1. There is no such thing as a "pending" ban or Steam admin. Anyone threatening your account is a scammer trying to scare you. Read more.

Announcement Policy Change: Trades with Scammer Policy, End of Life

Discussion in 'SteamRep General Discussion' started by Mattie!, Jan 3, 2016.

  1. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    We just advice not to. For the items you are trading for from scammers may have been gotten with by fraudulent items. Although the item itself may not have been scammed, the scammed items may have found its way into the trade for the item you are looking for. Would be a shame to get trade bans, item removals etc by Valve once they get caught up with your particular scammer.

    Any item you can get elsewhere. No reason to let a scammer profit.
  2. Aditya

    Aditya New User

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    I would like to know, if i was banned by FoG, do i have to appeal on FoG or can i open an appeal on SR aswell?
  3. Enstage

    Enstage SteamRep Admin Partner Community Donator - Tier V

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    Appeal on FoG.
    Roudydogg1 likes this.
  4. gukingofheart

    gukingofheart New User

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    LOL, SR is talking moral when they treat a penny scammer the same as a scammer that scams for thousand of dollars worth, and they make it a perma marking.

    There should really be different levels of scammers marking.
    Petty scammers to major ones!

    There's going to be a huge wave. (well, then again, huge is an opinion)
    These users will test these grey boundaries that SR made with this new policy.
    The more users who trade with banned users, the more SR will be backed up, and eventually SR will update this policy!
  5. Knucklejoe

    Knucklejoe New User

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    Not that my opinion means anything here, but here goes.

    As far as I understand it, the rule is now that you CAN trade with banned users, but you still probably SHOULD NOT. Just be smart about what you are after, check item history, check what they were banned for, etc. If you are totally sure that the item(s) you are after were not stolen, then I suppose go for it. It's still probably not a good idea to trade a banned user, but that is your call.
  6. gukingofheart

    gukingofheart New User

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    That's a rule I could stand more by.
    This is what the new rule should be.

    "Do not do any kind of cash trading with a scammer.
    "When trading with a scammer, please don't trade for stolen items. If you do, you may be tagged as a broker"

    It's a whole lot clearer then just don't trade with them too many times in general!
  7. gukingofheart

    gukingofheart New User

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    Once again, I really thin you guys need scammer levels.
    If someone did a tiny scam 5 years ago, and has not scammed since.
    Then anyone who trades with them, should not be treated as a broker if they do it multiple times with the same person.
    (Or however many times you consider too many)
  8. You Are The One

    You Are The One SteamRep Admin

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    First off, Its "think" not "thin".
    Not really on topic but ill bite, unlikely SR would justify certain* types of fraud over others by having separate taggings. Some users would not care if tagged, if it was a particular type of tag.
  9. Rosalina

    Rosalina New User

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    First off, it's "certain" not "cretin"

    In all seriousness, I do agree that a scam is a scam. At this point since the trades with scammers are being downgraded it doesn't even make sense to make a separate tag for those who trade with scammers (something that many people had recommended but I was never for to begin with).
    Enstage likes this.
  10. You Are The One

    You Are The One SteamRep Admin

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    rip autocorrect

    corrected.
    Rosalina likes this.
  11. Antosheek

    Antosheek New User

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    So basically, less work with reports and making bans and easier life for scammers.

    So I just do surface check of steamrep, whether someone is banned or not, and if not, then I can freely trade. With him. With alts. Because I wasn't trying to help them right? I just didn't check thoroughly.
    Of course officer, I wouldn't trade them again after you showed me he is indeed a scammer, my apology, goodbye.
    You'll never prove it's a partnership when I stop afterward, and I was really certain that things weren't scammed! *wink wink*

    Most scammers sell items from some form of alts anyway so now you basically allow people to trade stolen goods freely, unless you prove their will to partner with him. Which 99% quickbuyers don't do - they just do one time great deals at juicy discounts.

    From my own experience, newbie traders had no idea of possible mark for scammers, but after being shown/warned, they learned it. Along with ways how to protect themselves from scamms.
    But senior traders should be aware and possibly punished for trading with marked scammers/alts unless extra effort was taken to find the source of those items.

    I used to do thorough checks (and sometimes reports of fishy people) to stop them from making profit. I believe most big traders did too. With this policy applied, very few quikcbuyers would dare to quickbuy items worth thousands of dollars from scammer.
    But now, many will. There is no direct punishment from steamrep, previously the main page with fair bans and careful rulings.

