Steam Realistic Scam - Your account has been blocked on suspicion of fraud, and complaints received from steam users, in the near future your account will lose the ability to exchange and make purchases on the marketplace, purchase games, and manage your

[peaxhy]

I received a message from "Manager#164", immediately thinking haha this is a scam lol. Their message was:

"[12:01 PM]
Manager#164:
This is an automatic message:

Good afternoon, your account has been blocked on suspicion of fraud, and complaints received from steam users, in the near future your account will lose the ability to exchange and make purchases on the marketplace, purchase games, and manage your friends list.
/quote Do you need the support of our operator?If necessary , write !call (your request)"

When I messaged back I said "kekw" and realised that my profile picture was gone and my name was just numbers. So I went to check my profile and it had removed all my showcases and my "info box" was the following:

Our chat [imgur.com] (my profile picture n stuff is here because I fixed them after)

So this is what really made me think this isn't a scam. I got scared and kept messaging them, they said I received over 30 fraud complaints and that my account will be blocked from doing any trading / buying etc. and told me to securily move all my items to another account which isn't suspended. They told me they can forward my complain to steam but this wouldn't stop the suspension which will occur in 24 hours. Later on they changed their opinion and said that this will stop the blocking of my account, and then told me it won't.

I started googling if this is a possible scam and when I found out Steam manager / support can't message you through Steam chat it all became clear. I will post our whole chat screenshots below so you can see and protect yourself against scammers. The weird thing is I changed my password recently and haven't been signing up for shady websites, but this still happened. Anyway, their profile was level 0 and private, and their previous aliases were "archer" "agent 164" and stuff like that. At the end they started typing weird and it just confirmed to me that this was just another scammer lol.

Thread of images of our whole chat: [/u]

Our chat [imgur.com]

[Crazy Tiger]

Quite clearly a compromised account. And a standard scam.

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Phishing is the most likely cause, OP. When people get phished, they give out the account name, password and then active guard code. A bot quickly enters it and hijackers have access then. Ultimately 2FA is "just another code" that can be given away when getting phished. It's not a magical defense layer.

Have you secured your account? If not:
- Scan for malware. https://www.malwarebytes.com/
- Deauthorize all devices https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage
- Change your password on a secure device.
- Generate new back up codes. https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage
- Revoke the api key https://steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey

Find out how you leaked your credentials. Phishing and malware are the two ways it happens, phishing is the most likely one. Either way, find out how you leaked your credentials.

Items are gone, they do not get returned nor will you get money back for them. The item restoration policy: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9958-MJDG-3003

Not all items require confirmation. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/community_market/announcements/detail/1705067494681435160

[ReBoot]

You don't really believe any of this, do you?

[J4MESOX4D]

Originally posted by ♀ peachyoana ♀:

So this is what really made me think this isn't a scam. ]

How could you even think this was a scam in the first place?

- The scammers added a fake message to your profile description
- You were contacted by someone called 'Manager' (LMAO) on another user account
- They used chat to communicate

Literally the most obvious scam imaginable and there are thousands of threads of these spanning probably 9 years. Also outlined in the Steam Scam FAQ https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/70E6-991B-233B-A37B

- Real restrictions are issued via account alerts that stick to your client
- The only Valve staff to ever contact users is Steam Support
- This is done through tickets only.

[peaxhy]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Quite clearly a compromised account. And a standard scam.

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Phishing is the most likely cause, OP. When people get phished, they give out the account name, password and then active guard code. A bot quickly enters it and hijackers have access then. Ultimately 2FA is "just another code" that can be given away when getting phished. It's not a magical defense layer.

Have you secured your account? If not:
- Scan for malware. https://www.malwarebytes.com/
- Deauthorize all devices https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage
- Change your password on a secure device.
- Generate new back up codes. https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage
- Revoke the api key https://steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey

Find out how you leaked your credentials. Phishing and malware are the two ways it happens, phishing is the most likely one. Either way, find out how you leaked your credentials.

Items are gone, they do not get returned nor will you get money back for them. The item restoration policy: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9958-MJDG-3003

Not all items require confirmation. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/community_market/announcements/detail/1705067494681435160

Yeah that exact message was what made me realise this wasn't what I thought it was lol

[peaxhy]

Originally posted by J4MESOX4D:

Originally posted by ♀ peachyoana ♀:

So this is what really made me think this isn't a scam. ]

How could you even think this was a scam in the first place?

- The scammers added a fake message to your profile description
- You were contacted by someone called 'Manager' (LMAO) on another user account
- They used chat to communicate

Literally the most obvious scam imaginable and there are thousands of threads of these spanning probably 9 years. Also outlined in the Steam Scam FAQ https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/70E6-991B-233B-A37B

- Real restrictions are issued via account alerts that stick to your client
- The only Valve staff to ever contact users is Steam Support
- This is done through tickets only.

Well my first instant thought was "lmaoooooooo what kind of scam is this "manager" literally embarrasing and there were spelling mistakes n stuff. That's why I said kekw x 3 XD. But when I seen the message in my profile I was like shocked, coz I never had an email about the 2FA and I didn't realise it was simply my bio changed and profile pic removed etc. Like I thought wtf. But once I realised that someone was just in my account it made it hilarious that I'd even think this was real. I probably wasn't gonna move my items anyway but because it also didn't make sense - what would the hacker get if I just trade my items to another account? But yeah ;/

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by ♀ peachyoana ♀:

I got scared...

This is the moment they had you.

Their goal is to get you to react emotionally as quickly as possible, because an emotional person is not a rational one. An emotional person won't stop and think, "Hey, is this a scam?"

[Muppet among Puppets]

Originally posted by ♀ peachyoana ♀:

it also didn't make sense - what would the hacker get if I just trade my items to another account? But yeah ;/

They set up an api key, so your trade would be cancelled and send to an immitating account of the recepient. Which you then confirm by accident.