Hi everyone,
Hopefully by now, you have heard of a phishing scam; if not, simply put, it is an attempt to gain confidential information from you (in this case, your active or owner key) so that it can be used to drain your wallet of all your hard earned SBD. It's like the emails you've probably seen, where a Nigerian prince wants to give you one million dollars, but first you have to give him all of your banking details, just to make it happen.
Sometimes, it comes in the form of a wallet transfer, which I learned from an older post by @arcange :
According to my friend @simplymike, there are over 65+ domains here that are known phishing sites. She (yes, @simplymike is a girl;) is actually hosting a contest in the hopes that more people will write a post to raise awareness of phishing scams because it seems as though the number is on the rise, and there doesn't seem to be a way to stop them. @arcange is doing a fantastic job in the offensive; you've probably seen him addressing known spam links in the comments of various posts. He has also just recently written a fantastic post that has a wealth of information for you.
If you don't take the time to educate yourself by reading the above links, please know:
The most important rule of thumb is to NEVER use your owner key, and STOP using your active password when you're on steemit. If you do, go to the permissions link in your wallet and change your password to the posting one instead. Only use the active key when you are doing things with your wallet, like transfers, for example.
Be cautious of links that take you off-site. If you do click on them, do NOT provide your active password to anyone, even if they promise you all kinds of cool things! The old adage applies...If it's too good to be true, it probably is.
I want to reiterate though...you should educate yourself about this stuff! This kind of information is as important as learning about steemworld.org or @ginabot or any other thing that makes your steemit experience a better one. I know of people who have been scammed here, and they are kind, caring, and smart people. So please don't think "this won't happen to me, so I don't need to involve myself in it". Take the time to help someone else, to pass the information on to someone who doesn't know what it all means; it's just another aspect of paying it forward.
I'll leave you with this quote that I love, by anthropologist Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
It's up to each and every one of us to work together, continually learning and educating others, in the hopes of keeping this platform great ;)
