Don't get screwed by scam accounts while transferring your money to upvote bots!!
Hello Steemians! Today I will be shifting your attention from my usual Travel and Cooking blogs to an important matter that some of you may have come across already.
Recently I faced a situation of erroneous transfer to an upvote bot by auto-typing the wrong account name of the bot using my smartphone. Now let me distract you from the subject above for a second and tell you that I do use upvote services to promote my posts, although I always try to publish quality content. As a minnow, I believe that this practice helps some beginners like myself to get attention of a larger public and not get lost in this vast Steemit ocean! Also I do appreciate and support upvote services such as @jerrybanfield which funds growth projects on Steemit such as @budgets and regularly promotes top 25 high quality posts.
Coming back to this unpleasant "situation" I had to face. While trying to make a transfer to @minnowbooster bot, I somehow entered an account name @minn and by the time I realized my mistake the funds were gone already. Now, the amount of transfer was not a huge one and, to be honest, I wasn't pretty much expecting the refund, but this pushed me to make further investigation into it. And, fellow Steemians, I came across a SHOCKING discovery:
There are tens, if not hundreds, accounts like that on Steemit that were all created starting from beginning of 2016 until the most recent ones in January 2018. All those accounts have several things in common:
- Name association with (or abbreviation of) the most popular and commonly used upvote bots
- Zero (and I mean literally ZERO) posting activity on those accounts
- Collecting wrongly transferred funds and not a single refund made to users since existence of the account.
- Regular transfers of "honestly earned" benefits to some associated accounts. I will talk on this more later on.
- Reputation 25, which speaks all for itself...
Now lets's go through some of those accounts that I had time to discover during my swift inquiry this morning. I am sure you will be able to find many more of them should you have time and energy to make longer research
Users by mistake (or due to technical glitch that mainly happens while making transfers from smartphones) associate it with @appreciator upvote bot. Created JUL 2016. Posting activity: Zero. Reputation: 25. Accumulated funds: 27.52 SBD. Refunds: Zero
The absolute leader that I have found so far!
Users by mistake associate it with @booster upvote bot. Created AUG 2016. Posting activity: Zero. Reputation: 25. Accumulated funds: 79.62 SBD. Refunds: Zero
Users by mistake associate it with @minnowsupport upvote bot. Created JUL 2017. Posting activity: Zero. Reputation: 25. Accumulated funds: 51.04 SBD. Refunds: Zero
Here is another one associated with the same bot:
https://steemit.com/@min/transfers
Created JUL 2017. Posting activity: Zero. Reputation: 25. Accumulated funds: 46.36 SBD + 6.66 Steem. Refunds: Zero
Now this one has a history of of transfers of its "honestly earned" benefits to account @angel. You could say "so what?" But I have found out that this @angel account is regularly receiving transfers from other pseudo-accounts like @min and guess what? Exactly the same description here: Created APR 2017. Posting activity: Zero. Reputation: 25.
I would like to stress to newcomers of Steemit that there is nothing wrong with Reputation 25. In fact, this is initial value we all get while signing-up and starting using Steemit for the very first time. But this reputation value, maintained for a long period of time, also means that there was absolutely no posting, commenting or other social activities (I suppose fundamental actions for which Steemit platform was designed) from the creation date of the account.
Users by mistake associate it with @jerrybanfield upvote services. Created JUL 2016. Posting activity: Zero. Reputation: 25. Accumulated funds: 15.5 SBD + 0.5 Steem. Refunds: Zero
And this is his elder brother:
https://steemit.com/@jerry/transfers
Well guys, I could go on and on. But don't want to take your precious time which you have already spent if your are still reading my post at this point. As I have mentioned above, you could make your own research and find many more of those scam accounts. Just use your fantasy and apply any abbreviation to well-known upvote bots out there.
Here below are some other examples and some newcomers registered in JAN 2018, ready to snatch your funds and never return...
https://steemit.com/@build/transfers mistaken with @buildawhale
https://steemit.com/@upm/transfers mistaken with @upme or @upmyvote
https://steemit.com/@boom/transfers mistaken with @boomerang
https://steemit.com/@post/transfers mistaken with @postpromoter
https://steemit.com/@all/transfers mistaken with @allaz
https://steemit.com/@rand/transfers or https://steemit.com/@ran/transfers mistaken with @randowhale
https://steemit.com/@sne/transfers mistaken with @sneaky-ninja
https://steemit.com/@bum/transfers mistaken with @bumper
Well dear Steemians, I should wind up here. Hope my article wouldn't offend anyone. I apologize in advance if some of the accounts mentioned above are genuine and not a scam. I just wanted to stress your attention to the issues you could face while upvoting your posts and be always careful, verify the account name before you click to that "transfer" button.
