Congratulations and welcome to Steemit. Let's talk security.

In my previous post I linked you all through to the ever exciting and very important F.A.Q If you're a brand new Steemian I recommend you go and have a look at it now, ok so not now but at least after you have finished reading this.

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My Goal.

In this series, it is my goal to produce a little knowledge bank in bite size pieces that I can and eventually compile it into a complete post that can be used as a reference guide for new Steemians.

The learning curve as far as I am concerned is part of the proof of brain required to contribute to and gain earnings from the Steem platforms.

However, I don't see any issues with trying to lower that barrier to entry to encourage new users and increase the value of Steems currencies.

Todays Lesson: Why lock an empty house.

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Wooo Hooo you've joined steemit, you're ready to post, but wait whats this? A wallet better check that out. Oh, 0.5SP and 14 something delegated well that's not exactly Scrooge Mc Duck kind of money in fact if you could sell it straight away free of fees that's about $1.85 so why care about security? Sounds like a lot of learning in order to protect a buck eighty-five.

It's your responsibility to yourself.

Dead serious ** it's your job** and nobody else's. If you fail to take steps to protect it now when its worth next to nothing you could lose a lot later on.

Enter the analogy of locking an empty house. I want you to imagine you have just built a house, it's empty you have nothing of value inside your still going to lock it up after all even though there is nothing to steal you don't want people tagging your wall with graffiti, right?

Now I want to expand the idea Imagine leaving copies of your house key scattered around the neighborhood with your address on because after all there is nothing to steal in there right now, A year later you have the place filled with nice stuff a massive TV, a badass gaming rig, or I don't know a room full of steem dollars.

It's a lovely house filled with nice stuff that someone is about to take using one of the keys you kindly left around the neighborhood and it's your fault.

Quit being so serious Shai and tell me what I need to do.

Step one

I hope you copied your owner/master key when your account was created that's pretty important put it in a text file print it out keep it safe Remember that F.A.Q post I made?

Read THIS Yeah, thats right no nice little forgot password here.

Step one

Now, I'm going to assume you have just logged in for the first time or that you have continued to log in with that first master key provided in the registration process.

Open another tab and navigate to your wallet and select permissions it's going to look something like this.

Remember I mentioned keys well these are them what you are seeing here are public keys having access to ones starting with the STM prefix is the equivalent of knowing someone's address but not having the key to the house, in fact, you could find these public keys for every account from plankton to whale even to the Leviathans.

Now since we have assumed you're logged in with that master key you're going to be able to click "show private key" on everything but the owner key remember that's the one you got at registration and are more than likely logged in with now.

Go ahead and click show private key on everything because right now you should be making copies of all your private keys so go ahead copy them into a text file with your master key back it up, print it, KEEP IT SAFE.

Whats the worst that could happen.

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Posting Key

This is the key you should be using to log in 95% of the time it's your day to day key its lets you post, comment, upvote etc so if someone happens to get a hold of yours is that maybe they post some low-quality content to your page and give out some unwarranted upvotes and the worst outcome I could think of if someone was really trollish they could make posts or comments in your name attacking a whale so its still wise not to give it out to strangers.

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Active Key

Made some posts, made some bank and now you have some steem, sbd, and sp in that wallet of yours, your active key is the one you're going to need if you intend to do anything with those funds so yeah you're going to need to to use it occasionaly.

This is not a day to day key and I am sure you can figure out that if this key lets you move your funds around then anyone else that gets their hands on it can move your money.

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Owner Key.

It is the master key! you should pretty much never, ever need to log in with this key except for the purpose of accessing your other keys and changing them if your concerned that they have been compromised, it should not be stored online, on a computer that is not private, in a web-based password manager, it lets you post, upvote, comment, move funds. IT LETS YOU DO EVERYTHING.

It would even allow someone to change the locks on your house leaving you outside faced with the difficult task of recovering your property if there is anything left inside by the time you can get back in.

Step Two.

If like me you're a little lazy there is a good chance that when you first logged in to your page you probably told your browser to remember your pasword.