[solved] AM I A VICTIM OF VOTE STEALING? - perhaps your account has been also abused and you don't even know it ...
 | Try to imagine my surprise when I opened an email early this morning.just to read a message from a dear friend @devann, warning me that I may be a victim of "vote stealing". He brought an example of his own case, where some posts were published by an unknown author would receive his upvotes (even while he was off-line). |
|---|
INTRODUCTION
He pointed out that I upvoted content created by @dlease writen in Italian language. And on top of that I used my 17k SP FULL voting power (which I really never do). And it seems that this abuse of my account by @dlease has been happening for quite some time already.
I remember signing weeks ago to their site https://dlease.io/ and I had given my trust to this project by linking it with my account via SteemConnect (which I consider safe). During that process however, I wasn't informed that my account will be used to "upvote" their content and I never accepted unauthorized usage of received access to my account (posting key).
FULLY ALARMED
I was alarmed right away and one of my first steps was to check steemworld.org/@user (or steemd.com/@user) and have a look at my latest activity. On top of unautorized upvotes for @dlease, I also realized that @steemsports are receiving my upvotes on similar basis. With full voting power, without my approval.
In this case I do not even recognize seeing that account in my entire life and I cannot figure out how they got into possessing my posting key.
It made me realize that the scale of this problem could be potentially bigger than I could expect at that time. So, it's time to build some awareness to avoid such an abuse of our accounts!
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER
My intentions are not to "spit" or offend the team behind dlease or steemsports as I do believe that they are putting much effort into their work. I'm only sharing my own concern and impression that my STEEMit accout (which is my property) has been used against my will. I hope to clarify this problem and build awareness so others would pay more attention to this issue.
I can only hope that this publication will not upset anyone and will serve others, as I strongly believe that most of us never even considered that our upvotes can be "stolen".
SHARE YOUR OPINION
I really would like to know what other people think about this situation. I'm sure many of you dear readers have been exposed to similar abuse of your own Steemit accounts. Perhaps many of you don't even know about it (as I did not til @devann contacted me in the first place).
I obviously removed my account from dlease.io and my trust towards this tool is forever gone. I can only wonder if this will be enough to stop them from gaining access to my account or will they continue. Unfortunately only time will tell.
Please share with me if you ever had similar experience. The best way we can fight with these unwanted situations like the one describe above is by building awareness and warning other users. So I would really appreciate each comment (and resteem, which would help reach and bring awareness to more unsuspecting people).
 | @reggaemuffin explained in comment section the reasons why @dlease has been upvoted from my account, for which I'm very grateful. Taking into consideration excellent communication and mature response, I would still consider @dlease as a trustworthy project. I would also like to underline that main goal I wanted to achieve is simple: to build awareness and encourage people to monitor their account activity. |
|---|
Yours,
Piotr
Just to clarify again what happened here:
@crypto.piotr signed up to steemvoter.com as a free user, which gives @buildteam the authority to use one of his votes a day as compensation for the service. Since @dlease is a @buildteam project, its posts get voted, as disclosed in the footer:
Signing up to dlease itself does not give us the authority to use anyones vote and that is not what we are doing. Technically inclined people can even check which key signed these votes :)
If @crypto.piotr wants to stop these upvotes from happening, he can go to steemvoter.com and disable his account or upgrade it to a premium account. Again, this has nothing to do with dlease itself and deauthorizing dlease will not stop steemvoter upvotes.
upvoted for visibility
Dear @reggaemuffin
I'm again grateful for your explanation and I already managed to remove my account from SteemVoter.
Personally I would appreciate more transparency coming from people creating tools like SteemVoter. Those informations should be clearly visible (instead of small print) during registration.
Currently it does look like hidden cost and I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one surprissed and my trust towards this team is most likely forever broken.
Again I very much appreciate your help and explanation.
Yours
Piotr
It is true that the old steemvoter.com is not the easiest interface and does not highlight the freemium votes well enough for everyone to understand it. We are working on beta.steemvoter.com as a new interface which will spell these things out clearly and gives users more control. But we did not want to deactivate the old version completely, as many users still use it and are happy with the service it provides.
We worked on the FAQ to state this as clearly as possible and every post that steemvoter.com votes will appear on has the footer that I showed to give you a way to check if this was a legitimate vote. We have disabled registration to the old steemvoter.com for quite some time, as it was not feasible for us to revamp the signup process to be more clear when we have the new beta version.
