Once in a while, we have some abusers entering the blockchain. With the premise of earning some small money on the side, people will resort to everything and that includes stealing someone's identity.
When this account surfaced, a few of my friends already noticed that something is not right. We run some checks with @kembot the sister of HivePH bot to see if there's something that we can use as a starting point but it pointed us to none.
Technically, since the account is new, very few interactions happened per se. But that doesn't mean that our suspicion is already closed. So we dig the rabbit hole a little.
We checked the wallet :delegations tab and saw that the Hive power he has is coming from a user that we marked as an abuser. The said user was suspected to create post using AI tools thus getting downvotes from other people. I did not check that thoroughly, but when spotted I tried to call out and left a comment on what he did.
I received no response from there and I think he left the account already after that.
Now going back to the identity theft case of the new account since the man is posting pictures with watermark it wasn't hard to pinpoint a good lead. Now the problem is, who's going to send a message?
If possible opt in using my personal account thus checked if I can use the Hiveph community page or my other FB page to verify but there's no send message option 😢
More often than not, it is Adam or Jazzhero who's contacting pages/people to determine the ownership of the accounts but since they are now busy, might as well give it a get-go.
I messaged out of the blue with no expectation of an immediate response because usually messages from someone you do not know are routed to spam etc. I myself don't read messages in my Facebook thus I have more than 90+ to be read in my inbox include group chats etc.
After a few minutes, I got a response that he does not own the account in Hive and asked where did he get the photos. I informed him that most likely it is coming from his public post/ tagged images. He mentioned that his account is private thus no pictures should be surfaced.
Since his personal account is private, then that means the theft is one of his friends.
Getting the necessary details, we downvoted the account and even send it to other people so that they can flag the new post, diminishing the rewards to be given. It was a good thing that this stopped prior to him getting the payout for the introduction post that he created.
What do we get from this experience?
There will always be bad actors here trying to reap rewards and may resort to such acts. You will never know who, maybe someone you know or someone you don't. The rewards earned here may be small but then again, it is free money in the end, and if accumulated that can still be huge in the future.
It is okay to be skeptical,and having a tight-knit community as a Filipino it helped us in a way to determine who are folks around. Sure enough, the admin and moderators of Hiveph cannot point it out immediately as there's a new account being created from time to time but once we see got an alert of a possible case then we do the digging, etc.
Getting Hive known to everyone is okay. But we need to make sure that the people we onboard will not be creating some fiasco such as these cases, as this can also affect your reputation. This isn't a hard rule, but most likely when an investigation is going on, someone might question it afterward.
On a positive note: I tried to invite the real Jovanie to join Hive too in that way, he can have the chance for his works to be monetized (even if it is just cents) .
This information will also be shared in the next onboarding session this Saturday 03/11/2023 at 08:00 PM MNL Time. If you are from the Philippines and you are new to Hive I would suggest that you join our discord server for the said webinar.
I still have a mountain of workloads to do irl thus the announcement post isn't published yet nahhh I am just getting lazy these past few days.
That is all and thank you for your time.
Hwaw, level up na ang Hive PH. 👍
Sympre naman we try to make everything smooth sailing dito sa platform for better experience. Hirap parin to navigate and all one way that we can secure the community parin for possible abuse.
So should we call you now TPZilla hahahha (I have been watching a lot of CoffeeZilla videos especially his expose on abusers, scammers and influencer shit coin shills/ pump and dump.
Hoooy di tayo magiging investigative eme. Pero as part nadin ng work collections agent sanay na sanay tayo dyan sa checking ng mga ganito.
Great work on picking up suspicious accounts. Do you think it has any links to the one who plag @wittyzell's onboardee post? I thought think both cases happened non the same day
I doubt it is connected. Most likely Witty's case is part of the bigger group. Looks like this one is an isolated case wherein a friend of a friend that knows Hive did the identity stealing.
I am always amazed on how you guys managed to determine those abusers!
Kaunting chika chika lang yun Lhes, may iba pang services etc pero may bayad na haha dun lang tayo sa mga libreng tools for now.
imagine if ako nag msg, edi ako pa mag convince sa kanya to join Hive? charot hahaha
thanks tp for messaging him!
huleeee!
Hive PH mods doing better job than NBI cybergroup 💀, chz hahaha
HAHAH i planned to report this to NBI pero di solid yung evidence tsaka walang end person eh. Sa huli anon parin... unless ma reverse image ng mahusay yung pic nung isang abuser na medyo matrabaho na.
Hive PH mods doing better job than NBI cybergroup 💀, chz hahaha
Man we now have our very own HivePhWatcher wow 😮
Hahaha we do these stuff from time to time di lang pansin. Haha usually sa mga bagong account sya napapansin.
Pero infairness ang galing ng intuition mo pre. Honestly I wouldn't really doubt new accounts per se but I guess being in Hive for a much longer time than me and witnessing abusers first hand can really give you that personal experience that just by looking you know that something is off. Good job. I could be a target with these identity thefts with my facebook page. Luckily I suck at taking photos so I wouldn't be worried with anyone stealing my work coz no one will 🤣
Hala buti po naagapan...Iba rin nagagawa ng malakas instinct. Well done, Kuys!