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.

People banned on SR and not tradebanned on Steam, Actual Fixes?

Discussion in 'SteamRep General Discussion' started by tugger, Nov 27, 2017.

  1. tugger

    tugger New User

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    I found other threads about this but they're archived.

    Ever since I started listing low tier valuable items on bp.tf I've been inundated with scammers adding me.
    Just last night I get this nice guy adding me

    http://steamrep.com/search?q=http://steamcommunity.com/id/N1ghtmaar3

    This guy's not banned, one of his alts is account banned, and one can presume his alts carrying his valuable stolen items aren't banned (the guy has all his screens with golden frying pans, etc up). As older threads have mentioned, steam just doesn't seem to care. The only way to get Steam to care about anything is to regulate it, customer advocacy petitions mean nothing to this company. If they cared they'd issue hardware bans for scammers and cheaters, but they don't.

    Maybe now with the EA Battlefront loot box fiasco regulators will look to regulate beyond gambling P2W values. Steam already cracked down on third-party gambling sites and Valve lists all loot box content in item descriptions now, probably to cover their butts in anticipation of regulation in countries' markets they target.

    I wish Geel or SR had enough sway to encourage Steam to take proactive measures against fraud and scamming, because the entire platform is just a haven for the worst kinds of junior criminals. We seem to think of these people as apart from telemarketers or credit card scammers, and they're not. They should be criminally charged for what they're doing. They're defrauding people of thousands of dollars in property, under the legal pretense of Steam retaining the rights to those assets. In Canada we have a whole specialized branch of our RCMP and CSIS dedicated to investigating international fraud against Canadian citizens, and their investigations often predicate changes in the criminal code.
  2. tugger

    tugger New User

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    I don't know if there's a post edit here, but I'd like to follow-up with a case study of legal precedent regarding this very issue:
    http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7048256/?reload=true

    (If you have University Access this link works, otherwise I cannot legally make the file available)
  3. Roudydogg1

    Roudydogg1 SteamRep Admin Friend Community

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    They could be criminally charged for what they're doing. But in a thread here a long time ago it was mentioned how valve is such a relatively small company and among the things we brainstormed: would cost too much money to criminally charge them (sue them), would take too much time to prosecute only a small handful of them, and thus would not make a large enough dent to stop the issue
  4. a Gentleman

    a Gentleman SteamRep Moderator Partner Community Donator - Tier V

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    CSIS is more national security and counter-espionage... but hey, the RCMP does good work.

    Lots of these scammers do get banned. The ones that slip through the cracks tend to do a lot of damage. Also the cracks are very big. Most any regular Steam user can do is to report their profile.

    And just a note for others coming into the thread because the title can be a little bit misleading - SteamRep is not Steam. SteamRep is not Valve.
    Roudydogg1 likes this.
  5. tugger

    tugger New User

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    Thank you for the thoughtful replies. Sorry for any confusing due to the wording of the title.

    CSIS does do surveillance work, including online. They also inform Interpol and carry out operations against foreign criminals in coordination with their governments.

    This suggestion isn't leaning toward asking Valve to run around suing people. That wouldn't be the effect of regulating virtual properties.
    It can already be legally argued that virtual item fraud causes damages, but those damages tend to be within the realm of small claims that wouldn't be entertained internationally.
    Though if someone were angry enough, they could file a small claim against Valve for not upholding the terms of their own subscriber agreement in allowing scammers to make free use of their accounts. I am not a victim of any considerable scams myself, but I have filed claims against service providers who fail to abide by their own small print and have won. (Paypal being the most recent). Companies (big or small) tend to not want to preoccupy themselves with legalities and settle out of court.

    I've decided to write to my MP about pursuing virtual item fraud under the same anti money laundering bills tabled in recent years in Canada,
    adding Bitcoin and other virtual currencies within the purview of what must be submitted to the government as earnings.

    I fail to see why my MP (who happens to specialize in contemporary property law) would fail to respond. MP's generally do respond, and I am informing myself of the best manner to present this issue so that it is tabled in a bipartisan way (consulting with legal professors at two universities I frequent) And it is quite clear that a significant number of active scammers in the overlapping CS:GO, DoTA2 and TF2 markets belong to small-scale organized crime networks (following the legal definition of organized crime in the U.S. and Canada). This falls between the purviews of both CSIS and the RCMP, and any form of conversion of the proceeds of organized crime is technically money laundering. There is already legal precedent to get at these people internationally in a big way, with laws related to counter-terrorism should the criteria for personal property be (in any way) expanded to include virtual net worth.
    This wouldn't even involve Valve, this would be between the counter-terrorism, anti-fraud and organized crime units of our countries.
  6. tugger

    tugger New User

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    (Apologies for the sloppy writing, hecking tired. Finals.)
  7. Roudydogg1

    Roudydogg1 SteamRep Admin Friend Community

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    You can take anyone from anywhere to small claims court...just gotta pay the fee but those fee's normally get passed on to who you are trying to recover funds from.
  8. a Gentleman

    a Gentleman SteamRep Moderator Partner Community Donator - Tier V

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    I'm excited to see you being so proactive about this. Writing to your MP or MLA is definitely a plus. With the rise of cryptocurrency in daily life, virtual item scams are getting more exposure and it would be great to see financial crime legislation passed in regards to what can and can't be done in terms of pressing charges and suing for damages.