someone logged into my account and traded my items

[A Sponge]

someone I never talked to nither I knew who he was, just took my items, it says I offered them, though I didn't. his profile is private (obviously).

[Jerry]

It is not possible to trade items without either the email or mobile device associated with the account (as you don't seem able to cancel the trade more likely the latter).

This could be a well-known hijacking, that is going around here since a year, but to be sure about this, you need to tell us if you put up an offer; any offer; containing the items in question and confirmed it.

[A Sponge]

i sent my items to marketplace.tf, so I can sell them, I had a trade hold for 2 days, after the trade hold it said the trade was declined by the bot, and then, I received another trade from a marketplace.tf bot asking for the items i tried to send them earlier, marketplace said that they would "never ask for your items" so I declined it, then, I scrolled up and saw that a guy I'm not familiar with accepted a trade offer i didn't send him, with the exact same items i tried to send to the marketplace.tf bot

[Matt]

Suggest not using 3rd party sites or bots since neither are supported. Basically what happened is they got your account details and you unknowingly traded with someone else.

Edit: Actually, don’t talk with them. Just use this incident to learn a valuable lesson.

[Jerry]

There we are. You gave your Steam login to an untrustworthy website (knowingly or not), that misused it to put a bot in your account. Said bot forwards all valuable trades to an impersonator account that takes the name and avatar of your intended trade partner.

The items you lost are gone. They will not be reinstated or duplicated.
To lock out the bot and avoid this from happening in further trades follow these steps:
- Change your password and email adress
- Deauthorise all other devices
- Revoke your API key
- Order new backup codes

In the future do not do Steam logins on other websites, not even sites that appear to be Steam profiles or trades. Instead do the login on the official page of Steam (bookmark it or use a web search). Legitimate sites will carry over the login and only ask you to confirm your account without entering your name or password. Every site that still asks you for these at this point should not be trusted.


P.S.: First time I see this scheme worked on someone with a trade hold (although still on mobile authenticator).

[Mikasa Ackerman]

Originally posted by Matt:

Suggest not using 3rd party sites or bots since neither are supported. You’ll have to talk with them.

bots can be fine if you just quickly want to get an item , they just auto accept if you offer the right amount of metal ( in tf2)
but thats the only use for bots

[A Sponge]

I didn't give my info to an unsafe site, marketplace.Tf is created by scrap.tf

[Teksura]

Originally posted by A Sponge #Remove random crits:

I didn't give my info to an unsafe site, marketplace.Tf is created by scrap.tf

You thought you did. You thought wrong. We see this a low here. "I sent a trade and it went to someone totally different". So frequently in fact, that I have to save this answer on notepad. It sounds like this happened a while ago, and you're only just now figuring out what happened now that the scammer's bot has changed names and ripped someone else off. There are all kinds of fake sites out there, and let me tell you, nobody here is going to want to hear you try and insist that nothing happened. If you're more interested in playing the victim card and insisting none of this is your fault than you are in resolving your issue, you won't get help. Otherwise:


Scan for malware https://www.malwarebytes.com/
Deauthorize all other devices https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage
Change passwords from a clean computer
Generate new backup codes https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage
Revoke the API key https://steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey
Stop using shady third party trade sites or clicking suspicious links.


Do each of the steps.



What happened is your account became compromised, most likely through a third party site. This well known scam then requires you to authorize the trade giving your items away after you allow them access to your account through either malware, or giving away your details through a phishing fake login page or other trick used by those shady third party sites.

The way it does this is after it gains access to your account, a bot waits until you send out a trade offer, and then using the access you gave to them, their bot cancels the trade, changes a bot account to match the name and profile picture of the person you wanted to trade with, and then sends a trade giving your stuff away for free.

The scam depends on you ignoring all the warnings, such as "this user is not on your friends list", "this user has a similar name to someone on your friends list", their items missing from the offer, the big "you will receive nothing" text, the fact that they have the wrong level, wrong "has been on Steam since" date (usually obviously too recent to make sense), and a few other obvious warnings. It only works if you're not even looking at what you're doing. Sadly, an awful lot of people don't care enough to verify the trade is what they are expecting, so this scam continues to work.

Valve will not return items you gifted away to the scammer as a result of ignoring all the warnings. https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9958-MJDG-3003

[Heeby-Jeeby]

Originally posted by A Sponge #Remove random crits:

I didn't give my info to an unsafe site, marketplace.Tf is created by scrap.tf

In that case you should contact marketplace.tf for help.

Whatever you did with marketplace.tf has absolutely nothing to do with Valve and they will do nothing to help you.

You use those sites at your own risk.

[Jerry]

As said above, the login does not necessarily have to have happened within the last time. These bots can lie dormant for weeks or months. The bot only reacts, once an offer that contains a valuable item is made or received and confirmed within Steam. As the makers usually only have one shot before the scheme blows up, they don't want to waste it on a couple of gems or a three cent background.

Just follow the steps to fix it. You are one among thousands to have this happen to them. Don't know if that makes you feel better or worse about it.