The service you were using (steemvoter.com) is now over 2 years old and we learned many things from our users feedback since then. It is a deprecated service and the upvotes keep it running for all the users (like you) who were using it. You are always free to disable your account there or move to the new beta version.
I am sorry that this broke your trust in BuildTeam, so I am here to show you what happened, how you can fix this and why this has nothing to do with using dlease :)
If you have any other questions or feedback, you can always talk to us, we listen to all our users!
Dear @reggaemuffin
You've earned my full respect for all time that you invested into your explanations.
Honestly I was worried that my post will upset someone from your team and I will feel your anger (flags). I'm glad that instead of downvotes, I received professional feedback.
THANK YOU
Piotr
This was a thing that happened to some users, so we took steps to mitigate it. We are glad that the users are vigilant about unauthorized use of their accounts and try to be as accountable as possible.
No one will be perfect, but we will improve with every feedback we get :) And pinging our staff will get you a quick response to any problem you might have with our services.
Flags on concerned users are not our style ;)
Very professional answer! By the way I love beta.steemvoter ;-)
Seriously respect @reggaemuffin
I think the problem, as @reggaemuffin pointed out, is one of transparency. I remember signing up for Utopian and Dtube and both of those took my votes and I only noticed the small print afterwards.
Anyway like you say, good to see these services thriving and good people like @reggaemuffin running them :-)
Cg
Utopian and Dtube 'took' your votes? Neither of those are a voting service, and utopian doesn't even have a log in, just a method to use tags.
Are you sure you have this right? If so, could you explain a bit more so I can understand and avoid whatever happened to you?
Yeah, you nailed it.
I did not know steemvoter before this topic, but your answers @raggamuffin makes me interested
So you are lease and steemvoter too? So in short you use steemvoter its payment for using it) to upvote your own lease?
Try steemrewarding.com as a completely free alternative to steemvoter, it's designed by holger80 and offers many more customization options.
Dear @reggaemuffin
I added small update to my post.
One more time I would like to thank you for taking the time to reply in very mature and polite manners. You've earned my respect.
Yours,
Piotr
Hi Piotr,
I think that this is related to you using steemvoter. Here a capture from FAQ of Steemvoter:
Since dlease is also powered by Buildteam, I think that explains the reason of the upvotes.
Best regards,
Achim
Yes, this is possible and could be true for @crypto.piotr, if he had signed up for steemvoter.
In my case, when I first experienced it about 3 months ago, I wasn't even a member of steemvoter, and hence it was not related to steemvoter.
Nonetheless, thanks for pointing out steemvoter. I notice some of my upvotes (10 in all) since 14 days ago have been through steemvoter. I, in fact, mistook one of it for vote stealing.
Dear @devann
I would like to thank you again for pointing out at this issue.
The truth is that according to priscreen provided by @achim03 - we all agree for Steemvoter to upvote it's content. I cannot find any mention about my approval for 3rd parties to use my upvotes to reward their content (as dlease is a 3rd party app; it is not steemvoter and I can hardly see any judge or lawer disagreeing with it).
Reality is that my trust towards this tool is already broken :( That shouldn't be this way. And this is not a "professional" opinion. It's an opinion coming from noone but "regular joe".
Yours
Piotr
Dear crypto.piotr,
DLease is not a 3rd party, both DLease and Steemvoter are services by BuildTeam. That is a little bit like Gmail and GDrive, both are owned by Google and thus linked with each other.
If BuildTeam was using your vote to upvote, for example, Utopian or SteemSTEM, then you'd be correct. But the current usage is stated in Steemvoter's ToS.
This is because you are not here enough to learn all the rules and quirks of this place, @crypto.piotr. Signing up for things is only Step One. The whole steem ecosystem is very complex and you need to monitor everything you do here.
If you are only coming in a few times a month, you will not have enough time to figure things out fully. I totally object to the term "vote stealing" in this case, since you gave your permission without knowing what you were doing.
I use @steemdunk for autovoting. I have been very happy with them for 1.5 years. Maybe you can give them a look, but read their terms and conditions if you do.
I also use Steem Dunk! (steemdunk.xyz)
Dear @crypto.piotr
I had experimented with steemvoter about a month ago and signed up for it authorizing it to upvote certain authors. That was about a month ago and it doesn't explain the earlier unauthorized votes selling from my account.
The point I am making is that I did forget that I signed up for steemvoter and authorized it to upvote certain specified authors, until I read @achim's comment. You need to rule out such a possibility for yourself too. You need to be absolutely sure about it as otherwise you might be putting innocent people in the crosshairs.
