Steam improving trade security immensely with an update next week

Steam is an oft-hacked platform for a number of reasons. The internal economy and lack of proper controls for trading the strangely valuable items makes it a very sweet target for scammers and hackers alike. Valve is committed to helping stop that from happening and is rolling out some new ways to help prevent you from outright losing your inventory.

On March 9th, a Steam update will add a number of new features to the trading mechanism to make it more difficult for scammers to steal from their intended victims. These changes are in response to the nearly 77,000 accounts that tend to be hacked or otherwise compromised in some fashion each month.

• Trade hold duration will be increased to 15 days (for long-time Steam friends the duration will remain 1 day)
• Listing on the Steam Community Market will have a hold of 15 days before an item can be sold
• Steam Support will no longer restore items that have left accounts following a successful trade or market transaction (a process that previously created duplicates of original items)

And for goodness sake, use Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator, it's relatively easy to setup and it helps tremendously. 2FA is a very effective tool in preventing both hacking as well as enabling a safer and more effective trading environment.