The Importance of Your Posting Key (Detailed Explanation for New Members)

Introduction

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Recently I have registered an ever-growing trend of new Steem apps that require our posting key for their services. Posting key might seem like a “not so important” key compared to an active key whose possession basically means the possession of our funds. Nevertheless I feel like the understanding of posting key’s importance is not sufficiently rooted into the minds of most of the Steemians (including some of the veterans). I’d like to contribute my two cents to the overall awareness about this important topic. If you want to check out more basic comparison of all the keys of Steem Blockchain, check [this post of my @sndbox’s fellow].(https://steemit.com/steemit/@jassennessaj/steemit-lesson-4-a-guide-to-understanding-steemit-s-different-passwords-keys)

Ignorance of the law is not an excuse

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Remember that all of you guys are VOLUNTARILY part of the Steem ecosystem. Unlike the law enforced by states (that has thousands and thousands of “musts” and “must nots”), crypto-ecosystems have rather simplified rules. Every crypto has its algorithm (rules) and they all are subject to the “supreme law” – whoever controls the keys, controls the funds. I am a firm believer that any given regulation would only reduce the emphasis on self-responsibility that this whole crypto movement naturally promotes. Thus said, be fully aware that your keys are your virtual you. When they allow operations with the funds, it’s like you have allowed the operation.

Giving a word cannot be perceived as a valid contract

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There are “inherent” permissions that go hand in hand with a posting key. In other words, you cannot adjust the permissions that you want to give to any given service through your posting key. The posting key always grants the same permissions.

Services tend to state which permissions are going to be used. Do not take their word for granted! More likely than not, the initial statement will be outdated sooner or later. It has already happened that when the services change hands, the new owners do not respect the word of the old owners. Yet they still have your posting keys!
The statement doesn’t even need to “become outdated”. The owners can just plainly abuse your posting key right from the bat, because most of the users don’t even know what Blockchain is and how to seek for the right information in it. Because of that most of the users don’t know how to control their accounts actions, therefore they can be abused without even knowing it.

Permissions the posting key grants

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The time has come to share with you the actions that can be done with your posting, therefore the actions that you should expect whenever you grant your posting key to anyone.

Posting

As the name implies, posting key naturally grants the ability to post with your account. That means writing comments, but articles as well. I haven’t yet discovered a service that would abuse the posting key in such a way. This is by far the easiest aspect to control, since Steemit inherently grants the ability to check your posts and comments very easily. You should still know that this can happen and that you should actively be controlling whether it is not actually happening. Better be safe than sorry! You don’t want to see your reputation drop drastically because a user that is not afraid to use his flags found the spam that “YOU” are posting unwanted. I intentionally say “you”, because as I tried to convey at the beginning, your keys are your virtual you!

Voting

Remember how active key means the ability to transfer the funds? Posting key isn’t that far behind. It grants the ability to USE YOUR POWERED UP STAKE! That means that any given service can upvote whatever they want using your posting key. They can also CHANGE YOUR WITNESS VOTES, or simply vote for their own witnesses! This is super important, because Steemit doesn’t provide an easy way how to check our outgoing votes. I recommend using https://steemd.com (block explorer) for this purpose. The younger the user is the more reckless he usually is regarding his posting key. After all stake of such an user is usually worth just few bucks. As the account grows, so does the stake and with it the need to be more responsible with your keys.

Following

Posting key is also used for following other accounts. This is though also very easy to control, because you would immediately see your feed being flooded by accounts that you personally did not follow.

Conclusion

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You should always keep track of the services that you gave your posting key to (it usually is done via steemconnect...through it you can even revoke the posting key). Do not underestimate the matter! Always check whether the service that is asking for the posting key ACTUALLY NEEDS IT! For example services like Steemauto, or Steemvoter truly DO need the posting key in order to provide their service (vote follow, scheduling of post posting, etc.). On the other hand service like dlive doesn’t need it at all (maybe it does in a way it is programmed, but then again we shouldnt care about that), yet they still ask for it and they actually even abuse it. They have then apologized for it, but that doesn’t justify the fact that they want your posting key when they don’t need it to provide decentralized streaming platform. Whenever you spot an abuse SHARE THE INFO!

And remember…

YOUR KEYS ARE YOUR VIRTUAL YOU! WOULD YOU GIVE AN UNKNOWN PERSON YOUR KEYS IF YOU TRULLY DIDN’T NEED TO?

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