Dear @Crypto.Piotr,
I don't want to impose or be divisive in any way but, since I've seen a friend who used to use Steemvoter having a similar problem, with another account (can't remember which was it), decided back then to not use it and just keep it stored in favourites 'just in case'.A great friend introduced me (will keep her identity concealed) to @SteemAuto, that has the autovote feature and a lot of other very useful and configurable tools, it's free and although I share a little bit of my reward income that is completely optional. Plus, never had a problem with it, the only times there were problems they were my fault.I would even share a lot more to give support for the quality of all the services/tools but will leave that for the time when I become a whale!! x)Having said that I will only add that, maybe it's time for You to change services/tools to 'better' ones..All the best,Cy
BIG THX for always being so responsive @cyberspacegod
Appreciate.
Yours, Piotr
Perfect! I was about to show this before checking through the comments first.
This is the reason why I don't use steemvoter for automated votes as we equally have steemauto offering this service for free!
Posted using Partiko Android
There are many perks that steemvoter does more than steemauto. But to each their own requirement, every good thing came with a price if my voting power already exceeding certain amount, I'd like steemvoter to keep me as subscription base rather than pay with my vote. But currently since I'm still small, I don't really mind if they make use of some of my votes. I'm a happy customer for both 🙂
Posted using Partiko Android
This explains it
Posted using Partiko Android
Dear @achim03
Thank you for that valuable information. That could be indeed a problem. Personally I do not use steemvoter but I remember signing up very long time ago to see what is this software about.
I strongly believe that information that they will be using accounts to upvote their own account should be more visible (during registration) as it would allow to aviod such a heavy surprisses.
Now the challenge will be to remove dlease access to my account and ensure that those unwanted upvotes will not happen in the future.
I also wonder how come that many of @steemsports posts have been upvoted (as I never had anything to do with their profile and I do not share their passion towards NBA).
Thank you again Achim
Piotr
This is sadly not the correct fix as the votes happens on steemvoter.com, so to stop them would require to disable the account there. The @buildteam authority has nothing to do with this. Please read my in-depth comment on what happened here: https://steempeak.com/steemit/@reggaemuffin/re-cryptopiotr-am-i-a-victim-of-vote-stealing-perhaps-your-account-has-been-also-abused-and-you-don-t-even-know-it-20190515t154949895z
you can revoke any of dApp by editing this link and replacing the app name: https://steemconnect.com/revoke/@APP_NAME
Example: https://steemconnect.com/revoke/@dlease
It completely an action by @steemvoter it can vote on any post on your behalf and @steemsports is one it's family accounts.
Posted using Partiko Android
This is sadly not the correct fix as the votes happens on steemvoter.com, so to stop them would require to disable the account there. The @buildteam authority has nothing to do with this. Please read my in-depth comment on what happened here: https://steempeak.com/steemit/@reggaemuffin/re-cryptopiotr-am-i-a-victim-of-vote-stealing-perhaps-your-account-has-been-also-abused-and-you-don-t-even-know-it-20190515t154949895z
Thanks for your clarification. I was barely answering the question highlighted and I understand it's from steemvoter as stated in the last part of my comment.
Since you say you are aware of these complaints from users and working to solve it with a new version of steemvoter, there's really nothing more to say other than "good luck and hope it gets released sooner".
We already have beta.steemvoter.com :) just that we don't kick out existing users of steemvoter.com
Does your link work if I used steem keychain to sign in to the dApp, @akomoajong?
Thank you in advance for your response.
No, it uses Steem connect. Steem keychain is just an alternative to steemconnect which was developed by steemit Inc. You shouldn't be scared to use it as it is open source and very secured. Also, if you login on steemit.com with your keys steem connect is even a better option.
I login on steemit and other dApps with my posting keys but I carryout all my transactions through steemconnect because I'm sure of the security.
Thanks @akomoajong
Thanks @crypto.piotr ,this article have prompted me that I should always read and understood any project or platform modus of operandi before registering especially when it involves registering with SteemConnect.
You have
DRAMA!To view or trade
DRAMAgo to steem-engine.com.Could you please remove my account from your list of automatic comments @dramatoken
Yours
Piotr
The dramatoken account only comments when it is called by someone who holds the DRAMA token.
It is notifying you that you have earned a token for being dramatic. I upvoted it after your flag.
You spam my wallet daily, make fake assumptions and post FUD posts prior to doing any research.
You are embarrassing yourself here.
