Abuse Series: A Web of Lies

         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.

         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.

         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.

         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?

         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.

         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.

         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.

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:

         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.

         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.

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

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