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.

Prioritize Paypal scammers with boosted profiles?

Discussion in 'SteamRep General Discussion' started by advicebanana, Sep 21, 2014.

  1. advicebanana

    advicebanana SteamRep Moderator Friend Community

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    I see scammers with (sometimes) young accounts, high profile levels, ludicrously high rep on CSGO/Dota2Lounge and donator status way too often and people seem to fall for them.

    Let's brainstorm on how to make things harder for them. I'd say it needs to be hammered into everyone's brains that cash trading is not safe, especially not on Lounge.

    I have told the mods of r/csgolounge a private message about several of those, but was basically told "Take it up with Steamrep."

    Here are some example profile descriptions of such people.

    SR-tagged quickly after someone pledged to an admin personally:


    Reported on SR a few times:
    You will notice some similarities. I've seen some of these do stuff like coming into a thread where someone reported them and then claiming an honest mistake, even though they had blocked and deleted the person after receiving item/cash without giving anything in return.
    I hope this gets some attention and will lead to Lounge and other trading places educating their users better.
    advicebanana, Sep 21, 2014
    #1
  2. ACid DrinkeR

    ACid DrinkeR New User

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    I very much agree. We MUST NOT allow this to happen. Many times a few of my Innocent friends who got scammed say that the guy was trusted because his profile seems "Trustworthy" or that he as a lot of valuable items, comments and s✿✿✿.
    ACid DrinkeR, Sep 21, 2014
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  3. You Are The One

    You Are The One SteamRep Admin

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    Noone actually checks/verifies who they deal with no matter how much crap you post on your profile, they just rely on what your profile says. But, it should not make any difference what your profile says because the user is the one who should be looking you up and verifying/researching you themselves. This is why I'm against the use of most of these psudo identifiers on steam profiles (items/screenshots/custom urls/ high level of friends/9999 pages of profile rep). Even real identifiers like join date/steam level a scammer will just change to their own.

    In the majority of cases, its the user not knowing any better.. that or just being an idiot.
    You Are The One, Sep 21, 2014
    #3
    Wrath likes this.
  4. advicebanana

    advicebanana SteamRep Moderator Friend Community

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    Some of the damages might be mitigated by banning really convincing profiles more quickly. Even moreso since Lounge seemingly only copies reports from Steamrep while not pushing any of their bans to Steamrep.
    advicebanana, Sep 21, 2014
    #4
  5. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    Lounge is not partner. So if they would, they would need to post their info here.
    SilentReaper(SR), Sep 21, 2014
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    Wrath likes this.
  6. Wrath

    Wrath New User

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    Without speaking ill of CSGO lounge, (At least not much) I don't think they really care for managing the reputation of users on their profile. For instance, the most recent trader from there that I helped make a report here on a scam attempt, ended up getting points deducted by his attempted scammer. Tried to talk to moderators about it. Was told to come here. Clearly, that's not true.

    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge#announcements/detail/1840010688797476042

    As you can see, while an outdated announcement, traders are not being informed of what is real reputation or what SR is in general. It looks like what TF2Outpost used to use, the + / - system that was taken out (FINALLY) a while back. All they see is Guns, Money, Comp. If any of them cared to actually read what SR is, what it means to be 'tagged/banned', they might have been able to see this, that has a pool of knowledge, to help combat your problems.
    http://forums.steamrep.com/forums/steamrep-guides.22/

    Maybe if someone made a dedicated thread or stickier one as such for that trading site with the latest 'obvious scammer' profiles, it would help the masses realize what is going on. The most common one I've run into as of late is this.
    Code:
    1. You go first, if real money is involved. Don't try to send me fake invoice or fake my friend as middleman.

We either do the deal or you will waste your time. Don't bother adding me if you don't agree.

2. You need decent profile that is not private! I want to see your inventory. You have nothing to hide.
I won't accept trades from private profiles. Don't bother adding me if you plan on hiding things.

3. You need hours played on different games and you need account that is not new.
I am not asking for a lot, I just need to be sure you are serious user and trader.

4. If you expect me to downgrade, I expect you to overpay for doing so.
If you offer some ridiculous trades, I will block you and report you. Don't low-ball me.

5. If you want to ask me for help regarding prices. Yes, I do price checks.
If you start asking million questions, you will be blocked instantly. Stay friendly and I will help.

If you agree to the rules above and you need to add me, don't forget to leave a comment.
I am paying using PayPal.
    And many others just like it, deriving from the original one made. It its all just smoke and mirrors, as you said, to make them look legit. SR, Steam, et centra is not responsible for traders failing to yield to looking up information on how 'legit' a person is. Even without SteamRep, Google is known by everyone on this rock we call Earth, and I'm certain if someone got scammed, they would make a ruckus about it somewhere. Reddit, Forums, news sites, PasteBin...

    Just really falls on 'blame the victim' for...well, being stupid.
    Wrath, Sep 21, 2014
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  7. You Are The One

    You Are The One SteamRep Admin

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    It doesn't help as much as you you think, I have had such a thread on my community for a long while and its common knowledge we ban for dealing with such accounts but, we still end up banning users every month. They simply dont care to be bothered to either read and/or follow such suggestions. I have no sympathy for such users when they come crying about it later.
    You Are The One, Sep 21, 2014
    #7
    Wrath likes this.