All links are safe and all link to support.steampowered.com


The very first thing you should do is lock your Steam account. This prevents the hijacker from:

• Purchasing anything
  
• Playing on VAC enabled game servers (Prevents a VAC Ban caused by the hijacker)
  
• Gifting your inventory items to other users.
  
• Trading with anybody or using the Community Market
  
• CD-Key activation
  
• Steam Community access in general.

Follow this Steam Support guide to lock your account.


The most common way an account gets hijacked is through malware or a RAT (Remote Administration Tool). This lets the hijacker control your computer so it looks like you performed the actions on the account, not the hijacker, in an attempt to avoid any potential blocks like a trade ban from a new login.

This means that even if you reset your password as long as the malware is still on your machine you'll keep getting hijacked.

Run a scan (Use a full scan, not a 'quick scan' that some tools provide) using a reliable program and wait for this to finish before continuing.


If you've been hijacked with malware or a RAT chances are the hijacker has other login details as well such as your email. Make sure your email account is secure before proceeding and ensure you have reset the password for your email account.


Now that you've secured your computer from being hijacked again, it's safe to reclaim your account and have the lock removed.

Follow this Steam Support guide to reclaim your account.


You've secured your computer. You've regained access to your account. Now you need to do everything possible to ensure it doesn't happen again.

Follow this guide on securing your account to the highest level possible.

Simple one today but not so common (at least, not for me) but it's still out there. In this method, people will try to scam items by telling you that they're an employee and that you got reported for duping/scamming/... and that they want to "scan" your items.

Valve employees and Steam Community Moderators will NEVER ask or threaten you for your Steam account credentials, CD key, or credit card information. They will also never threaten to punish users for refusing to make trades or to click on links.

Chat conversations will go like this:

Often, the "employee" will have poor spelling.

If the "employee" actually worked for VALVe, they would have a profile badge that says "VALVe Employee"

Eventually, we'll have all known methods of scamming up on here in the announcements. If you take something out of it, great!! This is simply for the purpose of letting people know that it exists.

A random user adds you. They make an offer (CS:GO/TF2 keys for a high-priced item for example) for you via steam chat, usually an overpay. They then says that they don't know if they can trust you, so they asks you if you have a trusted friend. Then they want you to tell them the friends name/link to their steam profile. They then add your friend and asks them some useless questions about trust (and invites your friend to a chatroom with another account).

After that they will ask you if you can trade your expensive item to your friend to see if it really is your friend (you trust your friend so it should be no problem). After you've given your item to your friend, the scammer's second account will come into play. Now that your friend probably accepted the chatroom invite, they will change their second account's name similar to yours, usually adding a . (dot) into the end of your name so that there wont be YOURNAME (2) when trading.

And after that, they will send a trade invite to your friend and your friend will probably give the item back to "you" (the scammer's 2nd account with a name similar to yours).

This scam usually ends up with you (not the scammer) suspecting things and ending the trade. It's essential you take screenshots during a high value trade. It's like having a witness to a crime; keeps you in the clear and acts as concrete evidence when you report them.

Yet another common way for account hijackers (in this case hackers) to get access to your account by creating keyloggers. Try it:

1. Go on YouTube
   
2. Search for "Free Counter-Strike: Global Offensive items/Free Team Fortress 2 Items/Free Steam Duplication Hack".
   
3. ???
   
4. KEYLOGGERS EVERYWHERE!

There's no real way to protect yourself from this, besides not being an idiot. Don't try to duplicate items because it won't work. Don't try to get free items because it won't work. Common knowledge, people!

Try researching how keylogging works, it's pretty scary and worth the five minutes. It'll keep not only your Steam account safe, but your bank details and personal information safe.


A new way of scamming (this usually happens if you have Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) is that people will add you (often a hacked account since they will have some games + a relative high Steam score) and tell you that they want to have your knife (in CS:GO, obviously) and that they'll offer a better knife.

The catch is that they'll send you a link to a fake screenshot site (instead of printscr . com they'll make it printscr . org,...) that shows their knife. However, when you go to the site they linked it'll come up with a download, asking you if you want to run this program (shown in the image below). When ran, the program will start stealing most/all of your items.

Happy Holidays, don't forget to spend this time with loved ones and remember how lucky you are to have everything around you!

Just letting you know, we are still alive! A quick update on phishing scams and we'll follow up tomorrow with some more tips for the other various scamming methods as well as some info if you sense your account being hacked; if you're a Jedi or something (timely af)

Probably the most common way for account hijackers to get access to your account is by creating a fake page. Links would look like: steamcomnunity, steamcomuniity or staemcommunity. Hackers often have automated bots spamming these when you use a trading site like tf2backpack, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and dota2lounge. You'll receive a message looking something like this:


Less suspicious forms take place as well; a person could post this on your profile page.