Dear @whatsup
Oh wow :) I love it. So it seem that two people had similar impression. I never thought that I may be considered dramma king :)
Oh, I clearly see that I upseted you. I will obviously not argue with you and respect your opinion.
Please trust me, that I did go through entire dlease.io website and I read all informations I could find. Should I know that this account is somehow connected with site I sign up to about year ago?
In current age, where people are losing access to their accounts - any activity that one do not recognize should be alarming.
Would you like me to stop bothering you with my memos? I'm mostly promoting once a week content created by other authors and Im doing it by sending memos to all people I engaged with. If you consider it spam and you're upset at my behaviour (unfortunatelly Im failing to understand reasons) then obviously I will not bother you in the future.
Yours
Piotr
Actually to be fair I don't mind your memos and I appreciate downvoting, so we are fine.. maybe I over reacted too.
cheers.
I read this and Resteemed it.
I am pretty sure the people behind @dlease include @thecryptodrive since it may be a @buildteam project.
I am not 100% sure but I think it is there project. I am using their project @tokenbb to build my own Steem-based website and I enjoy their work.
Let's see if they, or someone else, can create a tool for discovering stolen upvoting easily 👍
I made a response to this, he is using steemvoter.com as a free user, which causes the votes, as displayed in the faq there. His usage of dlease is unrelated to votes.
Again I very much appreciate your time and explanation @reggaemuffin
I strongly believe, that others will find this information also very useful and I hope you understand how shocking and scary it may be to discover that your account is being used to upvote some content and on top of that it's initially hard to find explanation.
After all "regular joes" may not connect dlease with steemvoter and without your explanation I would still be "in the dark".
The truth is, that if we go to the bank to open our accounts then we are being informed about all costs. When we buy plane ticket or book a hotel, then we also are being informed ahead about all costs.
Noone is telling us to visit FAQ if we want to learn about some extra expenses. I'm not saying that to attack you or anyone related to dlease/steemvoter. I'm just pointing out that this situations could be easily avoided.
FAQ is not a good place to display informations about extra/hidden cost of provided service.
Yours
Piotr
This is what we have done already, we disabled signups for that old service and added information on each voted post that people can read. Since you signed up to steemvoter.com before we disabled the signups, there was no reason to disable your account on our side, it would be quite unfair to just kick people out of a service they enjoy using so we kept existing users like you.
For me it is important to inform people about what happened with your account as to not spread FUD about @dlease upvoting posts.
Dear @reggaemuffin
And you did a great job so far.
I used to trade on ebay for many years in the past and I've learned that most customers do not pay that much attention to negative feedbacks received from customers. They mostly pay close attention to response coming from sellers as it does show clearly with what kind of people are we dealing. And it shows how do they handle 'crisis situation'.
And you handled it brilliantly.
ps.
Using full upvote isn't quite fair. After all 100% upvote of someone with 100SP or 20k SP = very different cost for both of those people. But that's already a bit off-topic.
Yours
Piotr
Thank you, I am glad to hear that!
Would it be possible that you update the post with the information I provided, as to not confuse people who read it?
That is what premium is for. For 3 SBD per month you can remove all restrictions and disable the votes, so once your account has enough SP that this is worth it, buying premium is the way to opt out. We have users with quite some SP who intentionally don't buy premium as they like to support buildteam anyway. In this way we give everyone the option to decide if freemium or premium is what they want.
With our new shop we are even trying out auto renewing subscriptions for user convenience, with 3, 6 and 12 month prepay possible too. https://shop.buildteam.io/product/sv-premium-1-month/
I'm glad you and @buildteam cleared up this issue right away @reggaemuffin and I am sure that builds a lot of confidence in @dlease and all of your other products 😀
I updated my post a moment ago and only now I read your comment @reggaemuffin
ps. the biggest problem I see is the fact, that I couldn't find any informations on dlease.io which could point me in right direction and help me figure out why does my account upvote theirs.
Also in current days people lose their accounts on different platforms almost on daily basis. Hacks are everywhere. Even giants like Binance has been very lately a victim.
And now, just imagine waking up in the morning and learning that 3rd party (of which I didn't know and couldn't figure out) had an access to my account and using it to upvote some content.
That is some scary shit.
ps.2.
Thank for that link.
Cheers, Piotr
This is because the upvotes are not related to dlease.io and the information is under to upvoted post itself.
I think it is impossible to provide enough information that someone in a panic state of "I AM HACKED!!!!!11eleven" will be able to find out why it happened.
