BEWARE USERS WHO IMPERSONATE STEAM EMPLOYEES

[1999 Toyota Corolla]

His profile is gone now but this user *removed* was a scammer who was impersonating steam employees and threatening users with 'pending trade bans' unless they contacted him through direct messages and they gave him their items in order to avoid getting permanently trade banned. He scammed my brother's friend and tried to scam my brother as well.

STEAM ADMINSTRATORS DO NOT perform official business within direct messages. Also, verified valve employees have a special badge on their profile which denotes them as a member of valve

these badges are public for all to see, so do not let a scammer lie to you and tell you this is not the case.

Educate yourself about these scammers and protect yourselves!
here is some very useful information and tools to use in order to learn how to properly identify a scammer impersonating valve employees.

[1999 Toyota Corolla]

Me and my brother reported his account for scamming and impersonating as a valve representative, so i'm hoping that's why his account is gone.

[pasa]

I thought it is self-evident without extra announcing

[Start_Running]

Thje irony is this is nothing that hasn;'t been said for literally years. The people who most need to read this sort of thing.. nevcer do,

[Phantom]

You forgot to mention the most important thing. I.e: Blocking and reporting them.

[J4MESOX4D]

Valve wrote this years ago:-

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3415-WAFH-6433
Valve employees will never ask you to trade your items to them; this includes users who claim to work for Steam Support.
Users claiming to be a Valve employee, accounts asking to verify your items, and users who send you a message which insist you need to trade your items to them for investigation or security reasons should immediately be reported for trade scams.
_____________________________________________________________________________

As usual; articles and threads like these are only read until it's too late. Sometimes people are even duped despite being fully aware of such scams.

[1999 Toyota Corolla]

yeah unfortunately

[Phantom]

Valve isn't able to fix the gullibility of their users.

[1999 Toyota Corolla]

yes, but them and us can warn others and spread the word of such practices

[Phantom]

These PSAs are just as nugatory.

The KB article linked above has clearly outlined this type of scam.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/7/1732089092454146051/?tscn=1538915408#c1732089092454388090

It's an old article but some still get deceived.

[CJ HUNTER]

Some people think it's sad when somebody falls for something like this. I call it natural selection.

[Zefar]

This should be common sense on the internet but apparently it's not. No amount of warnings will stop gullible people from giving their account information away to a scammer.