Fake rep on steam profiles!

Actually thanks to things like due process and a whole bunch of other great things in America the police will not automatically throw you in jail and force you to go to court to defend your innocence just because you happen to take your dry cleaning to a place that is a front for drug trafficking.

You guys want to disband +rep on profiles due to newly inquired problems. Okay, understandable. However, traders like myself who are not scammers, and have many valid trades that have been completed through trading websites such as TF2Outpost and TF2TradingPost, are now going to have to restart what we began a year or more ago? Couldn't you have seen this problem arising prior to this case? If so, why punish everyone associated with the trader if not enough evidence can be presented to determine the verdict of everyone else but the scammer? One more question. If people like me, who have been receiving valid "+rep" on their profiles for a year or more, didn't stumble upon this post, then how do you suppose others are going to become aware of your sudden change?

My first post, because the way you handled this case angered me, an honest trader, who isn't even affected by this.
Reconsider those people's punishments until you gather enough proof.

Many traders aren't aware of SteamRep in the first place.

Which furthers my point. If they are providing legitimate trades for weapons and hats, and receiving +rep for it on their profile, then they can be accused of being a scammer on a site they never even heard of. Like another person stated earlier, you guys have a huge impact on the trading community, and can damage these traders' reputations without them knowing.

There was never a "sudden change" of SR's policy on profile rep, rep on profiles has been exploited since I became admin on SR at when SR started to go public back in April 2011. I decided with the OP post to make it more publically known, more talked about and making people aware that those rep is too easy to fake, either by:
- Scammers buying rep for little metal, often a Reclaimed.
- Scammers putting up fake rep from their alts.
- scammers putting up fake rep from their scammer friends (and alts thereof).
- Scammers deleting negative rep from their profiles

Which is then abused to sell "legit", and/or scam. I don't really object to rep on profiles, but ppl need to be aware that this is not real reputation that is valid and checked to be not from alts etc.

Profile comments should really be that: Comments, a message to the other person to make aware of, or a answer to such. They can be deleted by the maker or the profile owner where the comment is placed.

Its been abused so many times, I dont think its valid in any way.

Another commenter said earlier that he only comments + rep when someone is polite and so forth, well I have those types of comments on my profile from past trades I've done. Now it's easy to tell if a scammer is trying to trick you as there have been many cases of "You go first, I have +rep", but I mean you now need to confirm the trade twice. I typically will type a comment on the person's profile if they were a good trader, and they would return the favor if they wished. If you guys are afraid that these profile comments you see will lead to a scam, you might as well abolish everything, including your post on how to +rep someone if there is a PayPal trade. People can fake that as well, I mean if they are scammers, they are going to find some way to fake fake it am I right? Anyways you're the admin.

I'm 100% ok with the fact that it's damn easy to fake rep on steam, I doubt it's easy too to do that on Sourceop as you can check every profile's history (date people join for example).
The scammer should have created months ago accounts, posted a while with those ones and then later fake rep another guy.
And i'm not sure that sourceop forums dont register all the ip. I know you can use proxy but well i keep thinking that Steam profile's rep is such a useless thing and a dangerous one.

I don't think you need to warn people that it's exploitable, I mean, isn't that obvious? But that applies for SOP too.
And honestly, it's not that hard to tell if someone's rep is legit or fake. If he got 100 +rep comments in a day, then it's fake. You just need to take a look at when he joined steam, when did he get the comments etc.
Yes, it's not as reliable as SourceOP, but I can decide pretty well if the person is trustworthy or not.
And the main reason people use rep on steam profiles is because SourceOP is too complicated with a lot of stupid rules. I registered to sourceop in 2009, I had a rep thread there and it suddenly just got locked, because of "outside rep".
That's just ridiculous, they're forcing me to use their forums to trade my stuff, when tf2outpost is way easier and simpler. Plus a lot of people don't have SourceOP accounts so they can't give you rep there.
So that's why I stopped using it, I'll be fine with steam comments.

