Method scammers use to find victims with tools steam has publicly available

[Azog]

if you had put anything on steam community market, there's good chance random people added you on steam trying to scam you, even if your profile and inventory is private.
steam community market shows avatars next to listing itself, so it's very easy to trace back owner of listing.

steam is clearly aware of this issue since they altered avatars on listing page to make it harder to find users from avatars, but it's nowhere near impossible. any newbie developer can scrape together program that fetches avatars from official api, save them and run similarity search when trying to find victim. it's that easy.

avatars literally serve no purpose on listings anyway so just remove them. why is it such a big deal...

[Brian9824]

Most of the scammers grab people from groups. They do not do what your suggesting.

[Azog]

Originally posted by brian9824:

Most of the scammers grab people from groups. They do not do what your suggesting.

they do. I've seen it in action myself.
hundreds of expensive skins and avatars in datatable, with account information like online status, age of account e.t.c
every new listing is automatically added to their software

like I said, steam is aware of the issue, they tried countering it by altering avatars and removing hashes from links.
they underestimated scammers.

lot of scammers are using this method

[Azog]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Wouldn't matter too much as they can look up the items themselves.

:qr:

what do you mean?

[cinedine]

Originally posted by Azog:

lot of scammers are using this method

Most scammers use groups to promote their phishing sites and then use the friendlist of hijacked profiles.

[Azog]

Yes I understand that majority of scammers aren't using this method but it's still one of ways and it's very easy to prevent it.
I don't understand why steam is holding back, avatars don't serve any purpose on listing page. removing them would do nothing but eliminating one of scamming ways

[Azog]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

What about the Market history page?

:qr:

tracing buyer of item you sold isn't much of a problem because scammers would need to sell an item in the first place

there are tens of new listings and therefore 10+ new victims every minute.

I'll try to get my hands on screenshots of tool I mentioned earlier. saw it in closed facebook group where guy was selling it. I got removed after they failed to scam me so I couldn't save it.

[Azog]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

They can also use hijacked accounts to scan through the history of the hijacked account itself.

:qr:

sorry I think you don't understand what I'm explaining. hijacked accounts have nothing to do with it.

on page where item is listed there's also an avatar of person who's selling item. scammers use avatars to identify seller

[Gilga ™ |Yonaguni|]

Originally posted by Azog:

on page where item is listed there's also an avatar of person who's selling item. scammers use avatars to identify seller

Even if they can find the related accounts, its still up to the user to get scammed. I also doubt that scammer will invest that much time, when you can hijack accounts much easier.

[Azog]

Originally posted by Gilga ™:

Originally posted by Azog:

on page where item is listed there's also an avatar of person who's selling item. scammers use avatars to identify seller

Even if they can find the related accounts, its still up to the user to get scammed. I also doubt that scammer will invest that much time, when you can hijack accounts much easier.

I know that for a fact that they invest that much time.
website steamid.uk was used to find victims not so lomg ago. you can ask their mods how many people were using that feature.
removing avatars from listing pages won't hurt community in any way.

[endrsgm]

you are talking to people who are stuck on "derp, dont give your sign in details to 3rd parties" ... which is valid and good advice but has absolutely nothing to do with what you are talking about. you are talking about something different. just because ones happening doesnt necessarily mean the others isnt happening.

yeah, u can track someone via avator info and this info is gathered and compiled into lists and then sold. this has been going on some years.

[Azog]

yes it has been going on for quite a while.
I'm trying to find whoever is selling these tools and get better look at what it does, maybe steam will pay attention to this problem if they have evidence that it exists

[Mom]

i was curious about this, thank you for this thread

[Azog]

I managed to get in touch with person selling software.
our conversation - https://i.imgur.com/pzbQVao.png
screenshot of software - https://i.imgur.com/z8remy4.png
valve please, take care of this.

[Gilga ™ |Yonaguni|]

Originally posted by Azog:

I managed to get in touch with person selling software.
our conversation - https://i.imgur.com/pzbQVao.png
screenshot of software - https://i.imgur.com/z8remy4.png
valve please, take care of this.

Seriously stop this. This is a user forum, when you want to report something, use the Steam Support.

[Azog]

Originally posted by Gilga ™:

Originally posted by Azog:

I managed to get in touch with person selling software.
our conversation - https://i.imgur.com/pzbQVao.png
screenshot of software - https://i.imgur.com/z8remy4.png
valve please, take care of this.

Seriously stop this. This is a user forum, when you want to report something, use the Steam Support.

I did, they told me to post it here :)