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r/GameTrade•
Aitchy21

[Please Read!] How to Avoid Being Scammed and Other Important Information for Safe Trading!

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#/r/GameTrade 101

  • We can ban scammers from commenting but we can't stop them being able to private message you. If someone pm's you ask them to comment on your public post, and if you can't see the persons public comment avoid them.

  • Research your trading partner properly, it's explained in detail down below.

  • Always message the mods if you're unsure of someone, find something suspicious or want some advice before you go ahead with a trade, we usually try to respond pretty quickly.

  • Don't always just accept the first offer that comes along, if you try and rush you will likely get scammed. Leave your post up for a while and you may get more than just one offer.

  • If it sounds too good to be true it probabaly is!

#HOW TO RESEARCH YOUR TRADING PARTNER

  • Check out their reddit profile, accounts under 30 days old could be alt accounts of already banned scammers. On older accounts look for big posting gaps in the comment history, it could be a hacked or bought reddit account.

  • Does the account have no past trading history? Is the user offering multiple games or gift cards to people without any past trading history? Is the user entering multiple free game giveaway posts? These are all suspicious accounts and you should take extra care when dealing with them.

  • Google search their reddit username, if nothing suspicious pops up add the word "scam" to the search for example enter "/u/joebloggs scam"

  • Check our known scammers list and ctrl+f their username, also do the same on the Universal Scammer List

  • Steamrep.com searches on someones steam profile are very important! It doesn't matter if the trade relates to steam or it's totally unrelated and you're buying an origin code for paypal, always request a steam profile to add them on so you can do your steamrep searches and see their steam profile. 90%+ of users on this sub will have a steam account, after you talk with them on reddit request you take the chat and trade to a live steam chat and add them as a friend. Once you have the steam profile link follow this guide on what steamrep searches to do - https://imgur.com/a/ARZwl

  • If a user refuses to give you a link to their steam profile or makes some excuses that they can't get on steam right now then those are red flags and you should wait until they can. If anyone you add as a friend on steam has a private profile ask them to unprivate it for you so you can make sure its not an obvious alt steam account. Obvious alt accounts will have very few games and playtime, they might also have very few games but have a lot of playtime on one particular game like cs:go or dota 2, like a cs:go smurf account for example.

#UNDERSTANDING WHAT IS GOOD REP AND WHAT REP YOU SHOULD ALWAYS IGNORE

Good Rep:

  • Confirmed trades on here or other trading subreddits, if they only have one or two still be cautious incase they made a fake trade or a few low value trades to appear genuine before asking you for your AAA game.

  • Rep on independant rep sites such as steamtrades.com, CSGOREPorts steam group, sourceop.com etc. These are rep sites where users can't just delete any negative rep they get

Bad Rep: (rep you should straight up ignore)

  • Steam Profile +rep comments

  • A steam group or subreddit the person created

  • Anything which is not independant and the user can fake, manipulate or delete any negative rep they get

Important Notes

  • If you are linked a rep thread always navigate back to that user from the rep thread and check it's the same person and not someone who has copied someones steam profile or reddit username for example http://imgur.com/a/5wxU8

  • Remember that steam profile +rep comments mean nothing and should be ignored. Doesn't matter if they have 2 or 1,000, ignore these and don't count them as genuine trading rep.

#COMMON SCAM TACTICS TO LOOK OUT FOR:

  • The "I've just been scammed or scammed before" victim excuse. If they claim to have been scammed on reddit ask for the details and contact the mods of that sub to confirm the story for you.

  • Trying to rush you into a trade with excuses or making the deal better if you trade quick.

  • Impersonating another user and linking a rep thread of the person they are impersonating. Some scammers will copy steam profiles of trustworthy traders and link you the persons rep thread, other scammers might try and create a reddit username that looks similar to a user that has some trading reputation.

  • Comment history suggesting they don't like scammers or calling other people scammers to make them appear genuine.

  • Offering to give you half the code or a code with missing digits first then giving you the rest afterwards.

  • Claiming they have lots of rep such as steam profile +rep comments, remember these can be manipulated, deleted or even made by friends or alt accounts. Ignore these!

  • The middleman scam, where they choose a friend as a middleman or impersonate a known middleman. Or ask you to pick a middleman or a freind and they impersonate them. We will middleman for you if the trade involves tradable steam items or gifts. Message Us Here

  • Whatever you ask for, they always have it. You ask for CS:GO on Steam, they have it! You change your mind and ask for Bitcoins, they have that!

  • They refuse to share information with you like steam profiles or accounts they care about, they insist on only doing a trade by pm or skype/kik/discord etc.

#PAYPAL PAYMENTS

Paypal goods and services or Paypal friends and family gift

  • Paypal goods and services offers some buyer protection and will allow you to dispute the payment if you get scammed. Paypal friends and family gift will not offer buyer protection or allow you to dispute the payment

  • Paypal goods and services adds a 3% fee to the total amount. Paypal friends and family gift will not add a fee usually unless you are sending payments overseas

  • If the person requests you send them a friends and family gift payment and they have no past trade history or "good rep" or you're unsure in anyway about them you should always be using the goods and services option to send the money.

  • People who trade often will usually request you send the payment by friends and family gift, it protects them a bit better incase the buyer tries to start a false dispute. This method is usually safe enough if you have thoroughly researched them as detailed above and they have a good number of confirmed trades here or on other subreddits or independant rep sites.

Be very careful if you use PayPal. No matter what you do to protect yourself, it is almost always possible for a scammer to dispute a payment to you, and get back the money they sent you, as much as six months later. Scammers usually win these disputes because they understand better how the system works. Understand that scammers will try and avoid any form of payment you could dispute, they prefer to ask for paypal friends/family gift, gift cards, codes, bitcoin, steam items (gifts, keys, skins) etc.

#REPORT A SCAM OR ATTEMPTED SCAM

If you think you have discovered a scammer or someting suspicious please report to the mods immediately. Please do not post comments about it on the subreddit unless you have good evidence and you feel certain.

If you got scammed send us screenshots of the conversations in full, if it was reddit pm's put them in threaded form by clicking permalink on one of them, screenshot them and upload them to imgur or similar site and send us the links, don't close the steam chat box if that's where you spoke, screenshot the whole chat before you close it and send us any other information that is relevant like steam profiles or other info.

Message the Mods Here

#USEFUL LINKS

Posted Sep 27, 2017, 2:36 PM UTC · edited

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