Well, Almier already knows I think, seeing his last activity been after I posted on his appeal:
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/76561198009669837-almier-sr-caution.16191/

But his appeal was granted. We're not here to jerk around on ppl, and most ppl know that. It's as Jameless has said, almost all of that guy's rep is fake, with 1 exception so far. I expect 1 or 2 more at most to come out, as he was quite busy to sell off his profits of his scams. The thing to wonder is if Valve is going after you if the victim of his scams reports him, and valve goes on a reverse spree.

Apparently not.

Join date: December 1, 2012

http://files.steamrep.com/1/2012-12/2012-12-07_00-32-16.png "rep" since day one he's online...
http://files.steamrep.com/1/2012-12/2012-12-07_00-32-53.png "rep" since day one he's online...

So, did you "take a look"? don't think so. WAY too obvious alt, no? Did you know that we are actually having a NEW rule on this? That experienced traders who trade with obvious alts get also backfired. For based on that, I could have granted your appeal, and relisted a Caution tag for trading with a obvious alt account.

Aparently not really getting why such rules are there. All those rules have been debated to a big extend by SOP admins, some where even discussed with me by them, some I even have suggested myself.
You have to understand that SOP back in early 2011 was the wild west, scammers and whatnot where having a big time there. They made loads of alt accounts, with 1 post as reply, and that got into the rule that trades must stem from SOP. So if reps are given by new users, then those are checked thoroughly, and some are put under watch. Slowly in the last 1,5 year they have cleared that out and its pretty much over in that regards.
So those "complicated with a lot of stupid" rules came with reasons to prevent bad stuff from happening.

The problem with a lot of "rules" is that one has to enforce them. So admins tend to have as less rules as they can get away with. Unfortunately, scammers and such come up with all kinds of schemes, so rules are made to end those avenues. The rules came therefore as a necessity, not out of boredom thinking of some "stupid" rule to annoy ppl with.

In fact, I just find out you had his alt also in friends list, so now you intentionally traded with a scammer via a alt, to be "clean" of trading with a scammer.

http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198009669837?t=1354833544

Friend #93:

|steamID: |Kibutznik|Dr. asdf
|steamID32: STEAM_0:1:43774383
|steamID64: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198047814495
|customURL:
|steamrepURL: http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198047814495

So Mr. Professional "profile rep" gleaner, how you respond on that?

I'll consider this for revising.

and PS: he got marked November 30th. But don't worry, he's been around, professionally having fake rep.

I think everyone can understand rules, and that SOP has them....

However the issue is SOP doesn't enforce them, I could list hundreds of users who have plenty of trades listed which do not adhere to rules, and yet none of them are declared invalid.

Then we have the problem of SOP making threads invalid for seemingly reasons known only unto themselves, my thread for example:

http://forums.sourceop.com/threads/112756-INVALID-WP-VenGanZa-Rep-Thread

Now Datastorm you know who I am, and you know just about every "heavy hitter" in this game knows me and vouches for me, and yet SR managed to invalidate my thread without bothering to read "** Please do NOT post here unless you are leaving GENUINE REP for something I have done for you as per SourceOP rules.". You would think that if anyone posted which did not conform to SOP rules, then that particular person would be in the wrong, given an OP does not dictate who posts or not.

Helen said Butane or someone would fix it, however I am guessing they are just as under staffed as SR, and perhaps just as busy. Not that is matters, I am one of the lucky few that has never needed a rep page.

In any case, irrespective of what people use for determining a user reputation, be it SOP, steam profile or some where else, people need to be much more circumspect. I advocate using reputable middle men or admins on reputable servers and caution people against putting too much faith in people who jump up and down and tell you they have more "rep" than you do.

