Are you someone who is new to Steam trading? Not sure if the guy you are messaging is legit, or if the guy messaging you is legit? See if you can go through this check list and cross off points

1. Look at their Inventory

If they are a high profile trader (scammers often claim to be) look through their inventory and see what is the total value of their items.

Lots of Filler Items

Often I've seen scammers spend 2$ to buy 200 1cent loading screens. That way it looks like they have an inventory of 3000+ items, but if you look closely the entire inventory is worth maybe 5 bucks

Hidden Inventory with the most expensive on the frontA sneakier version of this is having a FEW expensive items on the front, and then privating the rest of the items like this: https://imgur.com/a/phTclTA

It makes the inventory look like it is worth a lot, but it may just be a few items they scammed, and 3000 loading screens like this guy.

Most of the time real accounts with have big valued inventories on their main.

2. Value and Playtime of Their Games

Game playtime

I've seen scammers have very very low hours in Dota2, this is a huge red flag.Go into Dota and look at their game history. 3 games in 10 months?

Another thing they do is - they sit the account AFK in the main menu to accumulate hours. This is a MASSIVE red flag. they play 3 games in the last 10 months but have thousands of hours logged recently.

Make sure you're trading with someone who actually plays the game. This is hard to fake as they need to invest real time.

Value of their games

Do they claim to trade hundreds of dollars of inventory? But their entire account only has 3 free games? A lot of times they even have these expired games that don't exist anymore from the previous owner of the account. If they have 60 paid games I would trust that account.

if they only have the free CS, free DotA, and other free games with no hours. I wouldn't trust to trade with them. (at least don't go first)

3. Steam account level and account age

This means nothing. Don't let them fool you. There's really old level 1-2 accounts they built long time back, and they log in and power level it using trading cards for cheap to a high level. You think "Oh they have a 7 year old account with lvl 50, it's legit" Nope. All can be faked for a few bucks.

4. Trade / Offer is too Good to be true.

They are claiming to want your items for 20% or more BELOW market price, or willing to sell you it for 20% or more below market. This is to entice you on the deal ASAP. There is almost no reason they cannot just go on the steam market and do that transaction more beneficially for themself. They are luring you in with the Too-Good-To-Be-True Offer!!

5. Look at their Friends and Comments

Fake accounts just have pages and pages of +rep. They have inside chat groups and forums to share reps with each other. This means nothing. You need to click into each friend, and see if 1-4. above applies to that friend. Often they have big rings of fake scam accounts all boosting each other up with +rep. and they all follow the same pattern of a fake account with no value or commitment.

A lot of the friend's of scammers I see just have some big flashy picture on it to make the profile seem legit, with a bunch of free games and a wall of +rep from another chain of fake accounts

REAL reps and comments, generally have some soul or personality to them. for example if someone posts on your wall to flame you for real, you get creative stuff. imagine a bot spamming u fake "flaming" it would all be generic and copy.

Same for real reps and comments, they have something behind them that you can tell came from a personality that drove that comment you know?

6. Check Steam Rep - DO NOT TRADE WITH SR BANNED

https://steamrep.com/

Enter the guy's profile

See if they have been steam rep banned, or if they have a couple steam rep banned friends.

If they are banned you can read the report there. Very reliable site. IF you are scammed REPORT IT HERE!

Basically you want an account that looks like they have invested time and money into it.

Beside's that I would advise people to be very very careful when going first, and do it one item at a time so you don't get ripped off all at once.

The reason Steam Rep works is because lots of people use it, and they ban people banned there. It makes it so scammers cannot re-use their scam accounts. first scam they do, if it is reported, then it will be flagged and they will need to start all over making a new account.

⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ ALWAYS CHECK AND REPORT ON STEAM REP!! ⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️

6.b Google their Profile ID NUMBER

NOT the profile NAME. get their ID string. it will be a series of NUMBERS that are PERMENANT. they cannot change this ID no matter what they change their profile to.

Look for other reddit posts, forum posts, linking this ID back to someone being scammed. Often people do not write up a SR report for whatever reason. They might just make a reddit post linking their profile.

7. When in Doubt, DON'T GO FIRST!!! (be smart)

Get a Trusted middleman from a mod on this forum, or just find someone else to trade with. If you do go first, and want to take the risk, start with the CHEAPEST items in the trade first if there are multiple, and make sure they honor their end.

if there are multiple items, break them up into individual small single trades. DO NOT TRADE THEM ALL AT ONCE IF YOU ARE GOING FIRST. One by one is safest. Make sure they pay after each one

8. Take a look at the entire account, from a macro standpoint.

Are they hiding essential information? For example # of trades? # of Market transactions?

These red flags are only when you have reasonable doubt and inexperienced. The general idea is, try to figure out how much time / money they have invested into the account through Dota+, battle passes, other games bought, reviews written in the store. things that take time and money and passion. Not something a scammer can imitate

Here are some photos of Positive traders traits:

Transparent: https://i.imgur.com/eXWG08A.png (this can be faked not always real)

Money Invested https://i.imgur.com/9BG1z4A.png

Time Invested https://i.imgur.com/SlRUiRh.png

DotA Investment( Dota+ ) https://i.imgur.com/ZJfS6LL.png

DotA Investment (Battle Pass) https://i.imgur.com/Cf1xHT1.png

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^Not to say you can't be scammed by this guy, but the repercussions of staining that account would not be favorable for them, if they cared. ALWAYS WRITE A STEAM REP REPORT PROPERLY. DOCUMENT THE TRADE CHAT WINDOWS IF YOU ARE SCAMMED. If you can get their account SR banned, it will be much more of a pain for them to try to do this again. or even use some sites that require SR verification. Even in other games like TF2 and CSGO.

Please I want to really reiterate. Write a Steam Report if you are scammed. Make a reddit post with their permanent ID. Sometimes you get unlucky and run into that guy with the 100% legit account who woke up and felt like scamming that day. PLEASE GET THEM PUBLICLY FLAGGED ON STEAMREP. It will prevent others from falling for the same thing. There are people with 10 year old bans on steam rep still trying to get unbanned for a scam they did a decade ago.The more people that use Steam Rep, the easier it will be shoving those scammers out of the trading circle!