Should SteamTrades do something more proactive to protect users trading? Like allow us to put a personal message on our SteamTrades page?
Comment has been collapsed.
I feel as though you're not quite answering the OP's topic (unless you're suggesting cg integrate steamrep into the feedback pages?)
Here're the key parts of what I've interpreted as the core subject of the thread (with grammar fixes for better clarity):
Why can't I add a message above the rep area [on SteamTrades] where I could add a warning [about scammers]?
[...]
Don't get me wrong, to someone who [is familiar with trading] [the current structure is] helpful- but to some newb looking at it for what I'm assuming is to assess if someone is who they say they are, or if they are a decent person to trade with, I'm not really seeing anything that would indicate it one way or the other.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yep, sorry, I was posting but slow PC with GIMP open and doing stuff
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh, you're drawing me what appears to be a delicious pie as a holiday gift, are you? =O
Comment has been collapsed.
lol, if you fixed the entire thing I would edit and replace my own with it ^^ (lets just say i played a lot of video games growing up)
i didnt reply to their message as its not clear what they intended by it, those links are indeed very helpful but not sure how it helps here
Comment has been collapsed.
if you fixed the entire thing
I'm not sure my interpretation of "Fix" would really help you much, though. :X
After all my hard work building up my rep im rewarded with scammers using my rep to scam people.
Scammers ruin everything.
So this POS is pretending to be me https://www.steamtrades.com/user/76561197960547556
This is my page https://www.steamtrades.com/user/76561197960874101
The calling out rule on SteamGifts shouldn't apply to public pages, especially when staff isn't doing their part to respond to tickets on the matter, and when I got called out first.
But how do you know which one is me? If he gives them my link all you see is wonderful rep, no red flags, nothing to indicate any warning of any kind. Why cant I add a message above the rep area where I could add a warning about this specific POS so he can screw off. I cant even have someone remove their old rep message and add a new one with a warning because it places it in the same old spot it was. And new reps just keep pushing down previous reps so I would have to bother every new trader I trade with to post about this scammer.
I am clearly prettier, so how is it that people confuse us?
When people look at my page, if it is given to them by a scammer, then they will only see the my prettiness! I have no manner by which to warn of others whom would use my dashing good looks to further their own nefarious ends. What an indignity!
If only I had means to write a simple note upon my page, to inform others of those whom would use my blindingly good looks to- well, blind poor innocents to the truth that they're about to be swindled!
What poor souls- if only I could tame my masterful majesty, my appealing allure, my captivating charm, my glorious grandeur.. but alas, such is impossible! Thusly even utilizing those good souls whom post feedback in which they praise my splendor to inform others of the plot against them would do no good- for such efforts would be in vain, as new praises to my magnificence would all too swiftly obsfucate the old!
Is there really nothing better that can be done? My SteamTrades page is NOT very helpful. What is all that nonsense under "Safety Check" and "Steam" Dont get me wrong, to someone who knows what all that is its helpful, but to some noob looking at it for what im assuming is to assess if someone is who they say they are or if they are a decent person to trade with im not really seeing anything that would indicate one way or the other. That small little green bit that says 201 and the red with 1? You have to imagine looking at that page for the very first time and trying to figure out what any of it means, and some prick saying look at my 200+ successful trades. Why is there no message prompt or text like "BEWARE SCAMMERS/IMPERSONATORS, CLICK THIS LINK TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE DEALING WITH THE RIGHT PERSON"???
TRULY, IS THERE NO HOPE?!
To those with the experience to distinguish true beauty from those who would only imitate it, verily, the site bequeaths only helpful information!
But to those fledgling novices who flit about innocently after every shiny distraction, hardly knowing better- oh, for my beauteous bearing to be sullied with such ignoble deeds against those naive souls! Why is there such a grave paucity of information which is suited to their needs, that we can not more suitably warn these poor innocents of their fate? Even just a few simple words warning of the possibility of encountering those who would impersonate those of superior grace- surely that would only be a feat which would serve the greater good!
Yes, im pissed, I dont appreciate my good name being used for some low lifes evil deeds. Whats worse is I dont really see anything I can do about it. Im considering making steam accounts just to add top rep warning messages every so often. Someone have experience or a better option how to deal with this?
And yet, here I must futilely lament my fate, for it seems as though SteamTrades- lacking now the warding which once thwarted the copious formation of such scoundrelly designs, and still receiving no attentions from those who ought guard its halls- seems determined to force me to engage in my own lowly artifice merely to protect the sanctity my own name!
