Official Guide How to verify an admin or middleman

Due to the number of recent well-done admin and middleman impersonations, we are trying to raise awareness of how to verify someone is an admin or middleman. If someone adding you claims to be a trusted admin or middleman, we strongly recommend you follow all of the steps in this guide. Additionally, you should follow these steps before making any trade with someone you believe to have a trusted profile on SteamRep:

https://steamrep.com/tips/pretrade​

Identifying Valve employees

There is no such thing as a "Steam admin", anyone who claims otherwise is a scammer. You will probably never run into a Valve employee in Steam, but if you do they can be identified by the following badge on their Steam profile:


If someone doen't have this badge, they aren't an "admin", simple as that. Most Valve employees will also have a purple badge (Example) when looked up on steamrep.com. You are very unlikely to ever run into one of these profiles in Steam, and if you do, it will NOT be in a trade. That is a scam.

Identifying community admins and middlemen

While trading, you may encounter someone affiliated with an unofficial Steam community, such as one of several trading communities on Reddit. Administrators and middlemen of such communities, who are NOT affiliated with Valve, will be identified on SteamRep.com with a green Administrator tag (example), and usually appear in the admin list. Bear in mind that because SteamRep.com is not affiliated with Valve, admins in this list do not have any special access or privileges within Steam. This means community admins cannot ban anyone in Steam, and can't get your items back if you get scammed.

Middlemen are often (but not always) administrators for their respective community, but can be verified in the same way. Their tag looks the same as an administrator's tag, except it says "Middleman". If you are working with a middleman, it's CRUCIAL you understand how a middleman works so you don't get scammed. Read this guide on what middlemen do before sending any items or money: https://forums.steamrep.com/pages/middleman

You can verify a community admin or middleman with the following steps:

• Open the Steam Browser by double clicking the steam icon in the tray in lower right corner of your screen.
• On the top left, open menu "Steam" and select "Settings".
• On the new Settings dialog box, select "Interface" and enable the tick in front of "Display Steam URL address bar when available".
• Click "OK" to close the Steam Settings dialog, applying the setting.

NEVER under any circumstances trust a link that was provided to you in Steam chat.

1. Open the other person's Steam profile.
   • If you're checking a pending friend request, click the arrow to the right of their name and select View Steam Profile. This will open their profile in a Steam window.
   • If you're in chat, click on the name or avatar picture of the person you're speaking to. This will open their profile in a Steam window.
   • If you're in a trade, click on the name of the other trader. This will open their profile in a Steam window.
   • IMPORTANT: Do not trust any links in their trade notes, or links to other websites given in chat, and do not trust any links to SteamRep in trade notes or any place the person can edit.
2. Towards the top left of the Steam window, you will find the Steam Community URL if you have the settings above enabled. Copy the entire web address from that bar (Highlight it with your mouse, right-click and select "copy").
3. Open a new browser page, and go to: https://steamrep.com/
4. Paste the copied Steam Community URL in the "search" box (Ctrl-V), and click "Search"

If the person claims to be a trusted admin or middleman, but there is not a green tag, border, and name on the profile, they are lying and you should report them. If the person provides you a link that does have a green tag, but the instructions above take you to someone else, they're lying and you should report the fake one.

Just because someone looks legit, their name or other details match what you see on the SteamRep profile, the profile is a high level with lots of friends/hours/items/whatever, or they sent you a SteamRep link, doesn't mean they are really the person you think they are. Fake middlemen scammers are notorious for making realistic-looking copies of Steam profiles.

Example admin: https://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198047602426
Example middleman: https://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198093792277
Example impersonator: Real Middleman | Fake Middleman (notice the subtle misspelling in the custom URL)

Verifying a staff member in this forum

Recently, we've received a few reports of scammers claiming to be SteamRep moderators. Moderators and other general staff all have notes on their SteamRep profile denoting their role under "Additional info from administrators" (example) and most admins have Green "Administrator" tags. If an admin has chosen to remove the green tags from their profile, there will be notes indicating their position (similar to a moderator) but that admin can temporarily add a tag to their profile for verification if asked.

All SteamRep staff also have special banners on the forum which will appear below their Avatar and nickname on the forums.

Admins look like this:


Moderators look like this:


Additionally, any posts from SteamRep staff will be highlighted with a green background to distinguish their posts from anyone else in the community, with "Staff Post" written above their post in green. Example:

​

If anyone adds you on Steam and claims to be a part of SteamRep, you can ask them to send a private message on the forums. Any messages from staff will have the green background as well as a moderator/admin banner as shown above. It will also have a link to their SteamRep profile, which you can use to look up their reputation.