📌 Beware - Scammers are predators ! Scam attempts explained in simple terms (Original wildlife photos and thoughts)

They are circling - Protect yourselves!

Maj. Alan "Dutch" Schaefer to the Predator: "you one ugly motherfucker..."
- in the movie 'Predator'

Kites, Hawks, Buzzards and Eagles - all are predatory birds. I see them often enough circling in the sky. This one time though, I saw this Black Kite sitting on a tall dead tree and watching something intently. Having no hopes of matching it's vision, I could not even attempt to see the prey the kite was waiting for. While I waited, I thought of us innocent newbies on Steemit. Most of us - bloggers, photographers, musicians and writers - not really experts in computer security or crypto currency.

Are we easy prey for the predators on Steemit? Before I mention some of the predatory activity noted on Steemit, let us take a look at this fine specimen of a predator made by mother nature. Here is the hi-res photo I took with my Nikon P900 early this year.

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Predators always flock the places where they find easy prey. Prey is usually around the places where food needed for survival is found aplenty. Therefore - meet Steemit a.k.a. the Food Source and meet us newbies and initiates, a.k.a. the Prey!

Who or what are the predators and what are they doing (or planning to do to harm us)?

So - what are the predatory activities being observed on Steemit and how do we protect ourselves?

It is of course impossible to cover everything that is needed to keep ourselves secure against expert hackers. However, if we note the following simple things, we would not at least be 'serving ourselves on a platter' to any average Joe who is out to harm us.

• The 'message from Steemit security' scam:

This is a scam that surfaced around a month ago (at least I noticed it then). Several people with either a high reputation score or a large SP were targeted. A wallet message was sent to these accounts from an account in with a small steem/sbd transfer accompanied by a message stating that some unusual activity had been detected and their accounts would be suspended. To protect the accounts, the scam message asked you to contact them on a certain email. Several steemians have already blogged about this and issued a caution to all Steemians. For example this post from @karenmckersie and this post by @rok-sivante. The scam message looks like the following:

Many Steemians with a lot of SP have flagged the scammer's account and it should apparently no longer pose a threat by itself.

However, this does not mean that another scammer will not try the same trick. Therefore, please take following simple precaution:

Do not respond to any message which asks you to send private keys and personal details to suspicious email IDs. Please note that Steemit (or any respectable business website for that matter) will not generally use an email with Gmail or some such very public domain name.

Gullibility is the mainstay of people who become a prey for scammers. Do not panic and do exactly what the scammers want you to do. If you feel very worried, ask around. Senior Steemians are very willing to guide all newcomers on Discord channels.

• Steemit Phishing scam :

The scam mentioned above is a Phishing scam too but this one is a more direct one.

Phishing is a term used for attempts made by scammers to trick us into providing them our personal information - either through cloned websites or calls purportedly from authentic businesses such as banks or government departments. The scammers encourage people to click on some links (that supposedly provide lucrative rewards or bonuses etc.) and ask us to provide information to execute the so called 'reward'. The link then takes us to a website which looks very much like Steemit but actually is a clone that mines all the information we provide. Next - the scammers just log into our account and change passwords.

One such scam seems to have surfaced on Steemit a month ago. This post by @ilyastarar provides details. Please see following images in his post which explain how the website is actually NOT the authentic steemit website.

Again - the account responsible for this particular scam has been flagged by Senior Steemians and is probably no longer a threat but the scammers have already taken over a few accounts and could target us with a fresh Phishing scam, through a message from an 'authentic' Steemit account but containing links to websites that send data straight to the scammers.

Therefore, please remember NOT to click on any links directly. Please hover your mouse over any links and see if the link looks authentic. For example, links to any parts of Steemit itself or Steemit posts etc. should have 'https:/steemit.com/.....' as the beginning of the link. Please see the example below when I mouse over the News tag on steemit. My browser shows the link as 'https/steemit.com/news' in the bottom corner of my browser:

In conclusion:

Avoid clicking on suspicious links and responding to spurious emails demanding personal details or passwords. Do not lose control of your account and wallet. If you are unfortunate enough to become a prey by falling for the scam, initiate Steemit account recovery immediately.

Steemians, please share your experiences, knowledge and views about Predators on Steemit. We need to let as many people know about such scam attempts as possible and fight off such attacks on our beloved Steemit. Thanks

Note: All images except for the wildlife photo and the title image created by me are from pixabay.com. Images from other post have been used as an example and posts along with authors have been mentioned in the write-up