Your Morning Cuppa Noxsoma Steem: March 23, 2018

by Noxsoma

I once told a friend that I’d seen every movie ever made. She was skeptical, until I delivered the punch line; they keep making the same movie over and over again. There are only a handful of plots that the general public will go for. I know you can think of several, so leave them in the comments.

The (con) confidence game is the same way. Although it should be called the “greed” game, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Most, if not all con games require either greed or need. Greed works better. The idea of getting the better of another person, or entity blocks the logical portion of our brains.

The reason I bring this up is due to a scam that I heard about within the Steemit community. It’s not new. However I thought I’d address it nonetheless.

Most scams require us to trust the scammer. Why should we? So we don’t. The way around the distrust we feel, is an offer to trust us… and profit.

The classic and now cliché Nigerian con, if I remember correctly, required a sum to be invested in return for the promise of a larger return. The sum is invested and the return never materializes.

In the Steemit scam, I believe a webot of some kind offers a service to help the user gain more upvotes and thus earn more Steem/Steem Dollars, or whatever they offer. In short, more profit for less effort. As I understand the process, the user is required to log into to some webpage, yadda, yadda, yadda… all, or most of your Steem is stolen.

I'll keep this poster with me in case I hear of a scam you need to know about.
When I was younger, friends stole items (toys) out of my house. Bikes were stolen. Someone snatched one of those candy bars they make you sell to raise money for school trips, right out of the box as I was delivering them to my neighbors. I was shaken down for money at bus stops and robbed while I was collecting money on my newspaper route. I’ve been stiffed by people I trusted to pay debts for both services and on loans.

As a result I am cynical, skeptical and suspicious. Believe it or not, I am grateful to my friends and neighbors for demonstrating that the majority of people cannot be trusted. It’s the exact right history to have in today’s environment.

This, of course makes the few gems who are trustworthy all the more precious.

Anyway… the “best” defense against theft is basic cyber security; don’t click on unknown or untrusted links. Be suspicious of anyone asking you for “money,” offering you a “deal”, requesting your key, and so on. There are folks out there requesting donations of cryptos, who have provided their public QRCs, so I guess that’s okay. And there are ways to transfer Steem directly to people who know (trust) if you want to gift them some. But other than that… I’d steer clear.

But that’s just me. It’s entirely too cynical of me to advise my dear readers to "trust no one", just be cautious and skeptical of strangers and “bots” wanting to do you favors.

Cheers

PS: A mark of success in this world, as pathetic as it is, is that someone wants to steal your "success." Welcome to the real world Neo.