Steem Pope Sermon: Beware the Phishers of Men!

A comment on one of my recent posts said that a plagiarist had been detected, and included an ever-so-helpful link to the culprit. I saw at once that it looked suspicious, because the link was not a standard Steemit URL, and the target of the hyperlink displayed in my web browser at the bottom of the screen. I did click it to see how the scam was intended to work (Right-click and open in a new private browser window for extra security if you decide to try this!) and discovered that it was a site designed to spoof the Steemit web page, and it asked me to sign in using my Steemit credentials.

If you EVER see such a popup window while browsing Steemit, STOP IMMEDIATELY! Look at the web address at the top of the screen before doing anything. Make absolutely sure you are on Steemit, and not a copycat site. In this case, it was a blatant attempt to hijack accounts by getting users to unknowingly enter their login credentials to a fake site so the site owner could in turn hijack your Steemit account. You lose your Steem, your account is used for more spamming, and your blog life is essentially destroyed if you fall for this.

This is a form of cyber crime known as "phishing." You may have seen warnings about scammers sending emails posing as banks, PayPal, or web-based crypto wallets trying to scam people by pretending to be a trusted financial institution in order to get you to enter your account info. The same is happening here on Steemit. Be careful out there. New opportunities afforded by technology also offer new opportunities for those with malicious intent. You must always be alert. Better to be skeptical and wrong on occasion than be gullible.