Divorce, scams and other fraud in Steam has flourished almost since the opening of the site. Because there will always be those «mammoths», hungry for freebies, interesting offers and frankly cheap games, which at the official cost at least 50-60 bucks a piece. And then the guys who aren't exactly clean-cut are hustling as best they can. Who completely copies the design of the original site, changing a few important points, who creates groups and publishers in social networks, and who simply plays on the emotions of gamers-newcomers.
Where are we going with this? To the fact that every year the schemes of divorce and deception in Steam are no longer a separate desire of a particular individual to squeeze your packs of skins in CS:GO, but a full-fledged scheme that can for a couple or three days «privatize» more than a dozen accounts with games and things in which the user has invested more than a thousand bucks for several years. That's why we'll try to analyze known, original and non-obvious ways to leave you with your nose, even under the most honorable pretext.
Divorces inside the platform
Many people will say that Steam today is no worse protected than a bastion or Buckingham Palace, and they will be right only partially. Until now on the forums and on the network pop up posts of angry gamers who were screwed out of their money, promising «Legend of the Dragon», a couple dozen knives and the key to «Cyberpunk» for mere pennies. You'd be tempted. The most common types of scams in Steam are as follows:
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Someone offers to exchange an item for real money, which is simply impossible in Steam. But who reads the fine print. You receive an offer in the spirit of «to your account transferred *** rubles, available after confirming the exchange». You think a bot wrote it, add items, confirm and wait… for the rest of your life.
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Divorce with a guarantor. Another old but working scheme. You have an interesting skin that the rogue is interested in. To keep things fair, he suggests you take a friend as a guarantor. Not expecting a trick, you surrender to the kent expensive gun, and the divorcee instantly creates an account with YOUR nickname, and the method of suggestion says that the buyer (ie, the second scammer's account) wants to screw you over, and in general, return the trade. A friend does, which has the potential to lose the skin. In such cases it is better to use the function «Add nickname», and at the same time always ask something that only your friend knows.
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Ignorance of the real value of items. Not the newest method of fraud, but unfortunately successful. If suddenly you add someone and conscientiously trying to sell you more than a couple dozen skins in exchange for «this rotten knife», do not hesitate to look at its real value on the trading floor. It is quite possible that you have in your inventory a conditional gradient knife with the rarest pattern and Float-Value, of which there are no more than 2-3 pieces in the world. With a market value of $500, its real value can add 100% of its value.
Domain spoofing
Not so long ago yours truly Lis-skins.ru tried to make Lis-skin.ru look bad by creating an almost perfect copy of a site called Lis-skin.com. What is noteworthy, the design was copied one-to-one, including the location of buttons, authorization, etc.
And therefore we strongly recommend to check the domain name three times, or even five times, down to the last letter. Moreover, don't be lazy to copy the name of the site and check it with services like WhoIs, which shows the owner of the domain, verification success, certification period and other organizational aspects.
It looks like this:
It
clearly shows when we started our activity, who we are, and how things are with certificates. As you can see, this is perfectly legal and open information that we don't hide from potential clients. Having trouble with the site? Now you know how to check a site for Steam scams. And at the same time you can create a thread on the forum, telling about another fake.Captivating freebies
We are all human and want to get something cheaper, or even free. Enumerate all the dubious publiki, VK groups, sites and roulettes no keyboard will not be enough, and therefore we will say very simply — do not believe. Today there are a lot of bots that are not stopped by Steam-account binding to mail and phone, parental control and other means of protection on the network. Often such services literally shout about lucrative limited offers, the simplest winning conditions and so on.
Do you already feel what it smells like?
In some cases, you may be contacted by «admin» of such a public, who as if casually offer to get the coveted skin in a roundabout way, because he knows how to circumvent the system. But it needs your password, or a passphrase when you regain access. Some pile on so competently that even experienced gamers are led. All that remains is to properly «handle» the client. While he is anticipating a set of Aziimov gear and «Speed Beast» on top of that, everything marginally saleable mysteriously disappears from his account.
