Part of my endeavors as a witness is to support a growing community - @steemph - I organize a weekly AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) for the purpose of sharing, imparting knowledge and educating the community.
 | Yes, @samstonehill 's account was a victim of phishing attacks. It's easy to recover an account, and it can be done by the creator of your account. in most cases (and you can check it at steemd.com) the account @steem is the creator. whoever controls that account can recover your account provided you still have your old password. |
  | Firstly, your password generates all the keys.The posting key is all you need if you just want to login, post, upvote or comment. You would need your private key if you want to do transactions like transfer SBD/STEEM, vote for a witness or change your profile info |
  | The best (as far as I know) is to actively check your account activity through block explorers like steemd.com or steemdb.com |
 | If the functions of those sites are limited to posting, upvoting or commenting it's fairly safe to just send your posting key but always check the integrity of those sites. |
 | Most of them (if not all) are not affiliated with steemit (as far as i know) . Some of these tools are created by witnesses or developers who want to contributed or give value to the community. |
  | Yes. Always be vigilant to were you input your credentials and if you are not sure always just use your POSTING KEY and if it's too good to be true, then it probably is! |
  | Somewhere you have access to and offline. |
 | Let's face it, the more money involve the more bad guys exist to steal them away from us. Most of us here are crypto investors and it's important that we should be conscious of our security. Before systems were vulnerable meaning, hackers target servers, computers to hack accounts but now, the most common attacks are targeting the human vulnerability. |
 | I'd say STEEM is fairly secure by design again attributing this to how the keys and their functions are compartmentalized. In order to attack the STEEM blockchain you'll have to destroy all the witness nodes and all STEEM nodes (not necessarily run by witnesses but stores all transactions) |
 | IF you are referring to steemit.com , a lot of users report the same experience and personally I think steemitdev are doing a lot of feature upgrades and infrastructure upgrades (i could be wrong). saying that, there are millions of reasons why this would happen not necessarily connected to security. |
 | It's a good practice to change your password regularly. |
 | it's not that hard to find ip address especially for public accessible servers. It's possible to locate the IP address of a witness server but it would need a very tricky craft to do so. |
 | Correct! |
 | At some point YES, a lot of malware can easily be embedded ot whatever you download from unknown sources in the internet. |
 | There are a lot and the list can go on and on. It's a good practice to think before you click and always remember if it's too good to be true, then it probably is! |
  | There is no limit and we can't say exactly as of now how many nodes are there for the STEEM blockchain |
 | I'd say if the exchange has a good reputation then it's fairly safe but always be cautious. remember what happened to MtGox. Don't place all your coins in one place. |
 | Exercise due diligence if you want to invest on ICO's or cryptocurrencies. Find out who are behind them and if they have an established reputation in the community. |
  | precise.tips:8080 is not my witness node. It's my spare server where I host a condenser version of steemit (a mirror site or clone). It would be counter-intuitive for me to host a security consciousness and be sharing a malicious site. but saying that I always say to be cautious and only use your posting key if you don't know the site's owner. |
 |  |
 | Yes |
 | Be careful of what you download especially from unknown sites and be cautious of the softwares you install or run in your machines. Only download or install from known sources. |
 | You would only need your password if you want to generate all your keys especially if you don't know them or lost them (somehow) For financial transactions (if you are referring to SBD/STEEM transfers) you can use your private key instead. again do not use your password |
If you think I deserve your witness vote, cast it here https://steemit.com/~witnesses
