Marketplace Scam but Steam didn't refound

[multi]

I’d like to share my recent experience with you. On March 3, 2024, while playing a Steam game on my computer, I received an email with the subject line “Thank You for Your Purchase on the Community Market.” The content of the email was as follows:
“Your recent Community Market purchase from user NikS has been processed, and $40.03 USD has been deducted from your Steam Wallet.”

Merket item (Actual price: $0.03 USD)

This surprised me for several reasons:
Steam Guard Activation: I have Steam Guard enabled, which should notify me if someone logs in from an unfamiliar location.
Marketplace Transactions: Steam Guard also notifies about marketplace transactions, but I didn’t receive any such notification.
Family Sharing: I have family sharing set up with my wife, and a PIN is associated with the Steam application.
Virus Scan: After receiving the email, I ran a virus scan (my antivirus is always active), and it didn’t detect any spyware.
Account Security: I haven’t shared my Steam account with anyone.
Strong Password: My password consists of 20 characters and includes necessary symbols (e.g., /%!+).


Perplexed by the situation, I contacted Steam Support. Unfortunately, Steam didn’t reply after 24 hours (reporting such incidents isn’t straightforward).
I decided to write to Steam Support again, providing screenshots to verify my issue. Their response was as follows:

Steam support 1st answer:
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(If activity occurred on your account you do not recognize, it may mean your account or computer has been compromised.

Someone may have gained access to your Steam account through spoofing, phishing, or malware.

As an immediate first step, you should take some action to secure your Steam account from further access. Our article on account security recommendations is a good start toward securing your Steam account.
If you suspect your computer is infected with malware, we have some tips for removing malware from your computer here. It may be a good idea to contact a local computer security expert if you're having trouble removing this malware.
Additionally, all Community Market transactions are final and cannot be reversed or refunded. When an item is purchased from the Community Market, the cost is sent from the buyer's Steam wallet to the seller's. Reversing these purchases would mean we have to take funds out of the seller's wallet, creating confusion and possible purchasing issues across Steam.
I'm sorry we can't be of more help with this, but we don't reverse or refund Community Market purchases and sales.

Steam Support)
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This response didn’t satisfy me because all security measures were in place, my computer was clean, and I received no notifications (except for the purchase itself). It seems like a software glitch or, perhaps. (involvement from a Steam employee in the theft)
I did some research online and discovered that in the United States, there are consumer protection laws that:

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(In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stipulates that consumers have the right to get their money back if they lost it due to fraud or faulty transactions. According to FTC rules, companies are obliged to refund the money if consumers legitimately complain.)
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I relayed all this information to Steam Support, but they dismissed it, implying that I was mistaken.

Steam support 2nd answer:
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(I’m sorry to hear that your account was used without your permission. I know it's frustrating to hear that we can't reverse Market activity.
To learn how to avoid scams or hijackings, please see our Trade Scam article.
To make sure that a scammer is reported, please report them through the Steam Community. Reporting a scammer through the Steam Community is the best way to prevent them from committing future scams.
Since there's not much more that I can say or do to be of help with this particular issue, I am going to close this help request.
If you have questions on an unrelated issue, please create a new help request and we will be happy to help you.

Steam Support)
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- Given all this, I pose the question: How secure is our money in the Steam Wallet?

- Why isn’t the Steam marketplace intelligent enough to flag suspicious activity?

- Other ppl. have this problem too (that you can check on marketplace site), but Steam dosen't want to do anithing?

[J4MESOX4D]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Brambilla:

For God's sake, it seems that you don't read my words. What I'm saying is that Steam hasn't implemented an additional layer of security in Steam Marketplace transactions that could avoid these scams

They don't need to. You need to not allow your entire credential set to become compromised instead of wanting to be babysat by more draconian measures that the majority of other users don't want or even need.

[Piston Smashed™]

Oprindeligt skrevet af brian9824:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Brambilla:

For God's sake, it seems that you don't read my words. What I'm saying is that Steam hasn't implemented an additional layer of security in Steam Marketplace transactions that could avoid these scams. The hackers may have gotten into my Steam account, but if Steam had implemented the transaction confirmation security layer, as is with store purchases, nothing would have happened. What I have always said is that transactions in the Steam Marketplace are not completely safe as they are in the the Steam Store.

As its been repeatedly said that confirmation would annoy and irritate every single person who DOESN'T get their account compromised. People don't like the CURRENT restrictions, let alone adding more.

There is a point where adding more security does more damage then good.

Exactly, there are plenty of people complaining now that they have to wait for pending balances. People were complaining over the years after each time Valve added more and more security measures to Steam. Valve can only do so much to please to protect anyone. People just go "Mine! Mine! Mine!" like the Seagulls in Finding Nemo when they see something like "Free 50 quid" or "Free Games". No amount of security will matter if someone just sees "Free Stuff Sign In Here" in front of them.

[Brambilla]

Oprindeligt skrevet af brian9824:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Brambilla:

For God's sake, it seems that you don't read my words. What I'm saying is that Steam hasn't implemented an additional layer of security in Steam Marketplace transactions that could avoid these scams. The hackers may have gotten into my Steam account, but if Steam had implemented the transaction confirmation security layer, as is with store purchases, nothing would have happened. What I have always said is that transactions in the Steam Marketplace are not completely safe as they are in the the Steam Store.

As its been repeatedly said that confirmation would annoy and irritate every single person who DOESN'T get their account compromised. People don't like the CURRENT restrictions, let alone adding more.

There is a point where adding more security does more damage then good.

If that is true, why the trade in the Steam Store require confirmation? Only the trades in the community market do not require confirmation. That s what I have been saying.