Thank you for your kind comment @chrisrice
Yours
Piotr
Same thing happened to me when I was using steemvoter or a auto voting tools from buildteam.I can't remember the exact name of the service I was using.But things like that are supposed to happen when you use some tool for voting or use auto voting system to vote content for you.
The best is not to use that kind of service if it bothers you.It is not vote stealing exactly as you have given them the permission to upvote on behalf of you.
Dear @philipkavan
Thank you for your comment.
I just learned that information about those upvotes are displayed in FAQ section. I'm not sure if that means that I have given anyone permission to upvote on my behalf. The truth is that it's very tricky way of hiding those expenses.
I strongly believe that each customer should have "black and white" all informations about upcoming costs being displayed during registration. But then, I may be wrong.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts with me.
Yours
Piotr
Hi friend, @crypto.piotr
I regret that this morning 5:30am Venezuela time I could not answer this message, just a few minutes after reading and sending a message by telegram to a friend, the electric power service was cut off.
Approximately three months ago I realized what was happening with my votes, immediately investigate what happened with my votes because they were used in this way, so speak personally with one of the @buildteam team's CEO to be more accurate. with @thecryptodrive he answered my questions and was an extremely polite person just like you are my dear @crypto.piotr friend.
If you are very right when your votes are used without knowing how an account is using them. I see that @reggaemuffin who is also part of the team has already explained very well how our votes are shaped.
After talking to @thecryptodrive I read one of his publications which I thought was very important for the community that speaks Spanish, and asked for his authorization to translate that post that I liked, he agreed to that request.
He invited me to do the translations into Spanish in future publications.
I think it's a good job they do, I also regret not reading the small letters and not going to the frequent questions but my doubts were clarified.
Thanks for this publication so many people can clarify their doubts about it.
Friend. @crypto.piotr
I send you a big hug very fraternal.
Dear @lanzjoseg
Did you lose electricity again? Omg. It's happening more and more often, right?
Excellent initiative!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.
Cheers, Piotr
It's all about security in this day and age, my friend. It seems a thief can get more from a cyber attack than from invading your home, and with less risk! And in my experience when I forget about security, or when I think I am doing everything necessary, THAT is when something seems to happen. I do hope that you avoid instances like this in the future.
Dear @peacefulpatriot
I just realized that I never actually thanked you for your comment. Somehow I missed your reply and I only had a chance to read it now.
Cheers :)
Piotr
@crypto.piotr I have just noticed a memo you have been sending out as per screenshot below, both my accounts received it and haven't investigated how many of these memos you have sent out. We have been very amicable and helped you with your technical support issue and instructed you how to remove your account from Steemvoter which you signed up form on the terms that we can use one vote per day on any of our projects.
You have followed our instruction and have now disabled your Steemvoter account, our replies were timeous and we were co-operative so I see no reason why you would need to spread FUD widely via memo.
To me, it looks like drama being created to get some votes on your post, the post itself was unnecessary and so was the memo, they are bordline defamatory and at the very least very inflammatory.
Dear @thecryptodrive
I fully agree and for that reason I added "small update" at the end of my post:
I had a pleasure to "talk" to @reggaemuffin and indeed clarify this issue. Please try to understand the way someone can feel (panic mode) seeing suspisious activity on his/hers own account. Activity he/she cannot recognize.
I understand that it may look like this from your angle. Reality is that I care only about valuable comments and all my rewards from posts/comments I'm transfering as a weekly support to group of few Venezuelans (project #hope):
https://steemit.com/steemit/@crypto.piotr/two-in-one-my-happy-birthday-and-raise-of-project-hope
I'm spending over 400 STEEM a month supporting those content creators and my goals are absolutely far from earning anything on upvotes.
Again thank you for your patience and time,
Yours
Piotr
It would be good to have a [solved] in the title and a link to my comment at the top of the post. As you have learned, small footer updates are easy to miss 😜
Hello my very dear friend @crypto.piotr.
Thank you very much for this valuable and informative post.
Immediately I did Resteem.
I do not know if I'll be a victim of vote-stealing. I will try to find out in some way.
Related to the use of Steemconnect. I have always thought that this tool is very safe. I always use it to register in all those Dapps that unite over the blockchain STEEM.
Each time we log in, these applications are registered in our history:
I've always wondered, how can I eliminate them from there?
Many of these applications I only used once out of curiosity.
Steemconnect has a revoke function. Go and explore. I included a revoke link above in my reply. U can use that shortcit by changing the dapp name.
Posted using Partiko Android
Thank you very much, dear friend.