24-72 hour trade cooldown if you change your name and profile picture within 24 hours of each other

[Brian9824]

So many scams involve someone changing their steam name and profile picture to that of a friend and tricking people into trading with them.

If you change BOTH your name AND profile picture within 24 hours you should get a temp trade ban.

[Vault Hunter 101]

If somebody cannot distinguish their friend from random scammer then I dont think there is any hope for them, they will get scammed, if not by this then other method.

Punishing people because very low minority just spams accept on every incoming trade is not good for the community imo :P

[JPMcMillen]

Originally posted by Vault Hunter 101:

If somebody cannot distinguish their friend from random scammer then I dont think there is any hope for them, they will get scammed, if not by this then other method.

Punishing people because very low minority just spams accept on every incoming trade is not good for the community imo :P

The only people that would be "punished" by this would be habitual traders that also like to constantly change their profile name and avatar. For well over 99% of all Steam users, it wouldn't affect them. Besides, you could always change one and then wait just over 24 hours to change the other.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

Originally posted by Vault Hunter 101:

If somebody cannot distinguish their friend from random scammer then I dont think there is any hope for them, they will get scammed, if not by this then other method.

Punishing people because very low minority just spams accept on every incoming trade is not good for the community imo :P

The only people that would be "punished" by this would be habitual traders that also like to constantly change their profile name and avatar. For well over 99% of all Steam users, it wouldn't affect them. Besides, you could always change one and then wait just over 24 hours to change the other.

Yep, thats why i'm thinking since 99% of the imitation of accounts requires the name AND profile picture to be changed and its so rare for someone to change both with any regular occurence that this would impact almost no one negatively.

Originally posted by Vault Hunter 101:

If somebody cannot distinguish their friend from random scammer then I dont think there is any hope for them, they will get scammed, if not by this then other method.

Punishing people because very low minority just spams accept on every incoming trade is not good for the community imo :P

That's not how it works at all. Scammers use scripts to try to trick people into trading with them by pretending to be their friend. They cancel a trade and create a new one after automatically changing their name and profile picture to match the person's friend.

[JPMcMillen]

Originally posted by brian9824:

Originally posted by Vault Hunter 101:

If somebody cannot distinguish their friend from random scammer then I dont think there is any hope for them, they will get scammed, if not by this then other method.

Punishing people because very low minority just spams accept on every incoming trade is not good for the community imo :P

That's not how it works at all. Scammers use scripts to try to trick people into trading with them by pretending to be their friend. They cancel a trade and create a new one after automatically changing their name and profile picture to match the person's friend.

The Authenticator does warn people if they are trading with someone who's not on their friends list. So Vault Hunter is correct in saying that if people would pay closer attention when confirming their trades, we wouldn't see people giving away their stuff to scammers like this.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

Originally posted by brian9824:

That's not how it works at all. Scammers use scripts to try to trick people into trading with them by pretending to be their friend. They cancel a trade and create a new one after automatically changing their name and profile picture to match the person's friend.

The Authenticator does warn people if they are trading with someone who's not on their friends list. So Vault Hunter is correct in saying that if people would pay closer attention when confirming their trades, we wouldn't see people giving away their stuff to scammers like this.

Yep, it does warn in the trade, but they try to get them to go quickly to not notice it. Hence if there was a 24 hour delay when a user changes both their name and profile picture within a day that should help prevent most of it.

Again, it would be a safe bet to say 99.9% of people aren't going to be changing both of those on a regular basis. So it would be a layer of protection that wouldn't inconvenience most people.

[JPMcMillen]

Originally posted by brian9824:

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

The Authenticator does warn people if they are trading with someone who's not on their friends list. So Vault Hunter is correct in saying that if people would pay closer attention when confirming their trades, we wouldn't see people giving away their stuff to scammers like this.

Yep, it does warn in the trade, but they try to get them to go quickly to not notice it. Hence if there was a 24 hour delay when a user changes both their name and profile picture within a day that should help prevent most of it.

Again, it would be a safe bet to say 99.9% of people aren't going to be changing both of those on a regular basis. So it would be a layer of protection that wouldn't inconvenience most people.

How about putting up a warning in the Authenticator if you are trading with someone who recently changed their profile name or avatar. The kind that has a countdown timer you can't skip to hopefully clue people in that something is up. Maybe even include a warning that the trade may be a scam.

[Yasahi]

Or just go to the source of it and make it so that accounts with an API key can't trade.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

Originally posted by brian9824:

Yep, it does warn in the trade, but they try to get them to go quickly to not notice it. Hence if there was a 24 hour delay when a user changes both their name and profile picture within a day that should help prevent most of it.

Again, it would be a safe bet to say 99.9% of people aren't going to be changing both of those on a regular basis. So it would be a layer of protection that wouldn't inconvenience most people.

How about putting up a warning in the Authenticator if you are trading with someone who recently changed their profile name or avatar. The kind that has a countdown timer you can't skip to hopefully clue people in that something is up. Maybe even include a warning that the trade may be a scam.

That would be a fair way too.

Originally posted by Yasahi:

Or just go to the source of it and make it so that accounts with an API key can't trade.

There are legitimate uses of the API key so thats not really an option