Hi, community. Later on we were discussing possibilities of SteamIt being hacked. Now I want to discuss fraud schemes and grey businesses using SteemIt that we may see tomorrow.
I value your time and really think that large posts are no good. The goodness is in the ideas and in talent to write concisely and meaningful. Brevity is the soul of wit.
So let's get straight to the SteemIt fraud cases.
- First grey scheme that recently visited my mind requires one to have a decent Steem Power on account. Does not matter how he got it: earned posting or bought. So this Powered-Up man has his vote-up cost in say 30$. He creates an online service where SteemIt user sends him a payout in say 10$ with link to post for upvote. In Bitcoin equivalent and to Bitcoin wallet. Powered-Up man sees the transaction and link to post and upvotes it with his 30$ vote. This scheme can be easily automated, more accounts with different Steem Power added for smaller or larger tips and so forth. Let’s call this “the Payvote”.
- Next dark scheme requires no starting fees but some programming experience. One can also use real money to buy a freelancer to do the programming job. Rogue makes list of top bloggers and programs an automated parser with the ability to upvote just in time when needed. So when a new post of top blogger arrives the parser part does it’s thing and the program automatically upvotes when needed depending on it’s configuration. I call this “the Autocurator”.
One can say: “Hey but you just gave fraudsters a guide to action!” That’s true. But now that the community knows this we can find out ways to prevent such frauds or at least minimize the effects. If not me then someone else would’ve guessed these schemes but did not tell you and just used them secretly. And it is so much better for SteemIt to go through these things as early as possible.
I would be very glad if I am wrong and these are just my tales that can’t be applied to SteemIt. But my experience and knowledge says me that I am not wrong. Hope this post helps. I ask you, community, for you opinion how to prevent this. Please vote up so everybody can know this and be aware of. Write your own posts on the subject and solutions! I am already preparing next post in which I will try to understand SteemIt roots that make possible “the Payvote” and “the Autocurator” schemes. So stay tuned.
We live in imperfect world where there is money there surely will be users of dark schemes. So we must predict the future and find ways to protect the community from such grey and fraud schemes.
At the end I say great thanks to creators of SteemIt. CEO @ned and others. I am excited and really enjoy posting and learning SteemIt, cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Special thanks to @on0tole and Russian SteemIt Telegram community for their great support. What is Telegram and links to the communities Russian and English are in my previous post.