Why is scamming rampant in Steam?

[Hanzo The Rain]

I've never been scammed before nor is concerned about it but this topic gets posted by victims of scammers all the time so I don't understand why out of all place, scammers are going after Steam profiles when they won't get pennies from it? Why go through the length to steal stuff from their inventory? What do they gain from it?

[Hanzo The Rain]

Thanks for the explanation guys, I know scams happen everywhere but that’s because of big money potential but doing it in Steam is odd where nothing is worth the hassle. What kind of person would pay loads on worthless crap in inventory? I learnt something new here today.

[crunchyfrog]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Sleepy:

Thanks for the explanation guys, I know scams happen everywhere but that’s because of big money potential but doing it in Steam is odd where nothing is worth the hassle. What kind of person would pay loads on worthless crap in inventory? I learnt something new here today.

Ah now that's one of the mistakes you can make.

NEVER EVER assume that something doesn't happen becuse you don't understand or know why it could be warranted. That's known as an "argument from personal incredulity fallacy".

The thing is there IS value in it.

In phishing an account, they get control of it, which means they can't remove games you've activated but they absolutely can remove everything else of value - inventory items, trading cards.

Some of the more rare inventory items can fetch thousands in the right conditions. So if you find any account who has items worth a few pence each, if they have a hundred or so or more, then it's VERY worth the while. There are sites and places you can sell them for cash outside of Steam as well.

[Taebrythn]

let me fix it for you. Why do people scam in general? whether Steam, email, in person, phone, text, etc? answer is as long as people fall for it will sadly continue. this is nothing new and yeah it sucks. Scamming is everywhere. if you think only steam then sorry pal to burst your bubble.

[Walach]

The only scam I've nearly fallen for was this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speaker_scam

What I wanted to say with that is: there are a lot of scams everywhere, every day. :(

Also, why can't someone come up with a similar catchy name for the scams on steam? :P

[DC-GS]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Walach:

Also, why can't someone come up with a similar catchy name for the scams on steam? :P

How about FART to keep the steam theme going?
The most gullible could be called brainfarts.

[Marcus]

not only on steam and since covid its everywhere .

[Doctor Teo]

Oh man, scamming. Hey, anyone played Runescape back in the day? How many scams y'all remember playing that? The 'trust game', the Wine of Zamorak, level 1 wilderness ambushes, alt+f4 'item duplication', too many to list really. The worst were the account thieves; some were tame, the old "hey look, Runescape blocks your password, watch: ***!" guys you'd never fall for, but I saw some who had actual proper grammar and would try to lead you to an exterior site of some kind - one of them legitimately impressed me, he had recreated the entire Runescape site, including functional links that would take you to the actual appropriate Runescape pages, all except for the sections that asked for your password.

My favorite game with a buddy was to see how much money we could earn from the 'money doublers'. We would give them a small amount of money to double to 'show they were honest before giving them a bigger amount', and see who could walk away with 50k. The trick was feeling out how much you could give a scammer before they would just log out -- and it's amazing how many of them would take 5k gold, aka absolute peanuts in Runescape terms, and immediately log out.