Counter-Strike 2

Counter-Strike 2

185 ratings
SCAM PREVENTION
By ☆ id/SweetRin ☆ [JP]
In this guide I will teach you a few tips and tricks on how to avoid getting scammed and how you yourself can avoid scammers when you encounter them. A few steps I take is deauthorizing other devices and revoking your API key which is simple to do and isn't hard at all! So don't worry I will guide you through the process on how to do it and even recommend you other guides you can go to as well to help you figure out what you can do if your account was hacked. My guide is solely going to be dedicated about how you can detect and avoid scammers.
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Introduction
Hello everybody!

I am id/SweetRin - The owner of Amazing Profiles!™, ☆The☆Anime☆Network☆, and id/SweetRin. Today I want to share how I avoid scammers and what I do to protect myself from scammers.

The most frequent scams as of 2021 is phishing scams where people either send you a link or lead you to a website designed to compromise your account or scam you. The sites might seem friendly but you will want to ensure avoid any scam sites offering "free money", "tournament", untrusted/fake "Skin trading/exchange sites", or "level up bot" designed to scam you and not actually give you trading cards.

The following detailed steps will be fairly easy to apply and only need a few minutes to do them.
Scam Links
First you are going to want to do is avoid clicking links from people you don't know well. Steam is doing an amazing job blocking scam links and fraud links. But some scam links still get through an unperfect system. Even some Discord, Youtube, and other links can be masked as a link to acquire your IP address and more.

For a decent example:



Know your Website links, Check for the lock icon on all sites you go to ensure its not a scam website. Scam websites often go by the same name as the original website but change the com to gg or onion. Some of these links can be utilized to smuggle keyloggers into your computer and or acquire your IP address. Any link with onion at the end of it is an obvious link that is designed to give acquire your IP address or also smuggle a keylogger or worse. So please take caution in investigating the URL before clicking it.

To help you get to see links without the big things like the image shown here so you can read the links before you click on them more easily follow my few short steps.
Step 1. Open steam friends.   This above is my steam profile link in a media in-line.
Step 2. Click on the cog/gear in friends as shown above.
Step 3. Navigate to "Chat" and switch on "Don't embed images and other media in-line.

That's it for The Scam links potion of this guide but never click on links from a person you don't know no matter how friendly they sound. Take a few weeks to get the know the person before engaging in such things. But always check the link before you click it or enter it into your browser.
Revoking Your Steam API Key
Scammers can easily hijack trade offers or scam you by using your API key. Scammers will grab your API key and use it for malicious actions in the future as cancelling a trade offer of yours to modify it and steal all your items. Also never share your public steam API with anyone. I personally wouldn't even share the domain name with anyone either.

This safety step is rather simple and only takes a few minutes and a single click.
Just go to this page and click the "Revoke My Steam Web API Key" as shown above.

https://steamproxy.com/dev/apikey

Now you are 1 step safer, You do not need a steam API key to participate in trades.
Deauthorizing Other Devices
This is a step I usually do right away when I have encountered a scammer as I am a paranoia freak, which is to instantly deauthorize my account from all other devices. To do this don't take very long at all and its just a 1 step process!
To do this go to this page and click the button that says "Deauthorize all other devices". A Image guiding you to where that button is will also be displayed above as always.

https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/twofactor/manage

This is pretty much the most important step when you do when you just encountered a scammer trying to scam you and you just want to be safe. As scammers are sadly always coming up with new ways to try to scam you.
The「You / I Accidentally Reported You」Scam
This scam is quite new and has been going round steam as of 2021 and has compromised a lot of users accounts and scammed a lot of users. There is no way anyone can accidentally report someone. So if anyone is claiming you accidentally reported them or they accidentally reported you block them and report them for trying to scam you.
Workshop Scams
In some games on steam such as CS:GO there will be workshop scams that if you subscribe to will compromise you steam account. These scams are usually obvious by offering you a "Free Item". To avoid them scams just be wary on the workshop.

Steam has been very good at cleaning up these types of scams and they have became more rare over the last few years.
Some Last Words
Thank you for taking the time to read my guide!

I hope I was able to help you learn how to avoid scams as best as you can and maybe even taught you something new!

I would like to invite you to join any of my steam group id/SweetRin or any of my other various groups. I will on id/SweetRin update when new scam methods have came up whenever I discover them! I will also be glad to give you personal advice on what to do if you been scammed or want to avoid being scammed!

You can join here:
https://steamproxy.com/groups/idSweetRin

Other groups:
https://steamproxy.com/groups/AmazingProfiles
https://steamproxy.com/groups/The_Anime_Network

If you got any additional questions, imrpovements, or feedback regarding this guide, you can add me on steam. Make sure to leave a comment on my profile so i can know that you came from this guide!

Other Trusted Guides:
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1815917787

Take care everyone and have an amazing day!