Checking a Steam profile before a CS2 trade: age, level, bans and impostors

A minute spent on the other account's profile before you trade can save you a knife. Some signals on a Steam profile are hard to fake, like the SteamID, the account's age and its bans. Others, like the name, avatar and comments, can be changed or manufactured in seconds. Here's what each one tells you, roughly in the order worth checking.

Start with the SteamID, not the name

Every Steam account has a SteamID, a unique identifier that's usually shown as a 17-digit number starting 7656119. Valve says the SteamID and the account name used to sign in can't be changed, even by Steam Support staff. The display name everyone sees, by contrast, can be changed at any time in profile settings, and the avatar can be swapped just as easily.

That's the whole basis of impersonation. A copy of your friend, a well-known trader or a site's bot only needs the same name and picture, so compare the number instead. A profile address either shows the 17-digit ID after /profiles/, or a custom address after /id/ that the owner chose in Edit Profile. The number is the part that can't be borrowed.

The easiest way to get the right one is to open the profile from somewhere you already trust: your friends list, an earlier trade in your Trade History, or a link you saved before. If the account messaging you isn't the same profile, it isn't the same person.

Name history helps too. Malwarebytes points out that people change Steam names so often that a stranger can pass for a forgotten friend, and that hovering over the name on a profile shows the names it used before.

What the trade offer window shows

Valve puts several facts about the other account into the trade offer itself: how long you've been friends, their Steam level, how old the account is, and which groups they moderate. Valve's advice is to review that information to make sure you're trading with the right person, because it's your responsibility to verify who you trade with.

These details are hard to forge. An impostor created this week can copy a name and avatar perfectly, but it can't show that you've been friends since 2019 or that the account is ten years old. When you confirm in the Steam Mobile app, Valve says the confirmation screen gives you everything you need to spot a redirected trade, so read it every time.

Steam level and limited accounts

A very low level isn't proof of anything on its own, but it's worth understanding. Steam treats accounts that have spent less than $5 in the Steam store as limited, because Valve says malicious users often operate from dummy accounts that have never bought anything. Limited accounts are locked at Steam level 0, can't send friend invites, can't make their profile visible to non-friends, can't add messages to trade offers and can't use the Community Market.

So a level-0 account with a profile you can't see may simply be limited, which is typical of a throwaway. A high level shows the opposite: the account has been used and has had money spent on it. That doesn't make it safe. Malwarebytes found that scammers like to use hijacked accounts in good standing precisely because they look established.

Bans and trade probation

Some bans show on the profile itself:

• Game bans. Valve says only permanent game bans appear on a profile; temporary ones and suspensions don't. Valve added them to profiles partly so players could see whether accounts they suspected of cheating had been banned.
• VAC bans. An account with a VAC ban, cooldown or Overwatch ban registered can't trade CS2 items at all, according to Valve's restrictions page.
• Trade bans and probation. Valve bans scammers it has evidence against from trading and the Community Market. When a temporary trade ban ends, the account goes into trade probation, a status Valve says exists so that other users know it recently committed a trading offence. Probation doesn't stop the account from trading, so the decision is yours.

Comments and "+rep"

A wall of praise on a profile is weak evidence. Valve warns that "+rep" comments can be generated easily by malicious groups, and that a trader who insists you trust them is probably trying to scam you. A private or sparse profile isn't proof of anything either; our guide to Steam privacy settings for trading explains what each setting hides and what traders actually need to see.

The signals at a glance

When behaviour outweighs the profile

A clean, old, high-level profile can still belong to a scammer, especially if it's been hijacked. These requests should end the conversation whatever the profile says: moving to another app to "talk to an admin", a link to sign in somewhere, a request for codes, an offer to use a middleman, or a deal where you go first or get paid outside the trade window.

Steam has added one more layer of help. Since its November 17, 2025 client update, a suspicious chat warning can appear at the top of a chat window when a message looks malicious, with links disabled while it's showing, and you can report the message straight from the chat. For the full list of tricks these checks protect against, see our guide to common CS2 trading scams.

Sources

• SteamID, Steam Account Names, Merging Accounts and Deleting Accounts — Steam Support
• Recommended Trading Practices — Steam Support
• Limited User Accounts — Steam Support
• Banned by Game Developer (Game Ban) — Steam Support
• Trading and Market Restrictions — Steam Support
• Scam FAQ (Confidence Scams and Trade Scams) — Steam Support
• Fake Esports voting sites looking to phish Steam users — Malwarebytes
• Steam Deck gets display-off low power downloads in a new stable update — GamingOnLinux