What are Steemit Private Keys?

Cryptocurrency wallet security is an important topic as we all hope to achieve high levels of success on the Steemit Platform, which in most cases means accumulating a lot of Steem or alot of one of the Steem Engine Tokens. But the downside to this is that as you accumulate cryptocurrency your wallet attracts the unwanted attention of people who wish to take some or all of it. So I wish to review the characteristics of the Steemit wallet and how best to use them to protect your cryptocurrency.

Review Steemit multiple passwords.

There are four different types of Steemit Keys. Most cryptocurrency wallets have one private key and one public key. Steemit has four. They are Posting Key, Active Key, Memo Key and Owner Key. Each Steemit account also has a Master Password.

Types of Keys

· Posting Key
· Active Key
· Memo Key
· Owner Key
· Master password

Posting Key
The posting key is used exclusively for submitting posts, applying upvotes and downvotes, selecting and deselecting followers, muting accounts and claiming reward balances.
The posting key is the safest way to log into an account. It limits the privilege of the person using it to functions that do not have access to the wallet, thereby maintaining the safety and security of the tokens.
The posting key offers the safest way to access your account on a regular basis and it is recommended that you develop the habit of using it as your primary way of logging into your account.

Active Key
The active key should ONLY need to be used to confirm transaction or trades or change user settings.
Do not use your active key to log in for posting and upvoting on a daily basis. Use your posting key instead.

Memo Key
The Memo Key is used for handling private messages and encrypted transaction memos.
The memo key is the only key that can encrypt and decrypt private messages sent and received via your account.

Owner Key
The owner key is the key with the highest privilege level. It is the key required to change all the other keys. This is the key that should be most carefully safeguarded against loss or theft. With this key your account can be completely taken over by a malicious party. Loss of this key severely limits the operation of the account. The owner key is not directly visible on the steemit.com website but can be derived from the master password using the CLI Wallet or an API Library like steem-python.

Master Password
The master password is used to derive all keys above. A hashing function calculates the corresponding private and public keys from the master password, the account name and the key type ("posting", "active", "owner" or "memo"). Having the master password enables to retrieve all private keys of an account. See CLI Wallet's get_private_key_from_password or steem-python's steembase.account.PasswordKey() on how to derive the keys. Don't use the master password to log into steemit.com or any other steem application. Never copy the master password into posts or transaction memos. Use the lower privilege keys to maintain the security of your account.

Conclusion:

Steemit is a unique cryptocurrency because of its multiple passwords provide protection for your cryptocurrency Steem and Steem Dollars that other crypto currencies don’t provide. First, let me put these password protections into perspective by explaining that most crypto currencies have one password. This is usually called your “Private Key”. So if someone gets your “private key” they can transfer your cryptocurrency out of your account into their account and steal it. Once your cryptocurrency leaves your wallet no one can make them give it back. However in the case of Steemit our cryptocurrency is protected by four passwords. Normally a cryptocurrency wallet has one password used just for transferring money out. Steemit has four passwords and two of them are for transferring money out and one can be used to reset all four passwords. So you can keep your most important password safe, the master password and use the other passwords to perform other functions.

Bonus Material

Security Rules for your Steemit Account
1 Save your master password and keep it somewhere safe.
2 Log in with the lowest level password your posting key.
3 Use your active Key only for money transfers or voting.
4 Use your master or owner password only for changing your passwords or recovering a stolen account.
5 Never paste your passwords into Memo boxes and always doublecheck what you have copied and pasted before checking the OK box.
6 Log into your account using the key with the appropriate permissions for what you are doing: