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Don't trade with a user if:

• User's Profile is set to Private.
  
• User's Inventory is set to Private.
  
• User's Steam Level is 0 or low leveled, around 0-10.
  
• User's Steam Profile isn't more than a Month old.

• User is banned on a reputable trading site.*
  
• User has bad reputation on a trading site. Note that +Rep on Steam doesn't count!**

It is not too necessary to look for these if the Trade is with low valued items, about <$5 USD.

*Go to the "How to check Steam Profiles" part of this Guide.
**Go to the "[Rep]utation" part of this Guide.

Is the potential scammer doing something like:

• Telling you they have another person that's interested in trading for your item?
  
• Pushing you to accept the offer?
  
• Rapidly changing items in the offer?
  
• Sending links to sites unknown? DO NOT CLICK THESE, THEY CAN KEYLOG!

If you answered "Yes" to any one of these, stop trading with the person, say "No thanks. Sorry. Good day. etc." or don't say anything at all, and decline the trade.

Check the Items!

• Is the user who they claim to be?
  
• Is their name correct?
  
• Be aware of name tags!!! ***

***I made this guide, because I almost got scammed.
The Scammer wanted to trade me two Festive Strange Scatterguns worth 17 keys each, but the Scatterguns were not "Festive", they were "Festivized", which changes the worth of the Strange Scattergun to 1 key, the only thing I noticed, that saved me from getting scammed was a different picture of the Festive Scattergun.


(Picture is in German, I know, sorry, but it's two different things, one is festivized (1 key and some ref), the other is dropped as festive (17 keys).

Always look at the item being traded!

For this use the site Backpack.TF.
To check these, all you need is his Steam Profile ID.

• Go to their Profile in a Browser.
  
• Look in the URL Bar and look for the Part after /id/
  
  Copy the ID. Note: The ID can be a Number, it's not common to be the Name of the User
  
• Go to Backpack.TF.
  
• Paste the ID in the search field.
  
  
• Something like this should show up, look at the status.
  

Rep stands for Reputation, a +Rep is positive reputation and a -Rep is negative reputation.

+Reps on Steam don't count, because the user can delete -Reps in their comment section of user profile.

You can trust a person with many +Reps on Steam if you're doing a low tier trade. These +Reps are also given to people that are considered nice by the community, don't ignore them, but don't give them too much weight when trading!

Trust is for high risk trading, like a transaction of in-game items to real world money. This has nothing to do, with low to middle tier trading.

Use Backpack.TF or Steam Rep to find out if the user has good standing, bad standing, or no standing. (Trust)
Trust is located right there:


When you click on Trust you can give the person an reputation and look at the reputations they already have.
It looks like this:

If their reputation(Trust) is bad, read the comment.

Some Scammers use the "Man in the Middle" tactic, where one user talks to you, and they show you the item they'd like to trade. They then proceed and give you another user's Name/Profile, and that you should trade item to the alternate and in return they give you the item you traded for from their own inventory.

Never, I repeat, NEVER do a trade that way!
Everybody that wants to trade this way is 100% a scammer, looking to rip you off.

Sometimes you get an e-mail from Steam, and sometimes, the e-mail address looks odd.

noreply@steampowered.com this is that email address you will see often, its an official Steam e-mail address.

Scammers try to send you e-mails that look convincing, but the e-mail never is.
Look out for dots, where no dots belong, like in the middle of st.eam or something like this.
Examples:

• ste.am@...
  
• Stemsupport@...
  
• Steamsuport@...

and so on....

Always remember, a Steam Admin/Moderator/Supporter, will never ask you for your Steam password!

Do:

• Check the e-mail address, if you get one.
  
• Report people that send random links to everybody.
  
• Get a Mobile Authenticator.

Don't:

• Click on links in e-mails.
  
• Listen to self proclaimed "Steam Admins".
  
• Give someone your password.

I will start by saying that even these people could scam you, in this case, it is likely their profile got hacked or they sold it to someone. Always be vigilant.

You can trust people like these more often than others. These users would most likely have one or more of the following:

1. High Steam Community Profile Level, around Level 50 or above.
   
2. User owns lots of games or high value games, accounts valued with lots of games or $60+ ones are usually legitimate users.
   
3. User has many hours in Team Fortress 2. Make sure they have time spent in more than just Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, DOTA 2, etc. or any other major Free To Play titles. You can simply run the game in the background to accrue hours. Just look at Berkyjef for proof that it's simple to rack up hours.
   
4. User owns a Steam Account over one year old.
   
5. User has made many trades on their Steam Account. This method can also be fabricated by a scammer doing single item trades to other accounts they might own to rack up the number. If this is the only thing they have marked on this list, make sure to take precaution.

The first two make it more unlikely they will scam you, because they invested money in Steam, and don't want to get banned.

The third and fourth says that the account is older and is used frequently. Accounts scammers use are most likely newer.

For five, there is a showcase that you can put on your profile that shows how many trades you have done. Minimum Steam Community Level of 10+ required however.


Items Owned should be self-explanatory. It shows the current amount of all the items in the user's inventory.
Trades Made is the number of times this person successfully traded with another person.
Market Transactions show how many times this person used the Steam Community Market to buy an item.

That's it, have fun trading!!!

Heres a Guide for you.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2195532080

Guide Icon
Team Fortress Wiki - Trading

Other pictures used were created by DrSnipy.
Proofreading and edits were provided by Berkyjef.
Information is from DrSnipy + many helpful contributions from the comment section.