Steam Trade URL – How to Find it?

Trading on the Steam platform would be impossible without the Trade URL – it allows you to send Trade Offers to players that are not friends with you. In this article we will highlight what is Steam Trade URL, How to find it and why you should use it!

CS:GO weapon skins, first introduced in the 2013 “Arms Deal” update, are thought to be one of the most important feature additions that has led CS:GO to become one of the most successful video games in the past decade. The appeal of CS:GO skins are so enticing that a large and highly lucrative economy has been created to support the insane demand of these virtual items among CS:GO players and collectors of CS:GO skins.

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Although Valve has made its stance clear that trading in exchange for real money is prohibited using your Steam account, due to fears that bad actors may use their gaming marketplace as a channel to perform money laundering. However, the CSGO community has quickly worked out ways to execute trades outside of the legally-compliant Steam Market.

But before anything else, let’s first understand what Steam Trade URL is. 

What is Steam Trade URL?

Known as Steam Trade URL, it is a trade link or address created by Valve to facilitate item trading between players within the ecosystem. In the following article, our editorial team at SkinCashier will be sharing more about the trading address available for every player, and how it has been used to allow intermediary trades outside of the Market.

Similar to PlayStation Store, Amazon.com and GameStop, the Steam Market is one of the largest digital marketplaces for online video games today, and boasted more than 34,000 games to date, apart from Valve’s own range of popular game titles such as Half-life: Alyx, DOTA 2 and CS:GO. Depending on the number of games downloaded in your account, you can access your virtual inventories, including CS:GO weapon skins right within the Market.

In order to facilitate exchange between users within the Steam Market, each user is provided with a custom tradelink Steam account has provided for trading your inventory items with friends on the platform. Thanks to the advent of CS:GO skins, you can now even use this address to link your item listing to trusted and reliable CSGO skins trading sites like SkinCashier.

Anyone with your trading address will be able to view your item listing and offer trading requests to you. Fortunately, you may also configure the privacy settings of your address anytime to prevent anyone from viewing your item listing. However, if you are planning to sell CS:GO skins to strangers and intermediary trading sites, you may need to set your privacy settings as ‘public’.

Read: Check Your CSGO Inventory Worth and Steam Inventory Value Easily!

How to get your Steam Trade URL?

It is pretty straightforward to find your Steam trade address, all you have to do is to visit your Steam profile and access your item listing, click on ‘Trade Offers’ and access the ‘Who can send me Trade offers’ option shown on the right side of the browser. A page will open, revealing your account settings and an overview of your trading requests, if any. Scroll to the bottom of the page and locate a section called ‘Third-party sites’. Once you do manage to browse the section, click on the link and voila, your unique address should be available for your use.

Highlight the link Steam Trade URL, and copy the address from the context menu. If you provide this URL to an individual or an intermediary trading site, they will be able to see your item listing and offer trading requests. If you no longer wish to receive trading requests from any intermediary sites or individuals that have your trading address, click on ‘Create New URL’ to disable the old trading address and make a new one instead.

4 Easy Steps to Get Your Steam Trade URL

It is important to note that all trade URLs are unique; however, for security purposes, you can generate a new URL at any point in time. 

Is sending your Steam Trade URL to someone safe? 

This question is a very complicated one. In most cases, especially if you are using legitimate and trustworthy third-party marketplaces, sending your Steam Trade URL is safe. That is because these marketplaces have security protocols in place that ensures the safety of your data. However, in the age of the internet, scammers are everywhere. They will exploit every exploitable system out there. This is the reason why you have to be extremely careful who you send your trade URL and vet the platform you use for trading. 

How do we enable Steam trade requests for external transfer?

Prior to executing your first trading offer, you will have to manually activate trading requests which are not enabled by default. Fortunately, the process is quick and simple, since all you need to do is to change your account privacy settings to allow the public to view your item listing.

First, head over to Steamcommunity.com or open Steam app if you have already installed it on your system. Login with your username, select ‘Profile’ in the dropdown menu and access the ‘Edit Profile’ section. You will then be shown several options including ‘My Privacy Settings’, which is the section that you will be heading to next. Once you’re in this section, change your Inventory privacy to ‘Public’. Your item listing should be publicly viewable now, and your trading address can be used from the time that your listing is set to public.

