New scam trending up on Steam - beware

Thank you for telling about this. I recently came across a similar one. But I just laughed and several times expressed himself in bad words.
I hope this post will help someone who is more gullible than me.

Other than 8 friend requests by strangers in the last week I haven't seen anything odd. Thank you for the warning though, I will keep an eye out.

One person this month made strange comment on my screenshot about my steam account being hacked or compromised. I just blocked them. New scams are popping up, but they usually are not convincing because their profiles are private or their steam levels are low in general.

Yeah, a few weeks ago some random ass guy contacted me like that, he found me on discord claiming he accidentally reported my account, cuz he didn't realize I was not the guy who scammed him and many of his friends did the same, sent me some steam support photos and shit, was weird, told him to take care and not worry about me, left it at that, haven't been contacted since, lol

I got scam attempts like the one described, also posted on my artwork or screenshots. Kinda common.

Now, I had one attempt with a different approach. Some dude sent me a friend request. Looked like a legit user so I accepted to see what was the deal. The dude claimed to be a developer of a game called Darkarta. He asked me general questions about games and that was it. Very pleasant chat. The dude showed up to say hi a couple of times and nothing more. He even liked some of my stuff. Like a week later he contacted me to offer me the mentioned game for a 60% rebate on some website. I knew right away that this was a scam and, of course, I never clicked in any link.
I told him I would consider buying the game when on sale on Steam. He then became really insisting about me going to buy the game from him cause that way it would be more beneficial for the developers. I said "I'll think about it". After that, he started to send messages daily asking me if I was willing to buy the game, always asking nicely and friendly. Finally, I decided that it was enough of playing dumb and told him plainly to stop asking, that I was not going to follow any link and that if he insisted he would be blocked and reported.
He went silent for a couple of days and he contacted me again, this time not asking me to buy the game but telling me that he wanted me to take a survey about the game, as it would be helpful for the developers that were thinking about starting a kickstart campaign for part 2. Obviously, providing other links. I replied: "How can I offer feedback for a game I don't own? Nice try, dutch bag." So I then blocked him and reported him.
just a little story about a variant of the recurrent scams.

I am so antisocial i ignore almost anyone that is not on friend list. One or two ppl managed to link the vote for my team scam, but other than that = instant block no questions no mercy.

"I know none of you would fall for this, but let's collaborate and make Steam ban these people. More will come with other scams, but at least these will be banned" A guy contacted me through old artwork. I just ignored him. Maybe I should have done that.

Thanks for the idea

oh yeah. one guy tried that sheme on me. after "chat" part i just deleted/block/report him.
after some around 12hours he got VAC.
EZ

That scam is very dumb and obvious. Who falls for that?

Oh yeah I did have someone contacting me on one of my screenshot asking me to add him because of an issue with my account. I didn't even reply. I'll try to report him the next time I connect. Thanks for the information.

It's a well known scam that's been going on for a long time but with a different lead in. Steps 1-3 have changed.

I do want to take a moment and thank you for posting because it exposes another lead in. Hopefully a lot of people that are naive to things like this sees this and it helps them avoid being scammed.

Thank you for the warning!

i had two comments under old schreenshots in the past going like "please add me asap, i need to tell you something really important! it's urgent. no trade involved".
looked like hacked accounts to me. no full private / steam level <10 profiles.

still i wonder who would fall for that kind of bullshit. tell me something "really important and urgent" but can't say what it is? get outta here.

I have seen this before but considering a company would never leave another user as the go-between I always thought it was laughable.

thanks for the info there has been some sus scams going on i got one a few weeks ago with voting for a team ESL ignore it if you get any friends saying to vote. It blocked some of your friends and spam them with links

I had a lot of people recently that asked me to 'vote for my team'. Guess it's a similar method.

Was hacked last year.. not gonna get hacked every again since i am so guarded against random people now.

They sold something on the market for a big amount of money (mine was $600+).
Nothing too unbelievable due to how inflated prices of a fair bit amount of things are.

They didn't receive the money after the transaction (which is ludicrous).
Even if in the unlikely event that steam's contained marketplace fails, they should contact steam support for transaction related issues. Else it suggests they did outside trading which actually goes against ToS if I recall correctly and steam won't help with such a case.

They found you because they can't see the name of who bought it but they could see the avatar, and your avatar looks the same.
Ah yes, searching people via their avatars and somehow landing on yours.

They reported you wrongly and only now they realize their mistake (and how do they know now it wasn't me?)
If they reported you wrongly for something you did not do then you should not be concerned. If false reports could easily get someone punished like this, then imagine the chaos. If anything, they are in hot water.

They received an email from Steam telling both parties to immediately contact one of the Steam moderators through Discord and use Steam rep to prove that such person is indeed a moderator (laughable).
.Steam does not directly communicate with you nor do they ask for sensitive information. There's also an entire support portal held within the steam client thus them using another company's platform would be a PR nightmare.

They show you a capture, a clearly photoshopped email looking like it's from Steam, but with really stupid content.
If steam did not send you the email then it holds not value to you. If they want you to be notified of something or want to involve you in anything, you would be getting the email yourself from a trusted address.

And of course such email says that if both parties don't cooperate in the investigation of the issue, they'll be banned.
If the report was false then there is no actual evidence against you in their system and thus it's not your issue. Also, this is a pretty immature and childish way of resolving issues, not to mention pretty archaic too. Steam has access to all the necessary data and logs that they need for this particular case.
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Always remember, question everything and try to find the logical explanation for just about anything. Also, Google is a powerful tool that can allow you to easily verify information and thus it is very useful for cases like this. Whenever someone sends you a link, even if it is a trusted person, don't just haphazardly click on it if it has even one single thing off about it. Going through links and sites through Google is a good precaution too, a great way to avoid sites that try to mimic the original and might have similar looking url.

Lastly, try to spread awareness about these sort of things to help prevent them. Hacking attempts happen a lot and at a very high frequency. Not everyone is too cautious, well informed or cynical. Some folks are also a bit too kind and innocent at heart, or may just be a bit ill-informed. Sometimes, people can just be tired as well and might miss a thing or two.

They reached me directly via Discord. not on my steam profile or anything with steam. it was obvious so i stopped chatting.

My interaction would stop at step 1. How anyone could be fooled by this is beyond me.