Why its important to verify yourself as a newcomer
Hey everyone!
For a long time while curating the #introduceyourself tag I've tried to tell users that it would be appreciated if they would verify being the person they claim to be. Not only because there are a lot of plagiarists and ID thefts occurring because of the monetary rewards that go towards intro posts, but also because we as curators would feel a lot safer knowing we are rewarding actual unique people. The worst case scenario about this in my mind for long was that someone would start out pretending to be someone else and use their ID to get a lot of rewards from the platform. This turned out to have happened yesterday.
I remember this one user in particular coming onto steemit.chat and DM'ing me and a few other high influential users her introduction post. It seemed odd that she knew who to contact on her first post but I brushed it off as I figured her friends would've explained to her. She made some rewards and got picked up by other users either through messages or autovotes later on. After a while my suspicions became bigger and bigger combined with the time some of her group got put on the cheetah list for sending transactions to the same Bittrex memo so I decided to stop rewarding her posts until things got more clear about their situation. Now I am glad that I did that cause this is what occurred yesterday.
I was browsing #introduceyourself and noticed a new poster with a familiar face, I quickly checked my DM's on steemit.chat trying to remember her username and got to her steem account and commented this:
I was not surprised to hear that that user had been fake, or in this case controlled by another person. Even more so when I remembered she specifically made a verification video proving she was the owner of the account. So I replied with this:
Now if we were to believe her, it seems as if she has been contacted by that fake Steem user and asked to do a verification video. Why she accepted to do such a thing and if there was money involved is not something I am aware of, but this is why you should be careful with how your content or your ID is used online. If it sounds too good to be true to just make a photo or video of yourself "verifying" your identity to someone else for some rewards, it often means that someone else is gaining more from it.
Now we are left with an ID thief who has made a lot of Steem and powered it all down and the real user coming to the platform trying to start fresh but having a lot of shady history and not many readers that will believe her for future posts. What if this user is fake as well? What if her way to prove it is just another middlemen transaction being paid for in advance so the ID thief can keep on pretending to be someone else?
This is a pretty unique case but I just wanted to highlight why its important to verify yourself as a newcomer. Verifying yourself doesn't mean you have to show your real identity, doing it through other social platforms where you have spent a lot of time and activity can work as well. I for instance proved my identity through my active Reddit account.
Anyway, I know it often seems a bit too much to ask a newcomer to verify themselves, but I encourage you to ask anyway in the future just to avoid these ID thefts and let the newcomers know that if they do verify themselves it often means that the readers and curators feel a lot more safe placing their votes on their intro posts. Most of the people won't mind verifying and will understand where you are coming from.
Thanks for reading.
well, i think she is not so smart too.. you can't make a video for the web, saying what a friend told to say..
Seems that maybe there could be a verification badges for types of users.
Explicitly, there are good bots operating for the communities benefit. They could be denoted by an official emblem that lets people know the account is a bot.
Accounts being used by real humans could earn verification as well. Perhaps via a set of votes or processes. For me it seems as simple as cross promoting via other social networks, as some of us are actively doing. Say maybe there is an organization like the Steemcleaners that will screenshot and document what they see.
Just offering up ideas because I don't think all bots are bad. Yes their are bad bots but it seems that the tools are in place to proceed towards making the situation better.
I agree ..there must be a verification level or badges for different users
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After reading more about what @ned was saying about Oracles, it seems like maybe this concept could be related to those components when launched.
This is a major problem with this platform. The ease of which you can just create an account in someone else's likening is crazy. I know that it would be hard to make this harder for people to do but efforts need to be taken.
I think an introductory post with a picture is almost a necessity. You don't have to give out your full name or whatever but knowing that there's a real human willing to show their face is a good start.
Trying to stop people imitating real people though is a whole other kettle of fish.
The problem isn't really exclusive to steemit. You have any idea how many fake profiles there are on FB and other social media sites created with malicious intentions?
It's an uphill battle with no real solution. Taking people's phone numbers on account creation is a way to combat this, using pictures and video verification for intro posts is a good way to verify... but short of requiring passport verification (which would anger a lot of people), I don't see any way to combat it.
Only thing we can do is pay attention to who we're rewarding on here IMO.
Agreed.. first I didn't notice it and after I post something in introduceyourself I became noticeable.. as a nub
This problem is true for any social media. It might be a bit bigger problem here as there is no verification check, though if you go by Twitter's standards, it's not like that means anything.
@acidyo that is a great catch and very good advice on verification. Until you shared this posting I was really never aware that this could be happening which takes away from the STEEMIT platform. Thank You
Question: For new users who prefer not to show their face for privacy, is there a recommendation for how they'd handle this hurdle? I ask because I have a friend that just signed up and they'd like to remain as private as possible.
Do they have other social media accounts with activity on them? Its more of a proving you aren't just pretending to be someone else than having to show who you are. They could post on that platform that they recently created a steem account and link to that in their intro post or something. Many take a picture without showing their full face but having a sign up showing their steem username for example.
Appreciate the tips. I'd imagine that they'd want to keep their other social media separate, so it sounds like a partial face it the middle ground. I wish I could go back and do that knowing that it wasn't necessary when I signed up.
If they're not claiming to be a particular person, there's no need for them to verify themselves.
to be honest I haven't bothered verifying my account so far and don't know if i will. i think doing it on one post that will soon be lost on your blog page makes it a bit pointless.
I'd much rather see an app that you use to take a selfie and asks you to put a set message on your twitter of Facebook account . your picture and link are then sent to set number of moderators who will check your account for the message thus verifying your identity. we could then have a symbol next to our names to say our accounts have been verified.
Ah, wow! I remember @lambarik.
I asked her why she was blacklisted, and I was worried that such mistakes from cheetah could affect someone like me too. She said she was confused herself, but everything was fine after she clarified.
Then she got a tonne of upvotes when she played the victim!
may be you can see introduce post by @kravtsova
And @lambarik
lol...
Online theft ,has to give some thought to that 1st user if it is that much of true ,using even a video from the real user ,that is intense and for real this is 1st time i am hearing about this kind of matter .
Will be more cautious and hope new users do not get scammed or used like this !
Who is who ,now that is difficult to get !
Never thought someone could fake ID or claim to be someone else on such website. Like they say, everyday we go a bit closer to the hell.