Food for thought # 22 - @dreamgirl12 almost SCAMMED on Steemit and how to can protect oneself

in #steemit7 years ago

Everything can be dangerous where there is money was told to me today by a famous Steemian. Why did I contact him? I was trying to help @dreamgirl12 with some great opportunities that were presenting in front of her, only to find that she was being scammed.

(Source: Pinterest)

The predator choosing its prey

Today morning, around 07:43 GMT, @dreamgirl12 was approached by a Steemian claiming to give a 100% upvote worth $100 for the price of 7 SBD.

There was even a special offer of 5 upvotes on different posts for 2o SBD because it was his birthday that day!

This looks like a very attractive and tempting offer that would be difficult to refuse as there is so much to gain back.

Not having the money, @dreamgirl12 declined the proposition. Did anyone notice the "." after the name of gavvet? It is one of the hints that maybe it is a FAKE.

The predator enticing its prey

Being new to Steemit, many new authors like @dreamgirl12 do not know all the possible uses of the platform. There is so much business that is being developed around the Steemit blockchain that it is difficult to see all of them as scam.

The scammer is trying to get whatever he can from its prey and after checking her wallet, he asks for all the Steem that @dreamgirl12 currently have. She was able to see through the game and even declined this new proposition.

Is the prey able to escape?

The scammer again tried to get all the Steem of @dreamgirl2 but by then she has stopped responding. She got away winning this battle against the predator!

The aftermath

@dreamgirl12 immediately contacted me on Discord to tell me about this offer that she was getting and whether she was right in declining. So I tried to do some investigations to find if this was legit.

Maybe you will not understand the wordings as it is written in a local slang in Mauritius which consists of both English and French words mix.

After doing some analysis, I eventually contacted @gavvet about the service as there was something odd with the offer. @gavvet doesn't have a voting upvote worth that is $100!

In the conversation above, with the real @gavvet, there is no "." after his name. Luckily there was no harm that was done and I have heard other discord channels like M-A-P, run by @accelerator, who has been warning all of its members. But there is still a part left in this story.

The Shield

Feel like you are going to leave empty handed? I have prepared some steps that you can follow to ensure that you are not falling victim of a scam.

  1. Whenever you are getting such a mouth watering offer, first thing is to check the wallet history of the scammer. See if anyone has been sending money to the account for the purpose of upvoting their post. You will get an idea if this is a running service or this is a new one.
  2. Since it is a service that you send the url in the memo, you can copy the url and view the post. If the payout is quite significant as stated by the service, then you can be pretty confident that it is a legit service.
  3. As a last step, you can check the powerful SteemNow tool, which contains a calculator to find the exact voting power of the service. In this case for @dreamgirl12, I checked the upvote worth of @gavvet and also used the calculator to find his maximum upvote worth. As you can see, his current voting power is $50 and his maximum upvote worth is $64.51 which is only half of the amount the scammer pretending to be @gavvet was promising.
  4. The most important of all, whenever something seems too good to be true,then it surely is too good to be true and stay away from it!

Do you have a similar story? Is there any important advice that you would like to convey to all Steemians?

Share your conclusion with us so that the community is aware of it and can help in the security of the platform!


If you enjoyed reading this post, don't forget to upvote, resteem and check out my other posts for interesting videos and reads :)

(created by @readallaboutit)

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Thanks for upvote and resteem!

Cheers XD

Upvoted and Resteemed by the Minnows Accelerator Project (MAP).

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Thanks for the upvote and the resteem XD

Cheers XD

A great post indeed! It is always best to have a "Protector" that you can contact for verification of an offer! Never be tempted to jump into a decision! Always check it out first! Advice from a minnow charity. Thank you for the post @pisolutionsmru

Thanks for your great comment :)

Can you give some more details about the minnow charity?


My vote worth is shit and my wallet cannot show enough of my pleasure reading your comment Reserving my upvote for checking your latest post tip! XD

Yes indeed! They are called "MAP" "Minnows Accelerator Project" Check out their post on my page and link from their! Hope this will help you! Blessings! Stephen

Thanks for the info. What a shame...

You're welcome and be careful our there in the Steem ocean XD


My vote worth is shit and my wallet cannot show enough of my pleasure reading your comment Reserving my upvote for checking your latest post tip! XD

VERY useful post. Good to know about the full stop trick particularly. So easy to miss that one. Many thanks.

That's why whenever someone chats with me I check if they use the same name as Steemit as a first step and see their profile!


My vote worth is shit and my wallet cannot show enough of my pleasure reading your comment Reserving my upvote for checking your latest post tip! XD

Scams everywhere in the cryptoworld. Gotta be hyper vigilant with our money.

Yes even with ICOs it is the case. Some are just scams eating our funds away.

Need to be very careful!


My vote worth is shit and my wallet cannot show enough of my pleasure reading your comment Reserving my upvote for checking your latest post tip! XD

Upvoted on behalf of the dropAhead Curation Team!
Your post will be Resteemed by @dropahead witness account of the dropAhead curation team!

Watch out for the #xx-votesplus tag!

Do you want more earnings?

By doing the above you will give us more STEEM POWER (SP) to give YOU more earnings next time.

Keep up the good work!


Most recent post: Moving #25_votes_plus to Discord

Good looking out guys. Love it. This is what TheUnmentionables is all about. Helping each other. Absolutely love it. :)

You guys are amazing. Good looking out for our @dreamgirl. :)

She is quite new on the platform and she was almost a victim at such an early stage. Like this how many Steemians got scammed and left the platform.

We should be spreading the words as much and helping each other as much to find the right solutions XD


My vote worth is shit and my wallet cannot show enough of my pleasure reading your comment Reserving my upvote for checking your latest post tip! XD

My vote is not worth much either my friend. But being a good human being has nothing to do with our vote worth on Steemit, but rather our actions when we almost have nothing to give. You are an amazing example of it my friend.

Someday our votes will be worth something, but your will to help others has no price brother. :)

Thanks my friend!

I try to do the maximum I can and give as much as I can back to the community so that we can all grow together :)

Cheers!

And grow we shall. I have no doubt in my mind : )

Thanks for the alert and reminder! Never thought those scammers would go to such extend to try to scam people... It's just not right.. Better focus the energy in creating good quality content and build relationships...

As Gavvet said himself, 'dangerous wherever there is money'.

We should be more careful with our dealings on Steemit as it is directly connected to our wallet.

We are responsible for any transaction and once that transaction is gone, difficult to get it back even if you know to which account it went to :(


My vote worth is shit and my wallet cannot show enough of my pleasure reading your comment Reserving my upvote for checking your latest post tip! XD

I will be careful and if anything suspicious happened, I will go to someone I know.. And thanks for the gift!

You're welcome :)

Ya do talk with someone specially if it is a new service. The power of sharing can show you whether it is a scam or not XD

Thanks a lot for posting this. I guess there is more of these scammers out there, great if they are revealed!

You're welcome :)

Also I mentioned the MAP discord channel since there was @accelerator which was spreading the news in the channel!

There are many like this and if the user is able to use the steps above to find the legitimacy of the service that would be awesome XD


My vote worth is shit and my wallet cannot show enough of my pleasure reading your comment Reserving my upvote for checking your latest post tip! XD

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