[Brian9824]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Brambilla:

Oprindeligt skrevet af brian9824:

As its been repeatedly said that confirmation would annoy and irritate every single person who DOESN'T get their account compromised. People don't like the CURRENT restrictions, let alone adding more.

There is a point where adding more security does more damage then good.

If that is true, why the trade in the Steam Store require confirmation? Only the trades in the community market do not require confirmation. That s what I have been saying.

As repeatedly said its a balancing act. Marketplace has other restrictions such as funds hold. People already complain about the trade hold and want it removed as well. There are a lot of market place transactions compared to trades, so its a balancing act

[Léon Scarlet]

To be fair i think an option to lock inventory or game inventory would be neat : like you could select items/ inventory and lock them of trading and sale for like 15 day when you desactivate the option

[Zekkah]

Don't listen to these people, as they have no arguments. You are 100% correct. Same thing happened to me recently and Valve is very much at fault for it if they don't protect Steam users from it.

Same thing as you, I have all the protections active. No log in warning in my phone, no nothing, and from my account was "bought", without my consent, some useless low value item from Dota 2, a game I don't even play, and valve just responded to me with the exact same messages as you. There's obviously a breach in their security and they are just shrugging it off.

From the post I made about my case, got the same cookie-cutter responses as you got here of "protect your account" and "you already gave them your information, so they can just walk in". Excuse me, but even me who knows my information still needs to validate my log in from my phone, so why doesn't the hacker need to do it?

[Crazy Tiger]

Oprindeligt skrevet af jose_silveira20:

as they have no arguments.

You're projecting. You're also showing a severe lack of knowledge about internet and account security.

[Zekkah]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Crazy Tiger:

Oprindeligt skrevet af jose_silveira20:

as they have no arguments.

You're projecting. You're also showing a severe lack of knowledge about internet and account security.

No, I'm being analytical. It's absurd to expect the victim's information to not be given away in the world of internet in which people use the same email to register for multiple services. So what you're asking is for users to go the extra step and to create a new email just to use Steam.

[Zekkah]

Actually, I think this could very easily be avoidable. Just ask for confirmation from the users on each end of each transaction and problem solved, specially if the values are high. I needed to confirm with my phone to sell trading cards, so why not ask for confirmation in these cases?

[Piston Smashed™]

Oprindeligt skrevet af jose_silveira20:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Crazy Tiger:

You're projecting. You're also showing a severe lack of knowledge about internet and account security.

No, I'm being analytical. It's absurd to expect the victim's information to not be given away in the world of internet in which people use the same email to register for multiple services. So what you're asking is for users to go the extra step and to create a new email just to use Steam.

I'll ask you, do you give consent to everything you buy on Steam store or the market?

My guess is no, because you have signed in to your account so you don't need to validate everything. Because you allowed someone access to your account by giving them your details somewhere you allowed them to by-pass Steam's security and use your account the exact same way as you do where no validation of buying anything is required.

People would like more security but no matter how much Steam introduce people still don't pay attention enough and as soon as they see something like "50 Quid Here Free" or visit some dodgy skin site for profits all common sense goes out the window. And what happens if Steam add more security, well then you get the normal folks who don't fall for such things complaining that there's too much security when they want to sell a trading card for 3 pence.

Common sense is your biggest ally when it comes to security, sadly common sense doesn't seem to be very common these days.

By the way, I've been using an email just for Steam for over 15 years.

[Akumeno!]

Oprindeligt skrevet af jose_silveira20:

Actually, I think this could very easily be avoidable. Just ask for confirmation from the users on each end of each transaction and problem solved, specially if the values are high. I needed to confirm with my phone to sell trading cards, so why not ask for confirmation in these cases?

seesh yesterday got scammed of 150 items being sold lightning fast on the marketplace and the bastard bought 5 overpriced dota objets I only got 2 notifications on steam guard and I didn't approve those, and man really is worrisome all this scams happening and Valve doens't given a crap, read on another topic about the conpiracy theory about the being valve employes since listing all these objects happening so fast doens't seem that farfetched

[Animus]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Akumeno!:

Oprindeligt skrevet af jose_silveira20:

Actually, I think this could very easily be avoidable. Just ask for confirmation from the users on each end of each transaction and problem solved, specially if the values are high. I needed to confirm with my phone to sell trading cards, so why not ask for confirmation in these cases?

seesh yesterday got scammed of 150 items being sold lightning fast on the marketplace and the bastard bought 5 overpriced dota objets I only got 2 notifications on steam guard and I didn't approve those, and man really is worrisome all this scams happening and Valve doens't given a crap, read on another topic about the conpiracy theory about the being valve employes since listing all these objects happening so fast doens't seem that farfetched

It's bots abusing steam's API system to rapidly list and buy items, which wouldn't happen if users kept their accounts secure.

[triat]

tldr

[Akumeno!]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Animus:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Akumeno!:

seesh yesterday got scammed of 150 items being sold lightning fast on the marketplace and the bastard bought 5 overpriced dota objets I only got 2 notifications on steam guard and I didn't approve those, and man really is worrisome all this scams happening and Valve doens't given a crap, read on another topic about the conpiracy theory about the being valve employes since listing all these objects happening so fast doens't seem that farfetched

It's bots abusing steam's API system to rapidly list and buy items, which wouldn't happen if users kept their accounts secure.

I guess it would be pretty easy for valve detect a bot doing a bulk operation and just block it may be, also upon securing my account I didn't have any API listed on my profile

[uopn]

I have recently got my account stolen (transaction made on Thursday 13th June, malware was not found on my pc(16th June when i found out the transactions). The hacker even refunded my Bodycam purchase, but it seems the fund is still pending on the Steam wallet.

Had changed my email, my steam password, added steam app 2FA....
I wonder what should i do next? is there any where I can report to and get my money/items back?