I have been spending a lot of time researching and blacklisting abusers of @buildawhale and have been blacklisting 20-50+ a day.
I noticed some patterns of a few bidders for @buildawhale and decided to do some digging last night. After about 4 hours or so, I ended up uncovering 51 accounts owned by this one spammer. Every time I thought I found the end of the trail, two more would lead me deeper.
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There are two main accounts run by the spammer:
- nuoviso
- ophelion
The majority of the accounts funnel into ophelion, but some funnel to nuoviso. Some of the oldest accounts were created in August 2017, and some as far back as June 2017. Some of these old accounts were flagged to 0 a long time ago. Most of the newer accounts are still going in full force and abusing most of the bots on the platform.
Most of the accounts are just fake vote bots that vote for his other accounts and spams posts every 2 hours. Some of his vote bots are listed on @yabapmatt's Steem Bot Tracker site.
- randofish
- votebuster
- steemvote
The rest are not listed and are used to vote other accounts up while masquerading as a public service. The ones listed also primarily vote each other up.
After digging through all the accounts, I came up with 51 total owned by Nuoviso/Ophelion. Most of them pretend to be a vote bot/promotion service of some sort but just vote each other. A few of them pretend to be a regular Steem account posting regular "content".
Most of them are using small bids on voting bots to promote their posts, small enough it doesn't get noticed but still generates $2-$6 in post rewards many times a day across many accounts.
Some accounts are only a couple days old, so he is still creating accounts. It looks like they are mostly automated.
He also ran "free giveaway" accounts which primarily rewarded his accounts.
Here is the full list of accounts, they will be provided to all vote bot owners so they can blacklist him as well.
- nuoviso
- ophelion
- steemcollector
- secrettv
- kittentown
- prepper
- kidstv
- provote
- astrotv
- neuehorizonte
- topzehn
- wissenschaft
- politik
- randofish
- howtodo
- mybooster
- steinzeit
- cookingstar
- infokrieg
- cropcircles
- news24
- matzep
- querdenken
- whalewatch
- whalo
- randofish1
- filme
- votebuster
- getvotes
- newsfront
- cashbidbot
- up-me
- blockbooster
- pushmeup
- postpromo
- myupvote
- votex
- steemboter
- voteboter
- cashbot
- freeupvote
- steembeamer
- myup
- pingpong
- steemtools
- steemwin
- appreciato
- minnowsteemwin
- umpe
- upvoteforfree
- steemvote
The full list can also be found here
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Nice! I actually found some of these accounts the other day and made a post.
I dubbed the actions the bid bot circle jerk haha.
Thanks for doing the work to really uncover the whole cluster!!!
keep up the good work
i caught on to whalo and randofish a few days ago too. I am glad you caught it and did something about it. Good on you!
Yeah, I also saw these accounts about a week or so ago. When I found randofish, I have to admit I liked the logo. :) But I quickly realized they were up to no good. Thanks again @themarkymark!
He basically paid someone from fiverr to clone randowhale
@themarkymark I wish we can get rid of all bots. They always use the same stupid comment.
Great post. UPVOTED!
Are you a bot?
It was a joke ;)
There was a bot meeting earlier.
They said a similar thing.
"I wish we could automate everything on steemit and have no human factor. Wish the money train no longer stopped at ANY little shitty town that isn't worth the value of the discarded chewed tobacco on the bottom of my boots"
One program stood up and said... "In time. It's in motion"
ROFL - This should be awarded comment of the day @teknow
Hey @theinsideout you have a keen eye!
I like your name too. Like a riddle.
Solve this riddle:
It is what it is.
It's always something.
If nothing else. It's still a thing.
If it's not, what is it then?
Hint: It might not really be a riddle. Just dribble. Haha!
I can't solve your riddle, so I guess I'll go to the fridge and take out a beer.
EXACTLY! It was yeast.
It can go foul or it can grow wonders.
You're good.
Take care and I follow you now.
Because YES!! My dreams are like a damn script.
I see my future events all the time. Good to find you here.
All the best with future posts, I'll be sure to support.
Why don't you tell me what my future post will be. I've got writer's block. :)
Do you dream of electric sheep?