Why, cg, hath thou forsaken me? Did thou disavail SteamTrades of its SteamGifts connection not for the sake of granting it its own footing from which to grow, but to allow SteamGifts to no longer be tainted by the other site's perpetual ill repute? Is such why the former has no forum of its own to grace it, and attend to its needs?
Alas, I must now drink libations in great quantity to ease my strained composure.
I may have filled in some blanks a bit.
And, uh. Completely changed the way you express your character.
But really, isn't this totally an improvement, despite that? :)
Comment has been collapsed.
lollllllllll, too funny, yes i was angry when i typed it up which isnt the best idea. but clearly this guy has been actively pursuing people on ST for the purpose of scamming them because the current layout makes it EASY against newer traders and as ive seen in his negative rep even seasoned traders. im no website designer so all the genius "how to" has to be imagined by another but one would think a warning of some sort comes standard, especially after a hole has been brought to their attention
warning prototype: IF YOU WERE GIVEN THIS LINK BY SOMEONE VERIFY THAT IT IS FROM THE ACTUAL OWNER BY CLICKING HERE -----> profile link (and maybe something about it saying "send message" instead of "add friend", they might not know to check that)
BOOM, guess i am a genius >.>
Comment has been collapsed.
Actually, most impersonators I saw gave link to the trades list of the impersonated person, not their profile link. I guess because the list of trades shows both the nick and the feedback number.
Comment has been collapsed.
probably, but im able to put up a warning on my trade post like here https://www.steamtrades.com/trade/18cDE/h-games-w-gameskeys and can not do so on the main steamtrades page of my account. which thinking about it should have had a warning of some sort as a reminder to traders to look into those "random adds". because adding a warning such as i have AFTER someone gets screwed is too late. i went from "who the hell would use my rep to scam" to "guess i gotta protect others now that my rep is good" in a few months
Comment has been collapsed.
Here, this version might be a bit more useful, at least as a conceptual reference:
Why can't I add a message above the rep area on SteamTrades where I could add a warning about scammers? Currently there's no way to do that, other than having people post that within their positive feedback for me- and that'll quickly get erased by new feedback.
Don't get me wrong, to someone who is familiar with trading the current structure is helpful, and offers a lot of resources- but to some newb looking at it for what I'm assuming is to assess if someone is who they say they are, or if they are a decent person to trade with, I'm not really seeing anything that would indicate it one way or the other.
To a new trader, those things which us experienced traders consider trading basics are going to be foreign concepts to new traders, and simply seeing a trading page with a large amount of positive feedback is going to be enough to persuade them to trade, if there is no extra information offered to educate them with.
There are no red flags, no ways of indicating a user is being impersonated (as there is on SteamRep), and there aren't even any basic warnings to inform a new trader that these are things they ought check when trading. The current setup makes it far too easy for a new trader to take a page at face value, as the site offers no information to dissuade them from doing such, and offers no means for a trader to offer advice.
P.S. This matter upsets me greatly.
Comment has been collapsed.
chance are, you will most likely get suspended for calling out while that scum will roam around without getting suspended.
that's how it works around here.
Comment has been collapsed.
I have seen alot of people getting scammed on streamtrade by impersonators. But the thing is when someone randomly adds me and ask me to trade instead of posting on my steamtrade, i do check each profile to make sure they are from the right place. If someone posted on my steamtrade that they added me, i click on their steamtrade profile and go to their steam url from there to make sure they are who they claim to be.
Ofcourse, you are pissed about people impersonating you but i think if you are trading online, you have to be cautious as there will be scammers who will try to take advantage of you. The only way it can be avoided is if steamtrade only revels a trader's steam id upon accepting reveal request, that way if i want to trade and add you, i sent you a request to reveal your steam id and if you accept, i can see the link. That way, everyone will be forced to click the right profile and no one get to add you randomly cause they wouldn't know your steam id. Ofcourse there will be cons to that but it can be there as optional too.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't like being so blunt, but this is akin to natural selection: survival of the fittest, or rather, smartest, in this particular case.
Smart people use Enhanced Steam, and check to confirm they're trading with the correct person, so they're not fit to be scammers' targets.
Heck, Enhanced Steam isn't even needed: you'd need to be pretty dumb to trust someone with a private profile, and lots of name changes completely unrelated to each other.
But I second your suggestion, even if I'm not a trader myself: I'd like to see a warning on Steam Trades profiles, telling people to check if the linked Steam profile is the one they came from.
Comment has been collapsed.
Smart people use Enhanced Steam,
Knowledge = Experience, which is a subset of Wisdom, not of Intelligence.
