When buying poe 2 goods, multi-tier protection mechanisms have to be adopted so as not to become the victims of scam. According to the statistics of the 2023 POE Community Anti-Fraud Alliance, third-party marketplace transactions have an up to 12.7% fraud percentage (based on samples of 52,000 transactions), but a fraud rate for transactions concluded on the actual Steam marketplace can be as minimum as 0.03%. In verifying the Reputation of the seller, the Trading Reputation Index (TRI) rating (10-point scale) should be checked, and sellers with TRI≥8.5 and transaction lengths ≥500 should be selected (fraud probability 0.8% vs fraud rate 34.6% for sellers with TRI<5). For example, the customer “Mathil” made a $420 “mirror dress” transaction through the Escrow service of the TFT platform (Trade Federation of Exiles) (99.2% custody success rate), reducing the risk by 89% compared to direct transactions.
The payment method has a direct bearing on the security of funds. The success rate of settling disputes with PayPal Goods and Services was 87% (PayPal financial report statistics in 2023), while that of recovery of cryptocurrency payments was only 2.3%. Be careful of “price change scams” – a merchant changes an item costing 1 Exalted to be sold at 10 Exalted and exploits a loophole in the transaction window to cheat (Reddit accounted for 23% of all scams in 2024). It is recommended to activate the POE Trade Companion plugin. Its automated screenshot feature (3 frames/second) is able to provide transaction proof and increase the rate of appeal from 32% to 79%.
Item authenticity technology can also ascertain the probability of tampering. Import the gear code through Path of Building to check if the suffix combination is reasonable (e.g., the probability of occurrence of T1 health +T1 resistance only 0.0007%). A player was dropped 150 Exalted (around $450) on a “Double +1 Gem level necklace” without verifying the crafting steps (actually naturally fallen as a consequence of fossil attacks). It indicates the potential advantage of using the Advanced Mod Descriptions plugin and will emphasize occluded affixes, doubling equipment authenticity accuracy rate up to 98.6%.
There are legal action being utilized that work to impede the black industry chain. FBI busted transnational fraud syndicate “ExileCartel” in 2023, an outfit that ran a $2.3 million fraud by generating fictitious TRI scores (by operating 1,200 bot accounts to generate positive reviews). The ring leader was sentenced to an 87-month jail term. The EU’s “Digital Services Act” renders it mandatory for platforms to have compulsory KYC (Identity Verification) for buy poe 2 items transactions. The German player “Schneider” was fined €2,500 for providing false information (Case No. : AZ 45 C 234/23).
Technical defense has to be combined with behavioral analysis. The GGG anti-fraud mechanism will generate an alarm if the following behavior occurs: the frequency of the transactions >5 times per hour (the normal position value of the player 1.2 times), cross-area IP log-in (for example, a US player unexpected login from Vietnam), and payment amount from the market price by ±3σ (standard deviation). The utilizations of VPN transactions will increase the risk index from 1.3 to 7.8 (1-10 scales). It is recommended to enable Steam Guard mobile authentication (reducing the risk of stolen account by 86%).
The third solution is to adopt the “zero trust” transaction model: 1) Use the official platform or TFT custody service (fraud rate 0.08%); 2) Stage payment (e.g., 30% deposit +70% balance); 3) Request the seller to provide the video of the production process (the accuracy rate of the FraudVideo verification tool for detecting deepfakes is 99.3%). According to the evidence from the POE police-enterprise cooperation project, this policy has reduced the player’s loss from 1.2M in 2022 to 0.18M in 2023, down by 85%.