Abuse Series: A Web of Lies

in #abuseseries6 years ago (edited)

         Some of you may have read one of @themarkymark's latest posts about faucet account creation abusers. Tying in from my previous post, this is precisely the method in which "Steemit Defence League" utilizes to spam the blockchain while impersonating genuine Steemians.

         We often think spammers operate on a single account and then move on to the next one when their racket is busted. That is often not true. Just like real life misdemeanors and crimes, the scale of the operation often correlates with the level of greed of those said users.

The Trail


         Here's a brief walkthrough of what anyone could easily find in a matter of minutes by following a single abuse report. To not deliberately notify the abuser mentioned in this post, I've decided to not tag their handles and let the community or abuser themselves find it.

         While reviewing a link submitted by a fellow abuse fighter in @steemflagrewards for image plagiarism, I decided to check out the abuser-in-question's transfer history.

step 1a.png

step 1.png

         Then, I looked at who have been voting for this user.

         Following the trail, I was led to another account who is just seemingly posting a single image as a post.

step 2.png

         The photo shown could not be readily identified as plagiarism, so I left it alone. I noticed the same group of upvotes like the first account I encountered. I was led to believe this had to be either a curation trail or off of a promotional service such as @minnowbooster or @smartsteem. I made sure I checked this account's transfer history as well.

step 2a.png
step 2b.png

         Normally, most Steemians wouldn't empty out their accounts to another address. In the screenshots above, you could see there are several accounts funneling into this one and then the Steem is pooled to be shipped to another. So, what did I find when I got there?

step 3.png

         Again, the photos seemed genuine at first glance. I noticed the post had not gone through the vote buying process yet. The screenshot captured what appeared to be this person's alts for raking in rewards. Based on the first image you saw on this post, it was not hard to predict the contents contained in those handles. The same votes were cast on this person.

step 3b.png
step 4.png

         I guess Toni bought votes from a different set of people. That doesn't really matter, though. By this point, I think it was evident this particular Steemian was German-speaking; thus, making organic votes from @steemit-jp, @anyx, and @berniesanders seemed highly unlikely unless bought.

step 5.png

         The difference, this time, was that this appeared to be a final cash out point. I have not checked the memo as I wrote this post to see if anyone else is potentially using the same address, but I was sure that could be done at any point in the future.

step 3a.png

Implications


         This was just an example of how some abusers run a network of spam, low effort posting, accounts to grab all the rewards they could get their hands on and cash out. It's worth noting that there are networks of accounts more sophisticated than Toni, with multiple cash out points and transfers to make their activities seem more natural and harder to track. However, they can often be identified due to the monotonous nature of their contents or the relative low effort in their creations throughout their deceptive webs.

         Combining their voting ring, the lack of public attention, and sometimes reluctant/distant bot owners, the result is accounts with high reputation score, but almost no Steem. Now, couple that with the recent Byteball airdrop, who do you think is benefitting more from all the "free money"?

In the end, genuine Steemians lose out because greed triumphs.

Conclusion


         The blatant abuse of account creation is spreading. If you don't believe me, check out this memo I came across today:
meh.png

         Let's not get too excited about this guy's contents either. Apparently, people believe just because the content they copied has some creative commons license, it meant they could use it as the sole content for rewards on Steemit.

meh 2.png

         Then again, flags ARE expensive. What is the community to do? Until a sound solution surfaces, it takes sacrifice, time, and voting power to counter malicious actors and bad contents on this platform.

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Abuse Series is a journal of odd, and sometimes humorous, encounters that were found while volunteering in anti-abuse initiatives.

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@enforcer in the event that you compose a screenplay, novel, or even a blog entry, you've quite recently made something new. When you put that creation out into the world and enable general society to get to it, copyright law kicks in to help ensure that another person can't take a piece of (or the majority of) your creation.

Hey @enforcer I am new to @steemit check out my new video and post. would be amazing if I could get an up vote from you. thank you :D :D

Cool cool. Try not to do that too much to too many people at once. It'll look forced.

ok I wont thank you :)

Lovely article. Money is Steemit's beauty and ugliness at the same time.

Whenever cash creation is involved, there's always crooks and corruption to spoilt it. At the same time, the premise of creating an income in exchange for quality content is Steemit's most amazing feature. Steemit is applying the reward of monetary value to social value creation.

A double edged sword that needs skewing somehow.

The idea is always wonderful, but the practice has been a bit lackluster in my opinion.

rât là hay . bài viết này đã giúp ích tôi rất nhiều, cảm ơn bạn

Flags ARE indeed expensive. Lately we've been saving up some SP for flagging purposes, the rest for upvotes.

And boy do flags take a lot of time (expensive again). This is the best one yet on your Abuse Series.

Thanks! I plan on keep going. At least a single volume of 12 entries.

Congratulations @enforcer48!
Your post was mentioned in the Steemit Hit Parade in the following category:

  • Pending payout - Ranked 7 with $ 351,71

@enforcer48 you were flagged by a worthless gang of trolls, so, I gave you an upvote to counteract it! Enjoy!!

BOING! You got a 17.24% upvote from @boinger courtesy of @steemium!

This post has received a 23.3 % upvote from @boomerang.