    So why shouldn't I do lighter backchecks, when I know other people won't? Why should I declined scammed items now, when I know, that other quickbuyer will just buy it, knowing that nothing fatal can happen?
    Why shouldn't I take it from him isntead and take the sweet sweet profit myself?!

    I like the idea of focusing more on the "stay secure" side but from my experience, most poeple will search how to secure themselves and how scamms work only after they get scammed. I had many friends who recently unboxed an unusual - and I warned them, told them to read guides, and explained some basic scamms.
    They usually get scammed the other day.

    I see no positive side of this change. New traders have to understand that they might get in trouble for trading with scammers and that they should make thorough checks for expensive items.

    Is it ok in real world to buy a bike from a person, who had stolen many bikes before? But you can't prove this one was stolen ....
    Should you trade with him for his expensive car he bought via selling stolen bikes? And he got convicted for thefts of those?

    In real life you get legal ways how to get your stuff back, and for the criminal to lose his property. On steam, you couldn't just take it, but allowing him to sell it to anyone freely is just wrong.
  12. Horse

    Horse Administrator SteamRep Admin

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    This isn't the real life.
    Roudydogg1 and Enstage like this.
  13. Rosalina

    Rosalina New User

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    Then what is it? Am I imaginary? f✿✿✿, man. I don't wanna disappear once I stop typing. Must. Type.
  14. Antosheek

    Antosheek New User

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    Yep, but it's trying to work the same, trying to stop scammers and their profit and to protect the scammed ones as much as possible via informing.
    The only difference is that there is no working legal punishing force (because Valve rarely issues bans ... in time at least) so the only way to potentially hurt scammers is via community self-conrol and rules.

    Still, altrough steam.rp will stop giving ban for this, sites like outpost and backpack.tf will probably might not join in this policy (I hope).
    Steamrep will just lose some of it's reputation being the best/most important sites due to it's fair and sophisticated process of warnings and bans.
  15. Lava

    Lava Public Relations SteamRep Admin

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    A clear cutoff on X number of trades or Y value to be taggable is probably not going to happen. It's about intent, and any attempt to draw a black and white line is going to result in people treading closely along it. Setting quantitative criteria like that would open the policy up for abuse from either direction. If we said "X trades = fencing" or "Y value = fencing" then someone would make X-1 trades with a scammer at $Y-1 from each account, then report someone who passed those figures by an honest mistake. Instead, we are giving a qualitative criteria, and only stepping in when a clear case of working with scammers arises, which requires more than a couple backpack.tf trade history links to prove. Without giving an explicit criteria, the case will be clear and obvious or it won't be taggable. There is significant leeway if you trade with scammers, and by the time you get tagged, you're not going to have much of anything except that "black and white line" you're looking for to justify yourself.

    When this rule was first set in place, we had people on sites like Outpost soliciting no-questions-asked quicksells at ridiculous prices. Of course, they seem really really absurd, but to someone who just stole a bunch of valuable items and is trying to liquidate them from an alt before they get trade banned, anything they can get quickly is still profit. They actively encouraged, supported, and shared in profit from scamming. Many of them traded so systematically it became difficult to distinguish from alts; looking at their trade history we couldn't readily figure out if the scammers were the same people on different accounts, or frequent business partners. Do you not see a problem with that behavior? The trade-with-scammer rule by design placed responsibility on the people making those trades with scammers and obvious alts, who refused to check or care where stolen items were coming from. It was intended to curb that practice, but the consequences shifted away from their end goal so it was adjusted with room to tag systematic fences but still not dictating who people trade with. Adding arbitrary cutoff figures to the rule ended up only giving a criteria for gotcha reports from traders with vendettas.
    • If you buy one or a couple rare items on your wishlist from scammers when you couldn't get them elseware, you won't be tagged.
    • If you forget/neglect/whatever to check a SteamRep profile in one or a couple trades, you won't be tagged.
    • If a scammer gets banned from r/globaloffensivetrade for a scammer tag, and shortly after the same items he was trying to sell appear in someone else's account, they're brokering (if not an alt) and that's taggable.
    • If you advertise "buying quicksells at X% from scammers", or show a consistent and repetitive pattern of trades with scammers, you're fencing and you can get tagged for it.
    • If you can show you had a reason to make those 10 different trades with scammers other than fencing in the example you cited with absolutely no context, then you should have nothing to worry about. If it's 10 out of 10,000, you're probably fine. If it's the only 10 trades you made in a month, looks more like a pattern of fencing.
    What's so hard to understand about this? Instead of looking for loopholes and exceptions, try not brokering or fencing. I realize you, and scores of other people who want to capitalize on the rule change, are looking for a hard quantitative line they can safely tread along, but that's not how it's set up. Every case is different. Some things are more cut and dry than others, but even with our current policies (trade-with-scammer rule excluded) we still run into varying shades of gray. There will always be unclear cases, and generally speaking we give benefit of doubt and heavy weight to behavior of someone accused. For example, PayPal scams seem pretty straightforward - buyer and seller agree to a set price, and if one of them doesn't pay they get tagged - if someone lost their internet connection in the middle of a paypal trade or spycrab, do they still get a tag? What if they actually intended to not pay but after a couple denied trades offered to repay if the victim takes their report down? We put months of debate, voting, staff meetings, and community outreach into this change as it is, and ultimately I believe the newer implementation is overall a lot better for the community. Do you not see this as an improvement? Refining it to the point you're requesting would require no less than an additional year. An additional year we would not be working on other changes, and even then, I guarantee you there would be unclear cases and people would find loopholes in it.
    Roudydogg1 likes this.
  16. Hamtaro

