Steemit Scammers, Spammers and Mosquito Flaggers — Some Things Never Change!

By way of announcement, let me start this with a cautionary note:

If you get a comment from from the user @gorafarid, claiming to represent @exnihilo.witness and promising you 100 Steem for voting their witness, IT IS A SCAM!

The comment might look something like this:

This is basically an attempt to steal your private keys, after which your account could quickly be emptied of all your stake and liquid Steem/SBD! So don't click on the link!

It's actually a somewhat clever phishing attempt, as the @exnihilo.witness does in fact have a revenue sharing program... however, this isn't it!

The link in the comment leads to an external web site and there's immediately something suspect about it:

The founder of Steemworld.org is actually long-time Steemian and No. 1 witness @steemchiller, so the above is an outright lie.

Anyway... always be careful!

As an aside, I am not actually blaming user @gorafarid because I suspect his account is compromised and someone else is using it.

Of course, it's not the first time we've seen something like this... unfortunately, when there is money involved, we always get to see some of the shadier members of the human species.

Not all posts are created equal!

While on That Subject...

I'm glad to see that the @endingplagiarism crew has been very active in pursuing spammers and content thieves, with their Mosquito Squishers initiative!

Spam and so-called "copy pasta" has been an issue on Steemit since my earliest days here... and I know how frustrating and annoying it can be to have your content stolen! It has happened to me on several occasions in the past, although those were not here on Steemit.

Still, it's good to know there's a focused effort to clamp down on this particular form of thievery! I also want to commend my friend @stef1 who is doing an awesome job of sleuthing out some pretty well hidden examples opf plagiarism and content theft!

Meanwhile...

The army of "tiny downvoters" are still active, I noticed this afternoon.

If you have been here for any time at all you have undoubtedly been hit with several tiny -10% downvotes from accounts with 25 reputations, no posts and virtually no SteemPower.

Truthfully, they are mostly just an annoyance, as their votes are too minuscule to affect anyone's payout. And, in fact, they were never meant to influence your payout!

The myriad tiny accounts were created by an angry Steemit user who got busted for trying their own version of "rewards pool rape," and when they were called out, they set out on a "revenge campaign" intended mostly to have a demoralizing effect on new users who'd perhaps only get 3-4 upvotes... and suddenly see 3-4 of this downvotes and perhaps turn their back on Steemit as a place they didn't want to be.

The disgruntled Steemit user's primary desire: to see Steemit FAIL.

Daisy the dog says: "Stealing is just plain WRONG!"

But even with thousands of these tiny "nuisance accounts," it hasn't had much impact other than to make many long-time Steemians angry.

There isn't anything you can do when they visit one of your posts... just KNOW that they actually have no impact on your post payout OR on your reputation score!

Anyway, be careful out there, folks... and remember that not everyone plays nice!

Thanks for reading, have a great remainder of your week!

How about YOU? Have you evr seen any "phishing" attempts in your time on Steemit? Have you ever had your keys stolen by unscrupulous operators? Were you able to recover your account? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20210622 02:45 PDT
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