Rather, it's like saying someone is an idiot because they were never taught calculus, and happened to be thrust in a situation where it was necessary to utilize. :X
Also, by your natural selection suggestion (keeping in mind the OP was talking about improving the ST interface to be more helpful to new traders), Zoos should just have a single giant pen with all the animals inside, and see what happens. ..'cause clearly doing some minimal effort to try and weed out destructive elements is unnecessary. :P
Comment has been collapsed.
Knowledge = Experience, which is a subset of Wisdom, not of Intelligence.
Yeah, this sounds a lot better, I still have a bit of difficulty distinguishing certain English terms, even after 15 years speaking it...
Especially when it's almost 7am and I haven't slept yet...
Your zoo example reminded me of a game I played when I was younger (Zoo Tycoon, I forgot if 1 or 2), where I did exactly what you said:
I placed all the animals in the same pen to see what would happen... I wasn't disappointed at all by the ensuing mess xD
Comment has been collapsed.
I placed all the animals in the same pen to see what would happen... I wasn't disappointed at all by the ensuing mess xD
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah I got scammed out of Mad Max when it was released and I never really traded before. They guy linked me to the real profile pretending to be him and I didn't know about Enhanced Steam etc.
So I never traded again but I know in the future not to be so ignorant to the flaws of the system through my personal experience! I have some wisdom now ^^
Comment has been collapsed.
Even if you know about those means of protection, there are also assholes who scam "noobs" by trading them freebies for mid tier or even AAA games because they don't know better.
One of the biggest is a mass effect fan
Comment has been collapsed.
what if tomorrow someone posts i'm a scammer, and in reality he dealt with an impersonator?
while he wanted to warn people about a scammer, i will take some heat from it despite being innocent.
the call out rule is here to protect everyone. if there's an issue with a user, support can deal with it, not a lynch mob.
Comment has been collapsed.
Seeing how he calls out himself (both profiles are the same, so he is same person, hahaha :P ) he's safe until scammer changes profile, again :P
Comment has been collapsed.
This specific person has impersonated a lot of people. And steam has still not trade banned his account. xD
Comment has been collapsed.
Naive question. How does he create the exact same name on Steam? (hidden characters?) Can Steam not police its own usernames for uniqueness?
Comment has been collapsed.
The little nickname area can be the same on a million steam accounts. Its the custom url id that cant be the same. Since MasterJunior was taken I havent bothered to change mine from the original one they give you http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197960874101/
Comment has been collapsed.
Then I think I am correct that STEAM itself is abusing the concept of a username. Why would I care about my achievements, badges, wallpaper, level garbage, if STEAM is incapable of giving me a unique identity
Comment has been collapsed.
Your unique identity is your steam id. not nickname, and not short url name.
Comment has been collapsed.
Again, it does not help to explain/rationalize their broken system. STEAM does not not understand the importance of unique identity. Then again, many parents do not understand it either when they name their child, John Smith.
Comment has been collapsed.
It does, again. Either everyone would be called name_numbernumbernumbernumbernumbernumber without any uniqueness to it, or they go with the ID system that works the same as accidentally used by all governments in personal papers. There is unique identity, there always were on Steam. But that's true that they are terrible at informing people, so most of the victims has no idea about their ID, or how to check other's.
Comment has been collapsed.
So, I clicked through to your STEAM id, which happens to be the same as your SG username:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/adam1224/
As I went there, STEAM briefly flashed up your /profile/123456789012?45 ID, then quickly hid it underneath your
impersonate-able name. "adam1224"
Yeah. How is this unique at all? What would be so difficult about allowing only 1 "adam1224"?
If I look for you later, how do I have any idea that I have the correct adam1224?
Google does it. Yahoo does it. They have several orders of magnitude more users with a unique name.
If I email adam1224@gmail.com, I should not need to wonder which of 7 different people I am actually emailing, which
google keeps track with a unique internal ID code. Again, STEAM does not.understand the importance of unique identity.
Yes, a government could name everyone John Smith and give unique government ID numbers to each one (in US, SS#)
That government would not understand the importance of unique identity. (There are 46,841 people named John Smith in the United States.)
Comment has been collapsed.
Umm... no? http://steamcommunity.com/id/adam1224/ is also a unique ID, you can not pick same as anyone else. You're again confusing the url which is unique in each and every case (be it the original numbers, or the name I choosen and picked and noone can copy) and the shown "nickname" of the profile. There are no other http://steamcommunity.com/id/adam1224/ users on the steam, not a single one. Anyone can call themselves adam1224 like your name is euroboardgames on Steam, but even my personalized url is unique - if you've read a little more about scammers, you know that they can't copy profile URLs, that's why they go with similar names / use capital i instead of lower case l, for example. See? They know how much of a trouble is for themselves that profile urls are unique?