    Hamtaro New User

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    I think its also and more than anything a pure fail, we only need to check one seconde to see an incredibly amount of scammers on the "legit" keys reseller friends list, quicksell sellers etc... Most of the big traders have already traded with scammers and they know what they do
  17. gukingofheart

    gukingofheart New User

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    Hamtaro, where's the rule about your not allowed to have scammers on your friends list?
    ------------------------------------------

    I have a fair solution to the Trading with scammer/brokering problem.
    How about You can not be reported on steamrep for brokering unless if a partner community marked you first, and unless if there's huge proof that you did it on purpose, that marking should only count as a warning.

    This way, if there's any issue, they can complain to the partner community first.
    If they continue trading with scammers afterwards, you'd have reliable proof!
    ------------------------------------------

    Also, at the same time BigMac187 will post on every community forum asking about the 10 trades with 10 scammer question over and over.
    SR will never give you the answer you want, no matter how many times you ask.
  18. Mattie!

    Mattie! SteamRep Admin

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    I did notice some prepositions I should include in case someone is confused on the wording (like BigMac pretends to be). I updated it to say:

    "No new bans or cautions will be tracked on SteamRep for cases where a normal trader (i.e. not green tagged) trades with, sells to, or purchases from a banned user."
    For brokering bans, admins will review the case based on evidence and precedents set with partners' input. While major trades with a scammer are usually a key bit of evidence in such cases, it will not be sufficient for a ban on its own-- more evidence is required to support brokering. Since (a) every case is different, (b) this occurrence is rare, and (c) this is a major fraud offense, we'll be handling it case by case for now.

    Anyone reading this thread and seeing 25+ responses from BigMac will see him trying to find "gotcha" quotes in admin responses so he can nitpick them to death in some sort of appearance of helpfulness. This is his way. His motives are to purposefully muddy the waters and make SteamRep appear bad, regardless of the decisions we make.

    Don't let BigMac's spam prevent more people from responding. If it continues unabated, we'll have to temporarily restrict him from posting since it's likely preventing other people from providing feedback or asking their own questions. (It certainly makes it hard to skim the thread for valid questions.)
  19. Hamtaro

    Hamtaro New User

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    You are naive, a lot.
  20. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    @BigMac187, as you continue to hijack this thread for your own agenda of nitpicking and misconstruing, per instructions from Mattie I'm banning you for another 3 months so others can actually field their questions, and a normal discussion can happen. We have extensively answered you on this thread and others, and it has been enough.

    I will separate your responses from this thread and leave a link from this thread to the "discussion" to the separated replies, to make this thread more accessible for others. The link will be edited in below in this reply.

    As that may contain replies of others that replied in kind to you but also touched a question they wanted to ask to SR about this:
    I'm sorry to be forced to have moved your reply, please ask the question or place the remark for discussion again, this time hopefully not snowed under by a agenda driven individual.

    /edit: the link to BigMac187's loaded/agenda driven thread is: http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/bigmac-trades-with-scammer-policy-end-of-life.120088/

    I've left some clarifying extensive replies here from some admins that where wide angle and not specific replies to BigMac.

    Again, sorry for the inconvenience for ripping the discussion, but this seemed the only way to get back on track without a huge diversion making the thread hard to read.
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2016