intolerence finally became a topic that was to be addressed and confronted. I understand that I and the ones before me and the ones after me will be persecuted by current rules and policies that exist to protect us. I agree that a mark should be placed on actions such as my own. I did what I did because I was not afraid of this mark. What I am afraid of is that one day, I do a 50 bud purchase with my paypal to get that sparkle lugermorph ive been after for the longest time and a couple of other ultra rare items only to click a stupid link that someone sells me on the idea that it is safe and validates if my buds are "duped" and find my entire bank account wiped out and my backpack drained within 15 seconds. Oh wait, that is happening right now in the community.

Anyone taking any action?
NO

Anyone who WASNT affected by it is trying to find a solution other then just acknowledging how its unfair that these things happen?
NO

So I may not be the prime example of a solution but I'll be damned if I just let this community sit quiet any longer without at least TRYING to increase the demand for change.

I look into the real world and ACT. If you want to compare us to the real world, we are at the "wild west", "post communism Russia" and / or "post dictatorship of the countries that recently had uprisings on the Middle East and Africa" where no laws exist. Policies have been written and rule books exist but nothing is being enforced or governed in any way. I know that the people who put countless of hours into forming this website and even the ones who originally created SourceOP all have their hearts in the right place. I applaud you all for the hard work, but I say IT IS NOT ENOUGH ANY MORE. I am not asking you to come up with solutions while I sit on the sidelines. I will GLADLY abide by any rules I agree with if I see they serve to protect me and not hinder me a crippled pawn in a game of "scam" chess.

This is why I am here and still typing away 3 days and 7 pages of posts later.

I am willing to take action regardless of what it may do to my reputation. If I manage to at least get this community to get the ball rolling forward even in the slightest faster then it already is then my purpose is done and I am content. But it wont stop me speaking in an open forum about it and it wont stop me from responding to whomever wishes to continue arguing/discussing this point.

I did not claim they were false. Only they are silly. His words are silly highschool mentality talk. It's the stage in life where you think you got the world figured out because you spend so much time learning and talking about it but not living in it for 1 single day yet.

lol

More walls of text. You're funny

Chaos stop it. If you don't want to argue with him, then just stop please. I'm trying to be nice here, but you're better than that.

As stupid as he's acting he still has a valid point in that scammers frequently get off with little more than a mark for defrauding hundreds of dollars (3man comes to mind). If we can ignore Dronefly's ranting and think of better ways to help scam victims, that'd be great.
Also, all those scammed by the tf2-items link were repaid by Valve iirc, as it was an exploit in Steam Trade that was taken advantage of and the onus is on them to ensure it's a safe system: at least they restore items in cases such as that.

So what can be done? You obviously were not happy with my approach. What would you suggest? Can there not be a better system to think of? Can we not write a simple guide. PROPER complete one outlining all the known frequent scams and how to avoid them? I can write something to help people with things like : steamrep.com lookup, how long the account has been active, how many games are installed on the account, how many hours in the last 2 weeks versus overall time the account has been active (someone with 120 hours last 2 weeks and 600 total play time is still a high scam potential). Sourceop Rep is nice because you can not remove posts you don't like. Is there such a thread here? Why isn't it respected as much as the sourceop one. From my experience many veteran traders are only interested in sourceop rep. What do they have as far as advantage over this forum? Also there should be general warning about paypal use. People MUST be informed that YOU WILL NOT WIN A CHARGEBACK REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU POST OR HOW YOU SELL THE ITEMS. If a person does a case in paypal and you win, they just call their CC company and do a reversal. Youre right or wrong, paypal will refund that money from your account the the other CC company and visa, mastercard, amex, they have ALL ignored cases that were won on paypal and say there is no valid proof and decline paypal's dispute. DO NOT TRADE WITH someone without them having proper rep. No one seems to have something like this that covers all the bases and proper safe trading practices. And if there is, its not being endorsed.

