Although Steemit is still a relatively small platform it has already attracted some fraudsters who pretend to be someone else. I just saw this post about a fake account for a popular photographer. He's been in touch with the real guy to confirm he's not on Steemit, yet. Of course his preferred name is already taken and cannot easily be recovered.
The easiest way it to link from a site you control that people already trust. It's not easy to build up a Youtube or Twitter account with genuine followers and if it's been been verified by the site then that's even better. I'm not exactly famous, but I've included some outgoing links on my Youtube. Of course it links to Steemit.
If the link on your Steemit profile links to a reliable site that links back then people can be pretty sure you are for real.
You may have noticed the neat badge I have in my signature block. That was provided by SteemVerify. I paid them a small amount and they did some manual checks on who I am. There may be potential for more rigorous versions of this for those who need it.
A geekier way to do this is using cryptography, which is what Steemit is based on. GnuPG and PGP are public key encryption that have been around for decades. As well as being able to encrypt data you can also 'sign' it in ways that nobody else can fake. Keybase is a site that makes that simpler. I have an account there and I have used to verify that I control various accounts and sites by uploaded signed messages to them. You can even verify that you control a Bitcoin address. Unfortunately you cannot so easily verify a Steemit account as we cannot place data in the html and Keybase doesn't know how to verify a Steemit account, yet.
What I can do is to include a signed message in a post as below. If you paste the whole block with all the dashes into this form it will verify who signed it. There's a Keybase app for various platforms that provides things like encrypted chat. I've already linked to a few Steemians using it. Look me up if you already use Keybase.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
This is to verify that user steevc on Steemit is the same person as https://keybase.io/steevc
Check that page to see what other on-line accounts, sites and other things I control.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----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=UfJM
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Stay safe, and check people are who they say!
I'm Steve, the geeky guitarist. I'll buy guitar picks for Steem Dollars
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What Bitcoin wallet are you using?
I have the bitcoin core wallet, but not much bitcoin. It uses a lot of disk space as it downloads everything and takes a while to sync.
I have other online wallets, but I think most are empty
It seems it never ends... thanks for the info
Interesting info. Too bad that a couple of bad people have to make it harder for all of us. Thanks for sharing this. I am going to have to dig into it when I get a little more time. This type of security has never been on my radar unfortunately.
For a lot of people it doesn't matter too much. I don't think there's much to be gained by imitating me, but I'm still interested in how this works
For sure! It's great that you are digging into it and sharing your experience with the others on Steemit!
Thanks much for this tip on verification. It's too bad we have to work so hard just to figure out who we are actually talking to. This is one of those good posts to save and reference. Appreciate it.
I also have my badge from steemverify, I think it's a very useful service to help us to contrast fraud people. I've never know about keybase site, it looks really interesting!
Keybase is a bit technical, but I like cryptography
@steevc fraud people are entring every where . it's tough to keep them away. by the way nicely explained blog.