Read Also: CSGO System Requirements & Minimum Requirements

How to Prevent Trade Requests and Hide Your Inventory

For security reasons, it is advisable to hide your item listing once you are done trading on intermediary trading sites or individual buyers. Many players who kept their item listing as Public have also received daily spams of unsolicited trading requests. Hence, you may wish to prevent such things from happening by hiding your inventory whenever there is not a need to use your trading address. The process of hiding your inventory and trade address is similar to setting your inventory to public, except that you will be choosing ‘Private’ this time instead.

First, head over to Steamcommunity.com or open Steam app if you have already installed in your system. Login with your username, select ‘Profile’ in the dropdown menu and access the ‘Edit Profile’ section. You will then be shown several options including ‘My Privacy Settings’, which is the section that you will be heading to next. Once you’re in this section, change your Steam Inventory privacy to ‘Private’. Your item listing is now hidden from public view, and even with others may have your trading address, they will no longer be able to view your item listing or send you any trading requests.

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Is there any risk involved by exposing my Steam Trade URL to external sites or individuals?

Generally speaking, sharing your Steam Trade URL is akin to sharing your email address to others. Since it is possible to switch between ‘Private’ and ‘Public’ anytime you wish, there is no need to worry about risking your inventory or accounts to compromise or hack as it is not possible to do so with just a trading address. If you are looking for a peace of mind, you can even change your trading address after every transaction with external trading sites or individuals. Furthermore, whenever someone offers a trading request, your items will not be automatically transferred to them unless you approve the request manually. The overall mechanism set in place for the trading feature is by far one of the safest in the industry, so it should leave you little room to worry about your valuable CS:GO skins or your account.

As one of the biggest digital game marketplaces around, users are also provided with an additional security feature known as Steam Guard, to secure your Steam account. Privacy-focused users can utilise the feature before performing any trade using their trading address, as Steam Guard acts like a firewall that prevents any bad actors from stealing your Steam inventory by guessing or phishing your account’s password.

It is also worth noting that users should perform their due diligence when accessing external trading sites to sell their CS:GO skins. There are currently a handful of trusted and reputable trading sites like SkinCashier which placed a lot of importance on the security aspect of their sites, as there are attempts made by bad actors who may come up with a clone of reputable trading sites or CS:GO gambling sites to scam users through an infamous scam called Web API Key scam. Thus, it is important to always verify the authenticity of the trading site web address (e.g. skincashier.com) before connecting your account on the website.

Read: How to get Free CSGO Skins? Complete Guide

Additional Security Measures Through Two-Step Authentication

Perhaps you may be wondering what may happen if you do come across a ‘fake trading site’ and have unknowingly linked your inventory to a scam site. Well, if you do not set up a two-step authentication, you may risk losing your items to a scammer. But fret not, thanks to ample security measures in place, the likelihood is not as high, as long as you have properly set up a Steam Mobile authenticator. With the authenticator in place, every transaction will have to be verified through the authenticator before the deal is confirmed.

However, in the unlikely event that all else fails, and you manage to get yourself harassed by scammers, all you need to do is to revoke access to your Steam API Key, reset your trading address, enable Steam Guard, enforce two-step verification and finally, change your Steam account password.

Final Thoughts

All in all, utilising your trading URL Steam has provided to send or receive trade offers on external trading sites can be a hassle-free and secured experience as long as we make full use of the readily security measures that the platform has implemented for its users. As more players are looking to find trusted intermediary platforms to sell their weapon skins in exchange for real money and cryptocurrency, external trading sites will be one of the most commonly used proxies to perform these transactions. As long as you do perform due diligence and preventive measures to protect your account and inventory, it can be a seamless process linking your trade url to reputable trading sites like SkinCashier and cash out your CSGO skins successfully.

Your Trade URL does play a small yet crucial part of the whole CSGO skin transaction process, thus it is important to find out how you can properly manage your trading address and establish a safe transaction experience for yourself.