Am I the only one bothered by the bills having different sides up? ;)
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I know there are a lot of scams and phishing scams going on right now, and lots of very smart people are working to curb that. Hopefully they will be successful and the people who are committing these acts will be caught and dealt with in an appropriate manner. (Fill in your own preferred method of justice/punishment here)
Wallet Spam/Scams
Before moving to the more sophisticated methods of comments and embedded links that are driving people to fake Steemit sites, one of the main places that spamming/scamming started was in the users' wallets. Scammers would send links in the comment section that could be used to steal someone's account. It got so bad that Steemit changed the wallets, so hyperlinks are no longer displayed, rather only the text of the link is given.
There's even a warning right above the transaction log
You would have to manually copy the link address and post it in your browser to get to the site. The additional time can help people's better judgement to kick in and prevent them from falling victim to the scam.
Bogus Transactions
The new craze in wallet spam is basting through a database of friends strangers and giving forcing on them 0.001 SBD (current value = $0.002) to harass them with messages that beg for money... or to use their "service." These are also basically begging for money as these services are devoid of worth. No real people follow those accounts. No one wants the spam! Still, check out the last three transactions in my wallet. One was rewards redemption, the other two, beggars.
Transaction Escrow
Currently there is no way to prevent this spammers from sending their unwanted messages. From what I have been able to tell, muting someone won't prevent their message from showing in your wallet as it's a transaction on the blockchain. Therefore, the message gets through.
Because these scammers are exploiting the system to advertise their "services," I propose a change to the system. Rather than simply sending money directly to another party, the funds would be held in escrow by Steemit until delivery was accepted. Each transaction would have to be specifically "accepted."
For those of you who don't know what escrow is, Wikipedia defines it as: "... a contractual arrangement in which a third party receives and disburses money or documents for the primary transacting parties, with the disbursement dependent on conditions agreed to by the transacting parties."
In this case, the dependent condition would be the approval of the transaction by the sender (by sending the money) and the receiver (by specifically accepting the transaction (and memo)). Since the escrow is held by a neutral 3rd party (Steemit), you wouldn't have to worry about your money getting hijacked or stolen. All you would have to do is approve the transaction.
Whitelist
Yes, it would add another steps and could be time consuming, but the process could be automatically bypassed for specific senders. A "whitelist" could be added so users could put certain potential senders on their list for automatic approval. Any transactions from those senders would automatically enter and successfully exit the approval process without additional confirmation from the receiver. The successful transaction would show on the wallet log like normal.
Whitelist Variant
A variant of the whitelist could be a "followers approved" type of system. It would still rely on an escrow system with Steemit acting as the intermediary, but rather than requiring a user to specifically approve specific senders, all of the users they follow would automatically be approved. Additional users could be added without following them, but that would have to be done manually.
Blacklist
Because Steemit will be the one holding the money in escrow, it should be safe from hacks, and it shouldn't be retrievable by the sender. Also, a sender could be "blacklisted" so that transactions from specific people will automatically be rejected and the SBD returned to the sender. The would-be receiver wouldn't even know that a transaction had been attempted.
The blacklist could even apply to people below a certain reputation threshold. For instance, you could set it to automatically reject any transactions initiated by a sender with a negative reputation. Or you could even block potential transaction from anyone with a reputation below "x."
Conclusion
One of the reasons there is spam on the site is that the system allows it. By changing the process slightly to give users the opportunity to reject certain transactions/interactions, it protects Steemit's legitimate users from bad actors and those who are only seeking to exploit the system.
tl;dr Let people Reject or Block wallet ads from beggars, spammers, and scammers sending 0.001 SBD.
Note: These are just my opinions and are for informational/entertainment purposes only. Do your own research. Always protect your keys. Don't accept candy from strangers.
