Beware Of Fake Steem Addresses!
Attention, fake addresses in town. I have lost 11 dollars in a very short time. How? I only mistyped some titles, introduced something wrong. But, the system helped me to repeat the mistake. Don’t make the same one...
What is done is done
One of the great advantages of Steem is: you can send money, Steem or Steem Backed Dollars (SBD) quickly, in seconds. Without any fees and expenses. The system is asking you a security question before, and you have to introduce your key, so you can’t really complain if you make something wrong. Your fault.
The same way as by other cryptocurrencies, once a transaction is completed, it is completed. For forever. What you have done, is done. No way back. If you mistyped, misspelled something, wrote the wrong address, is your failure. Nobody will give you your money back.
Upme, Upmy, Smart or Smat
That is an advantage in some business actions, this “irreversibility”. Because it means reliability: you can trust in that that money you received, is on your account. For forever. (Credit card transfers or bank account transfers can be reverted in some cases.) But it can be also a disadvantage on some occasions, like mine.
Example: I made this mistake months ago with@upmyvote, which is a real bid bot, and @upmevote, which appears to be a fake one. But today I was terrible: I sent money to “Smarmarket” instead of “Smartmarket”. And twice.
24 SBD for free?
I think some accounts are only made for this: to catch transactions to misspelled addresses. Of course, they are copying addresses of often required persons or services. Not only “@smarmarket”, but also @smatmarket and @smartmarke exist. And @minnowbooter, copy of @minnowbooster seems to be a quite rich account, just sent 24 SBD to “smartmarke”. Who is behind these accounts? And who knows how many other accounts are awaiting your lost money?
The fake "Minnowbooter" also posted a stolen picture earlier.
Once I sent money to an address that seems simply to be a “deadfish”. The owner registered and left soon, 6-7 months ago and never returned. Maybe he/she will never return. The money stays burned. Bad luck. That “insecurity”, security issues are some of the reasons why many people are thinking mass adoption is still very far away. (Or, it can come if younger people – like Millennials – grow up who are managing computers better.)
Helping you to lose
On the page Steemitwallet.com, the system is trying to help you: It offers the addresses you used last time and the addresses of the persons you follow. (Not very consistently, however. Sometimes I don’t understand when and why it makes it – but this is another story.) That can make your life better – but also worse.
In my case, I made a wrong transfer, and the next time, Steemitwallet offered the same bad address again. I clicked the offered one again like always – and I lose again.
Ever heard of checksum?
In the case of conventional bank accounts, mostly, there is a checksum at the end of the account number. If you mistype a number or two, the number will be erroneous, and the transaction fails. But I think the laws also are providing some protection: If somebody receives the money of others without a reason, can’t keep it, has to refund it. If not, the court will oblige him.
I see no such protection by cryptocurrencies, and this is only one of the security issues. (Hacks, thefts, scams…)
I know, don’t drink and drive. Don’t make wrong transfers. My fault. But there are also more secure systems.
(I know “fake Steem addresses” don’t exist, all addresses are real and should be serious. I called fake addresses the ones somebody made to catch money from the errors of others.)
(Picture: Own work)
not sure for other frontends but i think steempeak has a option to click on the person to whom you want to send steem. it is a nice option because of misspellings.
Posted using Partiko Android
Oh yes, I love using @steempeak for transferring STEEM os SBD exactly for that reason!
I guess these accounts all belong to one person.
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Or a small handful of people.
Maybe but lets say if i am the one who make it than for sure i try more account names.
More option more possibility to get some payments.
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Probably noganoo he registers accounts one letter off from bidbots and keeps what ever it is sent
Thanks. The person has already a negative reputation.
This post has received a 10.00% complementary upvote from @swiftcash 🤑
So far, it didn't happen to me. But there were a few close calls. Fact is: people make mistakes. And others exploit that.
Irreversibility is good in certain applications. In others it just makes life easier for crooks.
Overall I'm quite happy with the capabilities of steem to facilitate payment.
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I think espesially newbies should be careful with this adresses coz just 9ne letter can brake their trust and they are loose treir funds which they have not so much at first time.
Hope this article will be useful for people!
P. S. This reminds me tricks with famous brands like adidas, ecco a.s.o.
@deathcross Very nice work, it seems that they are their just to dupe people money as we cannot block them from doing that. But we can report this to steemcleaner so that can take proper action against them. :-)
If they are downvoted they can also catch the mistyped transfers.
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STOPHmm. Been there myself. I agree that most of these accounts are made to steal from unsuspecting people. They never return the money.
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@deathcross , "I see no such protection by cryptocurrencies, and this is only one of the security issues. (Hacks, thefts, scams…)"
There is. The EOS cryptocurrency has that capability and they do recover such lost/stolen funds.
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I hope they also have court, police, and government. Because, what shall they do if the one party says: that was a business transaction, the other party paid me for some service?
OK, some cases like hacking should be clear. But not all.
You have a point. Don’t think there needs to be protection, so users must be watchful
Posted using Partiko iOS
Yes, I agree with you. Many cases are not clear cut. I rather lose funds and blame myself than lose it due to unfairness.
They do have or had a court of some sort and a governance system. Here are the details of the constitution,
https://www.eoscorearbitration.io/home/governance/
But I believe they changed it to this user agreement two months ago,
https://github.com/EOS-Mainnet/governance/blob/master/eosio.system/eosio.system-clause-constitution-rc.md
Here is an example of an old case and it's ruling under the previous version of the constitution,
https://www.eoscorearbitration.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ECAF-Ruling-Case-0027-2018-12-14-AR-002.pdf
buen pots para los que no tenemos experiencia en esto, todavía no he llegado a ese paso pero gracias a estos tipos de información prevenimos de cometer un error.
You just reminded me my painful experience. After I had made my very first 8 steem or so, a friend asked for 4 steem. I spelt his name richforeve instead of richforever. I had to send the remaining 4 steem. I almost cried because steem was about 4$ then.
Posted using Partiko iOS
A brief career as a proofreader taught me that if there is one thing we can rely on, it is that we will make mistakes. So, when I want to transfer anything, I go to the target address, copy it and paste that into the appropriate box. Then I paste that target address into "search". If the correct party comes up, I'm pretty confident.
The insurance industry flourishes on the premise that mistakes happen. Your blog is proof of that. Thanks for the reminder.
Buena información amigo. Hace unos años atrás me equivoqué dos veces al introducir los datos para enviar steem a mi cartera de BTC usando blocktrades. Ellos me apoyaron y tuvieron la dicha de devolver el dinero. Se los agradezco mucho pero, hoy en día reviso más de dos veces la dirección a donde enviaré mi dinero.
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Congratulations @deathcross!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
This content has earned some GEEK. 70 GEEK tokens has been issued to your @deathcross steem-engine.com account.
https://bloks.xyz/token/GEEK
Geek Rewards (GEEK) is a new token native to the steem blockchain that rewards content creators for their intelligent contributions to the community.
Sorry to hear that. This reminds me of the early days of the Internet when folks would squat on domains like yaho.com and yahhoo.com and get that accidental traffic.
It looks like your typing skills need some improvement.
Indeeed.
Thanks a lot