Have a nice morning, day, afternoon all!
- Image rights belong to me
There is just no way someone would mistake @build for @buildawhale
about 90% of the example you gave are very far from the whole name.
https://steemit.com/@sneakyninja/transfers or @boomrang have more likely been registered to be sent money by mistake.
You could read examples above from real people how it could happen. The system preselects the bot from the list of previous transfers, but in fact wouldn't insert full account name of that bot, just part of it. That's where the issue is coming from, not a user mistyping manually the name of the bot
Thank you for this useful information. I am a new user and I have already used several different bidding bots. I see there is very limited pathways available for new users to get upvote. It is a shame therefore that the system can be manipulated in this way.
Lol, I just did a 6SBD "donation" to @post yesterday.
https://steemit.com/@post/transfers
But what can you do, it was my fault - I wasn't paying attention and it happened.
Now I know and I will be super careful in the future.
Tnx for bringing this to public - it's easier when you know you are not alone :)
Thanks for your comments. In fact there are hundreds of cheated people if you go through all those scam accounts. That has become quite a business! )
Thanks for bringing this to public knowledge. Truth is every one need to be careful when doing such transactions. For me, i would even say dont use your phone unless it has a big screen. Preferably, usa a tab or a computer
Thanks for your comments. In fact I didn't mention this in my post: there is some kind of technical bug in Android smartphone web browsers, that would automatically insert only part of the account name, while selecting the bot from your recent transfers list. That's where the whole issue is coming from, and those scam accounts are well using this glitch to abuse users and increase their profits
The mobile interface is horrible and I too have accidentally transferred all my SBD by mistake. Live and learn.
Thanks I actually had this happen. I was going to use the @boomerang bot but instead when I typed @boom I saw boomerang highlighted then I clicked enter and transferred. Easy as that to make a mistake I didn't click on boomerang I clicked enter. I saw there were others who had done the same though not as often I'm sure. Thank you for this post. I hope people can benefit from knowing this and not making the same mistake as us!
Thank you for taking the time to post about this. As a new Steem user you have definitely brought my attention to this issue. I haven't used voting bots before but will definitely be careful if transferring any funds to other accounts in the future.
Unfortunately this is an ongoing issue that has no solution.
Thanks @afrosiab for this post. You must have seen my 8SBD error to @app, not @appreciator, which was my own error. I pay closer attention after that error.
When I had to type the whole name completely, I was actually very careful; however, I got lazy when I saw the drop-down populate the "To:" field in the transfer dialog. So, of course, my fault.
The automatic drop-down is a problem in my view because now the @app account shows 1 transfer in the dialog. There is no way to edit this automatic dropdown list - that is not ok.
Furthermore, since I noticed my error immediately, there should be some recourse to 'un-transfer' within some short timeframe, like 30 or 60 seconds. This perspective is completely opposite the concept of cryptocurrency transfers and blockchain in general for keeping all data in the blockchain.
Finally, I noticed that @app has done nothing and has not transferred funds out of the wallet. This makes me think it was not originally set up for a scam. I have seen other accounts that have been.
Thanks for the post and notifying me of it.
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Thank you @GoldKey for detailed comments and sharing your experience with us. Actually, some of those accounts do transfer their so called "revenue" to third party accounts such as to @angel and @warren.buffet So not all of them are so innocent as they seem to be
I completely agree with you! Many are not innocent - straight up scams. There are many that were set up as a scam. I'm sure there will be many more created.
Really useful information my friend. I appreciate your work and it takes a lot of time to track these kinds of activities. Thank you for this awareness post. It is very useful and beneficial for all the users that use biding bots especially on smart phones.
Thanks. I am glad that this info could be helpful. I see a lot of users in the activity of those scam accounts transferring big amounts for upvote and not getting any refunds
Thank you afrosiab for making a transfer to me for an upvote of 6.10% on this post!
Half of your bid goes to @budgets which funds growth projects for Steem like our top 25 posts on Steem!
The other half helps holders of Steem power earn about 60% APR on a delegation to me!
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