Despite the recent dip, the past weeks were very positive for Steemians and Steemit itself, since the price for both Steem and Steem Dollar went up significantly, thus creating plenty of new millionaires and even more "millenaires", at least on paper, most users here on Steemit have gained significantly. Even my own little downvote ridden account has surpassed the 1,000 US $ mark which is quite astonishing, as I find.

But with this price surge leading at least on a virtual level to unprecedented wealth levels, I think there is a new problem emerging and it needs to be addressed, because it won't become relevant for too many who are blogging on this site, it is much more already relevant and I don't think anyone is aware of that.

I am talking about the threat of criminals who are attracted by the platform and who might use the information displayed on the blockchain to pay users a visit in real life and rob them.

The Functionality of the Steem Blockchain Will Provide Criminals With New Possibilities

So far, Steemit already produced a couple of millionaires, most notably of course @ned, @dan and @sweetsssj and as @lukestoke meant in the article where I brought it up first, it is a normal consequence of becoming wealthy, that you also become more vigilant and take care that you and your wealth is safe.

My argument against this is based on the fact that with Steemit, its Blockchain and crypto currencies in general, there are several key aspects of personal safety changing dramatically. My impression is that these changing factors won't become relevant for the top Steemians in the future, but that they are already important now and that there are many more who should be concerned than one might think.

There are several aspects that are concerning me and which should be concerning you - the newly rich Steemit blogger - as well:

#1 The degree of publicity by users is high. After all, Steemit is a blogging and social networking site where users are supposed to come together and many use it to tell stories about their life, where they live, what they do and so on and everything glossed with pictures. Thanks to the Blockchain, all this information is fully public and cannot be changed anymore after a week. For criminals, intending to spy on a user, this is ideal. At the end they can get to know anything, especially since it is also possible to ask personal questions in the comment section and who would ever suspect anything behind the question if there are dogs in the house?

Bottom line: Targeting somebody with a lot of $$ in the wallet and spying on that person has never been easier.

#2 The actual speed and possible anonymity of removing crypto from the system. On this one, I am not an expert. So far, I haven't powered down or used a crypto wallet for a pay-out and I also don't put much effort into being invisible or anonymous towards the government. Others do that and for quite some time, the tagline for Bitcoin seemed to be "don't worry, go ahead, there is total anonymity". I am sure, for advanced programmers and/or by using the right coin this still is a factor, althougth @lukestokes mentioned that there already have been prosecutions of criminals because of the trail they have left in the system. That may be, but it seems to be a matter of chance.

Bottom line: The extraction may demand a professional or at least a good amateur, but the Blockchain still provides enough anonymity for criminal activities.

#3 Opportunity costs of stealing crypto compared to stealing classic items. Imagine, you break into the house of a person and you have the chance to either break into the safe and steal the Rolex or you break into the crypto wallet and steal Bitcoins worth the Rolex, assuming both extractions require the same skills but you can only do one of them. What would you do? It's both risky, it needs effort and you have to sell it on the black market. Thanks to its properties, it might be simpler, faster and less risky to get rid of the Bitcoins than the Rolex.

Bottom line: It looks like as if crypto theft has a higher profit margin than the theft of classic items.

#4 Steemit is growing and so is growing the competence of its users and so is growing the likelihood of attracting criminals. According to @arcange, there are about 40,000 active users on Steemit. The relevant two question in regard of theft is A) How many of them are criminals who are ok going the full length for the gains from a crime and B) How many have excellent knowledge about Steemit, crypto and blockchain. It is the cross total that makes up the group of criminals going after your whale wallet. My guess is that A) is about the population average of 1 in 1,000 and B) is about 1 in 50-100. The cross total therefore is 1 in 50,000-100,000.

Bottom line: At the current user base, it is statistically not unlikely that there already is somebody mending a plan and spying on potential victims. And assuming a linear development for the next year, by Christmas 2018 there will be definitively one on Steemit for every continent.

#5 The crypto market still is in its exploding phase and Steemit is one of the few crypto projects that already has a viable business model. Personally, I think the crypto market will both consolidate and grow in the next months and years and my impression about Steemit is that if the developers manage to keep it together, the platform and currency will have a very bright future - and so will a lot of users, some of which are still living the let's just try it phase and not thinking in personal strategic terms and that will also be the case, if Steem Dollar suddenly goes up to 20$ or even more, as as the jump from 1$ to 8$ shown - the most users are not ill-prepared but not prepared at all and they don't see the issue of personal protection at the visible horizon.

Bottom line: This could turn into a fest first for Steemians and after that for ruthless criminals robbing the first, because they were way too naive.

@clio (17,500$) and her son @exyle (337,000$) fumbling out crypto stuff together and as fun as it is to follow them, I think they and many others expose themselves too much relative to their account value and level of individual protection they have.

Who Is Affected?

On Steem Whales, you can look up which account is worth how much. The biggest ones are obviously Steemit itself, the developers and a couple of services tightly connected to the platform. But even among the top100, there are enough normal users who's accounts are worth more than a million or at least several hundred thousand US Dollar at current prices.

For the full picture, you have to add all payouts and also transfers to bots of these users. Thanks to the publicly available blockchain, all that can be traced. Therefore, even if a user has "only" 50,000$ it is very well possible that the person behind it still owns 10 times as much in crypto - and if you take a close enough look, you can find that out very quickly.

I strongly believe, they are all affected and on top of that every small but ambitious user is affected as well. Considering the price jumps, every single active user who gave a look into is personal life on Steemit in the past, might be. This truly is a big issue.

Good news... will there even be too good news?

What Needs To Be Done?

Awareness is probably the most important aspect. Users need to know about this issue, so they can decide themselves what to do or not to do and Steemit should know about its users Achilles' heel. In an extreme scenario, if something severe happens, one incident could kill the entire platform.

What Steemit Should Do

• Add a statement in the text field for writing a new post. Right now it says "Write your story..". Better would be "Write your story but always remember, this will be stored on the blockchain, which means it will always be visible for everyone and cannot be removed."
• Develop and offer a "cloaking service" for whales. This is mainly a protection for past articles to hide or even remove personal information. If it is in any way possible on the blockchain, but it should be removed at least from Steemit and connected services like Steemd. This doesn't rule out criminals searching through the blockchain itself, but given the hurdles for accessing it directly, it will reduce the number of people who can access potentially sensitive personal information.
• Add something like an emergency button to the wallet or maybe a safe-word necessary for bigger power downs plus a phone call and informing the police, if possible. As soon as it gets triggered, the users value for criminals drops to zero and it turns into a classic hostage situation. That would still be terrible, but kidnappers without a way out are usually willing to negotiate.
• Advertise the account verification a bit more and allow users to have more than just one account independently from each other.
• Introduce user hierarchies from non-friends to close friends.

What Users Can Do

• Run several independent accounts with one for postings and comments and another one as wallet, upvote and delegation account.
• Don't post your address, pictures of your house or your workplace.
• When on vacation, wait with posting about it until you are gone again.
• Don't be too open in the comment section. Wait a bit until you trust a random user and then revel personal things somewhere more private.
• When you meet with others in real-life (not just on Steem Fest), make sure all users know each other and have communicated via telephone at least once.
• Don't post images of your children or family members - or only outdated ones.
• Try not to boast about your digital wealth, neither online, nor in real life (I know, that's hard..;-)

These items are just the result of me thinking about the issue spontaneously. I am sure, there are more and better things which can be done to protect our little social crypto island from malice, now that it becomes increasingly interesting financially. Feel free to add suggestions and give your opinion about this issue in the comment section. Thanks!!

... and now: Frohe Weihnachten an alle!!!

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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