Having said that, in terms of rep pages, I would have to say that SOP is far superior to anything else out there, but even SOP rep should be scrutinized a little before plunging in and trading. I work on the theory that is someone is horny to buy your s✿✿✿, they are more than happy to wait while you check them out, and will never have a problem with a reputable mm if needed.

Ehm SOP admins work their forums, while SR had their report threads for a long time there, and Butane is SR admin, SR never had a real say in rules there. That I or maybe other SR admins got polled for their input, sure. But don't say SR does any enforcing on SOP, for we don't. SOP has its own admins, and SR and SOP have always existed as separate entities. SR had to move for various reasons from SOP due that, having these forums as a replacement.

Well, I took a look at his profile, saw that I have more rep than him, then checked his steamrep and it was clean. He was willing to go first, so I traded with him, as there was no way for me to loose my items.
If he wanted me to go first, then I obviously wouldn't do it, he's not trustworthy enough for that, but why not if I get the items first? Was I supposed to reject him, just because he might be a scammer?
I admit, if someone offered me to trade the items first, then I didn't always check him thoroughly, I was lazy.

Same with the other guy, Kibutznik. He was willing to go first so I did it. Never thought that I might be helping a scammer get rid of his items.
And actually, sometime later after we traded, someone contacted me (can't remember who) and said that he was scammed by the guy and saw my comment on his profile. I told him there's no way to get his items back (as far as I know, Valve doesn't give the items back, unless they were taken by account hijacking). And I advised him to report him here on steamrep, that's all he can do. After that, I deleted Kibuztnik, because believe it or not, I hate scammers and don't want to help them in any way.

But I suppose your right, even if unintentionally, I was helping a scammer and if there's some kind of rule for this then feel free to mark me.
It's all up to you, the best I can do is to check everyone more thoroughly in the future.

And one more thing, you should try to make people aware that trading with scammers is also punishable, because the way I see it now, a lot of people could be marked for this, without them even knowing.
I'm sorry if I wasn't exactly behaving nice, I was a bit angry at first, but I can see your point now.

you got that alt added AFTER he got marked.

And trading with scammers has been up for marks since june 2011, the "kira" story who bought 21 Max heads from a russian scammer. Since then, trading with scammers has been marked for too. Single time: caution, repeated: Scammer tag. It says so clearly in our FAQ.

My above post is meant to be a reply to DataStorm's #30 comment

From our FAQ:

The "high-value item" trades is settled at a minimum of a Bill's hat or unusual's Value.
Cash trade in PP as you did.... is a automatic.

Which one do you mean? It's possible I traded with his main acc without checking it on SR, but I remember checking the Alon Berger account.

And again, I didn't know about this rule before. If I knew someone is a scammer then I didn't trade with him, but I didn't check everyone if they were willing to go first. I admit, I
So yes, I might have helped some scammers in the past, but if I did, it was never intentional. I only used this site for quick profile checks, if I had any idea this might affect my reputation too, then I would have been more careful.
I have no intention to damage my reputation, but I'm late with that I guess

What's the difference between creating fake Steam profiles and leaving comments as opposed to using them to login to Skial or SourceOP and leave fake rep there as well? With this logic, all rep should be assumed fake.

I sure hope none of the 60+ people I've traded with so far decide to start scamming as I'll be marked with a caution flag due to having a previous trade with them.

Really, have a GOOD look at the account that got marked scammer in the OP, what date it was created, and in the 6-7 days after creation got a LOAD of rep by scammers and their alts. Also he's known to use fake rep on his profile. So I marked everybody that repped him with a caution tag.

Don't apply to yourself conditions that aren't true. Screaming fire and murder, while it goes about a PROBLEM, not that they are really at risk of getting tagged... unless they are regularly trading with scammers...

Now get your head screwed back on straight, and re-read the OP, and check the Scammer marked person, his alts etc.


I never said I'd mark randomly traders with some scammer trade. But one is really obliged to check out WHOM they trade with. And make sure that any rep is based on truth.