Maybe steamrep can make a group like "Beware of scammers/sharks" or something like that and then a bot that autoinivtes people to it to spread the word. I have no idea if this is a good idea but the problem currently is that steamrep is seperated from tf2. If you are doing all you trading on trading servers or none at all you will never get to know steamrep. Every new player should get to know of steamrep and read the guides on how to avoid getting scammed or sharked. Valve has finally to start work closer with the community. They cant ignore how much money is in the tf2 economy anymore. That one popular scammer said he made 30'000$ with scamming. No idea if its true but this should show valve that the tf2 trading isn't just trading pixels for pixels.

Valve follows its own TOS. Trading outside of Steam is against the rules, that's why if you get scammed in a paypal trade there is nothing Valve can do. Most traders choose not to abide by Valve's rules but then they scream and come crying when they get scammed. Be sensible, use Steamrep. If you want to be particularly sensible, trade within Steam. That way if you get scammed (by an exploit or a phish) your items can be returned. Steamrep does everything it can to help traders, but in the end all we can do is mark scammers. If you want to buy items with Paypal, I beg you. DO THE RESEARCH. KNOW WHO YOU ARE TRADING WITH. IF SOMEONE MESSAGES YOU RANDOMLY ASKING TO BUY YOUR STUFF, ODDS ARE THEY ARE TRYING TO STEAL IT.

lol you're so damn lucky you have a caution tag anyways

I wasn't aware that the SR API blocks caution tags. So no, he's free to join my servers.

oh wait i forgot that he got a caution tag, lol so lucky

Thanks for the notes man, I was getting bored of reading this discussion.

Just tone it down a little. Dronefly, there are better ways to fight scammers than playing by their rules. Fight with your own rules, not theirs. THAT'S how you win the battle.

@Dronefly

When I sell earbuds, you get $1 off whatever my listed price is from now until forever.

I just wanted to address this one point:

That's simply not true. You can ask around- this is something that has been discussed a LOT. There are about 20 different viewpoints on this- not only your situation but the entire problem at hand. I spend hours a day researching scam reports and marking people. I sincerely and passionately wish there was anything more that I could do to help than to just process their report. You can ask around- we are far from not taking any action, either on this specific situation or the problem with scammers in general.

I was not affected by it yet I am trying to find a solution. It's a very thin and hazard-filled line to walk and you DO NOT want to be the one walking it- and this has nothing to do with SteamRep. What if your account gets disabled or trade-banned by Valve? They have corporate policies that they have to follow. It may not be fair, but just as we have to follow our posted policies, they have to follow theirs. Because they are a corporation, they have even stricter policies that must be consistently followed whereas we have a bit more leeway. But how can we condone something that can get you trade banned or your account disabled? It would be like a bar giving discounts on alcoholic drinks to designated drivers- we would be condoning a practice that is dangerous as it can get you into a lot of trouble (and not even counting us!).

This is clearly a hot-button issue and constructive discourse on it SHOULD be encouraged. However, I do believe that any insults and accusations need to stop. Continue the discussion by all means, but let's make it polite, courteous, and if we can, fact-based.

Don't compare pixel trading to genocide if you want to be taken seriously. It's a very bad way to make a point.
Simply put, TF2 cash trading is a very fringe activity as it stands, and no one on the outside cares to help. The linkhack is not a valid point, as it is covered by Valve due to it being a result of an exploit. It's not enough mainly because Valve can't entrust the power to reverse trades to the community because of all the inevitable issues that arise.
Also, if in fact the law DOES start passing legislature on cash for virtual items, it would be only a matter of time before traders start having to file income tax on their earnings (among other issues). Do you think the trading world is ready to deal with having to go through government process any time they want to trade?
Once again, you're oversimplifying the issue and trying to paint yourself as a martyr. You've been doing that for the past 7 pages. This issue has ramifications far beyond just the actions that you did, and you need to understand that.

This thread has long gone it's purpose, you are tagged "CAUTION", and you've been given a reason why.