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes. I am sure that everything that you are saying is true. Nevertheless, the fact that anyone can "call themselves" and Steam will mimick the nickname "adam1224" is a problem that STEAM has created by bad design. That is NOT unique identity; it is a system that is purposely allowing others to impersonate with the same name. They are placing the name in a position to purposely fool people into thinking that the nickname is the user, and then hiding it behind a /profile/12345 garbage number that only STEAM knows what it means. This is a problem that STEAM has created and should bear much of the responsibility for mistaken identities (gifting to the wrong person), since they have purposely programmed a system to encourage and foster impersonators.
I am sure that you know more about the scammer problem than I; MasterJunior is not the first person to have this problem. It was a problem 3 years ago, and STEAM has continued to foster impersonators. Would someone else like to be called adam1224? Sure !! Please do. This is not a font problem of capital i vs lower case L. I say it is a terrible system.
I searched for "Master Junior" and found 2 on the Steam App. There is NO indication of ANY difference between the two because the Steam App does not show urls up top like a browser does. There is NO Steam ID number anywhere. Sure, Steam knows which is which, but nobody else does. That is the problem of the OP. NO UNIQUE IDENTITY. Nowhere on the page does STEAM give a unique ID number--NOWHERE. Requiring something: Master--*Junior would at least give some identity uniqueness. You do not seem to be associated professionally with Steam; I have not meant to insult you personally, even if you were associated professionally.
Does Facebook have the same problem? Sure; because there really are 46,841 "John Smith"s. It cannot fix the problem of non-unique names given at birth.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well if you think about it another way what does it matter if im MasterJunior and another user in lets say China also has MasterJunior. In my group of buddies im know as MasterJunior and in his group of buddies hes known as MasterJunior. So long as we dont add each other as friends theres no problem. I think they do a good job of letting you personalize yourself by putting what area you are from. In search mine would say something like MasterJunior, Florida, his would say MasterJunior China. (if he so chooses to put a location).
Only in this instance of a small community does it become a problem when someone is pretending to be me. If I couldnt put my nickname as MasterJunior I would be so bummed out. Its bad enough that the unique id for it is already taken. Been trying to buy/trade for it to no avail >.> That bastard doesnt even use the account!!!! lol
Comment has been collapsed.
SO why would you care about your life and your achievements in real, when there are ppl in your country with exactly the same name than you have?
Comment has been collapsed.
I do not really care about my "profile" on Steam. No one visits it to admire what I have played. Nevertheless, because of the system created to gift and trade games, I thought that the OP made a good point that he should have a unique ID, instead of proclaiming "That JohnSmith is impersonating the real JohnSmith."
After college, I legally changed my name--my name is completely unique. The change was motivated by the lack of identity which my parents had already endured from receiving ridiculously common names from their parents. They gave me an uncommon first name, and I eliminated one of the most common last names in court, with a last name that has no blood lines that I can find.
Comment has been collapsed.
on steam you have your login name that's unique (and only visible to you), then the customURL (also unique) and the vanity name that can be changed as much as you want and also repeated by anyone else.
Comment has been collapsed.
Do everything you can to protect yourself and others
Comment has been collapsed.
After all my hard work building up my rep im rewarded with scammers using my rep to scam people.
So this POS is pretending to be me (removed because its not really important anymore to what id like accomplished by this post)
This is my page https://www.steamtrades.com/user/76561197960874101
But how do you know which one is me? If he gives them my link all you see is wonderful rep, no red flags, nothing to indicate any warning of any kind. Why cant I add a message above the rep area where I could add a warning about this specific POS so he can screw off. I cant even have someone remove their old rep message and add a new one with a warning because it places it in the same old spot it was. And new reps just keep pushing down previous reps so I would have to bother every new trader I trade with to post about this scammer.
Is there really nothing better that can be done? My SteamTrades page is NOT very helpful. What is all that nonsense under "Safety Check" and "Steam" Dont get me wrong, to someone who knows what all that is its helpful, but to some noob looking at it for what im assuming is to assess if someone is who they say they are or if they are a decent person to trade with im not really seeing anything that would indicate one way or the other. That small little green bit that says 201 and the red with 1? You have to imagine looking at that page for the very first time and trying to figure out what any of it means, and some prick saying look at my 200+ successful trades. Why is there no message prompt or text like "BEWARE SCAMMERS/IMPERSONATORS, CLICK THIS LINK TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE DEALING WITH THE RIGHT PERSON"???
Yes, im pissed, I dont appreciate my good name being used for some low lifes evil deeds. Whats worse is I dont really see anything I can do about it. Im considering making steam accounts just to add top rep warning messages every so often. Someone have experience or a better option how to deal with this?
Comment has been collapsed.