How to stop imposters from abusing my account ?

Hello all ,

Recently I am encountering a huge wave of imposters , I dont know what I did or post that attracted their attention towards my profile.

I have many people coming to me , warning me about imposters and many others blaming me that I scammed them , even thou I had a very large warning message on my wall with ways to differentiate the real me from any imposters for weeks ! , some newbies are still being tricked and falling to the scammers traps , I dont blame them , they are just noobs with not enough awareness that anything like that could happen.

Here is the warning message on my profile , read it by visiting my steam profile:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Hamouri/

What upsets me the most is being worried that noobs falling into imposters traps are probably reporting me for nothing. I am worried if maybe one day Alot of people report me without knowing that I am not the person who scammed them and end up with a automatic trade ban or worse.

what also upsets me is being forced to private my inventory as I was always against that idea , but due to huge amount of imposters tricking noobs with drag and drop chat tricks from my what used to be a public inventory , after that I had no options left but to private my inventory so imposters cannot use it as if it is their own.

I am wondering if there is a way , to set my inventory to public as it used to be , and yet have no imposters playing with it. is there a way that I can forbid specific person from viewing my profile ? because its easy to spot the imposters and block them , but still blocking is not enough as they are still able to see your inventory and drag and drop from it as they wish.

I posted a report to all the imposters of me so far, I hope they get marked soon , anything to raise awareness would be good.

here is a link to the report:

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/report-76561198118218320-dota2-dota2-items.108927/


am open to any ideas and tips.

Thank you
PataPon

Hmm, you have a old account, SR's tier 4 donator, but low steam level. You do make your account pretty distinct by having 1900 games and showing off the 11 year old badge.

On the imposters, if one impersonates a SR/Partner admin, those are banned on sight by us. On others, when reported it must show intend (linking to your profile, claiming your reputation, etc. in order to get someone else to go first. This makes the reporting of imposters of traders/profiles in almost all cases the business of those that where attempted the impersonation on (successful or not).

appreciate you reply , as you can see , am an old steam user ( am actually pretty old ) , with a very high value steam account , I see with imposters are doing this , they think they can trick people by using a very trusted and known person between the dota community and steam community in general. It just pains me to have to hide all this glory in my inventory to avoid other innocent steam users of being scammed , I wish I could do something about it. Any suggestion on what should I do ? what if I return my profile to public and more people get scammed through my inventory ? Did I do enough to protect my self from a trade ban or worse ? from your experience , would valve/steam listen to me if I got an unfortunate trade ban for example ? what do you think ? is there anything else I can do ? Thanks

hello , I did not understand fully your note number one , can you please explain more , as for note number 2 , do you suggest I change my inventory to public and not care about the people that get scammed ? what if people who get scammed report me constantly thinking i was the one who scammed them ? wouldn't that put my account at risk ? thanks for your reply anyway

He meant the link on your profile, you use your custom URL instead of the ID64:

instead of: http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561197960302167

The font Steam uses, is quite bad with spacing, for instance "rn" looks a lot like a "m" etc. Removing ambiguity is a strong point.

I'm more for telling people HOW to check a profile on steamrep instead of linking them directly... for everybody can link to your SteamRep profile...

Also, why link on your own steam profile to your steam profile???


Listing specifics on your own profile... they will just copy it, adapt it to their "numbers" and such (if they even edit it). Listing specifics is useful elsewhere, where you can't directly link your account etc.

Hello guys , Fixed the link to ID64 instead of custom link.

I have a link of my own Steam profile ID because I want people to click on it and figure that they are not talking to the real me , if they click on it , they would know for example that am not on their friends list ! therefore they are talking to the wrong person ... I think its important for the Steam ID to be there. as there can only be one custom Steam ID.

oh, and the impersonators will just links it to themselves ?

Thanks alot for your very long very detailed reply , it means alot that you actually went throu my profile and read it all.

I agree with almost everything you said , therefore , I will remove any links on my warning message .. wither it was a link to my steam profile page or a link to steamrep page , and I had no idea that there are scammers who donate to steamrep , I was just trying to differentiate my self from those people , was not planning to start any myth therefore , I will remove my steamrep link and remove the wording " Special reputation ".

Dota 2 lounge rep is really hard to reach that level , that is why I have it mentioned , it took thousands of trades to reach this level.

The reason that I have all those points mentioned , such as ( check my d2l rep and other stuff ) , is because I have so many things that would really make it a tough job for an impostor to impersonate me .. It is true .. Dota2Lounge rep means nothing .. and any impostor can reach that level .. but amount of work and dedication that he will have to put into this will make it (perhaps) not worth it to impersonate me .. And anything that I could do to keep those suckers away from me , I will do it.

regarding the suggested "instructions" to verify ( without links ) , do you have a template or a ready warning that I could use on my wall aswell ? It would save me alot of time writing the guide.

So ultimately , you suggest I public my inventory again , right ? or should I wait for the wave of impostors to cool off a little bit ?

Hey Lava ,

Thanks again for the replies , well , I rather keep you out of all this , in order to keep things as short as possible.

I have modified the warning , again . removed all links as suggested and added a small guide lines to check me out on steamrep and what to expect there.

I wish I had a rare ( no longer obtainable) badge , but I do not think I do.

and I agree with you regarding private inventories , I think I will just wait for a couple more days until the wave cools off .. and it has ! there were 8 imposters that I know of , now down to 2 , am guessing with in inventory locked .. they could not do much !

after that , its public again !

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Hamouri/badges/23 <--- This is actually a pretty unique badge. It won't change, and obviously the event is over, so it can't be faked very easily.

But if you can't get people to check your ID64 at the very least, then telling them to click your badge page and look for this badge won't help either.

Your right , but that was more less a free event , it is not achievable anymore yes , but most people I assume have it. Thanks for the input

I'm referring to the exact level recorded by the badge. "The real me will have a level 570 monster summer badge." And again -