The “I accidentally reported you for making illegal purchases on steam instead of someone else” Scam

I have been enjoying the delights of the Discord for a while now, a free service that allows you to in essence create advanced IRC-like chatrooms, with all the modern facets of audio, video and game streaming in a very user-friendly way. Discord also allows users to send messages privately and yesterday, someone I have never spoken to or heard about messaged me with the following statement:

Hello sorry to bothering you, is this your account on steam ?

Scam quote #1

My Discord profile features links to my social media accounts and Steam profile, therefore it isn’t hard for someone to know this so hardly an impressive feat. At this point, I confirmed “yep” and awaited for what was going to follow…

okay i just want to make sure because I accidentally reported you for making illegal purchases on steam instead of someone else the steam admin said your account will be deleted. I didn’t mean to report you bro can you please help me to explain to him?

Scam quote #2

You can imagine at this point I knew this was sounding like one of the many methods of a user trying to get hold of Steam account details and sure enough, a quick Google search confirmed that this was a known method – almost word for word in how they approached me right down to using the word “bro”.

So, without hesitation I blocked the user within Discord and reported them to Discord themselves and the moderators within the server channel the user had spotted my presence. I highly doubt I was the only one approached, most likely they were simply hopping from one user to the next within the same server waiting for an individual to pass over their Steam credentials.

To report a user on Discord using the desktop app, there are a few steps you need to take when it relates to a direct message (Android and iOS users can visit this link for instructions):

• Hover over the offending message and click the ‘…’
• Select ‘Copy Message Link’

• Visit Submit a request – Discord and fill in the form

On this occasion, no harm done – however the moderators did mention that they had a spate of this activity lately and with the conversations happening behind the scenes within a private message between users, it is hard for them to do anything about it unless people come forward and report them.

If anything looks suspicious, it probably is so always be careful, do your research and question everything!