This is the best conversation on Steemit so far. Followed all of you.
Nuovisio is almost certainly either German, Swiss, Austrian or Liechtensteinan.
Agreed.
Yeah! I am completely against the use of bots! Most of the bots impact the Steemit Community in a bad way, making the community users tend more to the rewards side rather than building up a profile here.
Without all those pesky bots, Steemit would be one step closer to perfection.
Nice picture.
The police of Bavaria is much appreciated
:)))
I guess, it is a german upvote spam bot ring
awesome picture good job police
Good Job Sir...It must be tedious tracking these lowlifes...
Newq
thanks,good work themarkymark and NOW spammers looks like.....
Commenting for keeping some track of this piece of shit.
Piece of shit because of the names he chose.
Serial transfer ambush scammer.
Good the wallet now has some auto completion for verification.
This comment has received a 7.57 % upvote from @steemdiffuser thanks to: @stimialiti. Steem on my friend!
Above average bids may get additional upvotes from our trail members!
Get Upvotes, Join Our Trail, or Delegate Some SP
Great work, those spammers just drain value out of steem!
excellent work trying to keep it clean. If us regular users see something, who do we tag to report it ? id have no idea how to follow a trail such as you did.
A week back, I saw 6 posts in #introduceyourself all identical and from the same person. Who do you turn to ?
Thanks for taking action :-)
@steemcleaners is a good one to turn accounts in to
Thanks for replying, Do we just tag them in a comment on the offending post ?
I've always turned in accounts on the steem cleaners discord channel.
https://discord.gg/9dkwgz
Right, OK. I need to work out how to use Discord !! I knew this day would come eventually lol Thanks again mate :-)
There is a report abuse form on steemcleaners also.
This link to the Steemcleaners Discord has expired.
https://discord.gg/HASBN3C Here this one shouldn’t expire
You got my vote mate, and please continue to clean up our beloved Steemit!
I think we need to more actively downvote spammers.
I 100% agree, and hopefully more witnesses start actively policing them as well.
Yes. I'm trying to create a croud-funded anti-spam bot, which would (as set out on: https://steemit.com/spam/@missioncontrol/croudfunded-anti-spam-bot) spend 50% of a vote every 2.4 hours downvoting what the community considers spam, and the other 50% rewarding what the community considers good content.
Thanks @themarkymark for your hard work to research and expose spam and abuse on the platform. I have removed the three bot accounts mentioned from the Steem Bot Tracker website pending any further information.
Thank you for keeping on top of that.
My regards! I know how hard this work is.
Once I spent the whole day searching for new interesting authors, but instead I discovered a huge amount of shit and various cheating schemes. That day brought me 12 STEEM from Steemcleaners and a huge disappointment from what is happening around, when you find one cheater, and he leads you to another ten and so on...
Boom! It was like enlightenment ... a terrible realization of how many fraudsters are here, and how many of them are still unnoticed. I was just shocked by the scale of what is happening. I asked Patrice how she feels, watching this all, and she replied that I saw only a small piece of the picture...
Yup ;(
Are you a member of Steemcleaners? or Spaminators?
You should be a detective! I didn't realize this kind of thing was going on. We need a bot to fight the bots!
That’s bad news. Nuoviso is an esoteric/alternative media publisher in Germany operating for as long as I can think. They are the first big name from that scene from Germany here on Steemit.
I was never a big fan but I respected their work giving a voice to censored authors in the German language.
When you say “spam” do you mean posts without proper content?
His main account Nuoviso is his "legitimate" account. He runs also as Matzep and Ophelion creating tons of accounts with vote circles and abusing bots for stupid fraudulent posts. He also spams a ton of wallet memos on some of the accounts.
Now that I have linked the entire network it shouldn't be hard to verify. I'm also familiar with his YouTube Channel with over 90K subscribers.
Well what can be done about this? Because this is completely unfair and wrong. What can Steemit and witnesses do to fix that?
It really isn't a witness's job. A witness is responsible for producing blocks, maintaining a price feed, and adjusting some parameters to attempt to peg SBD.
Many witnesses are passionate about the platform and do things to prevent this, but it's not what they are here for. Well the ones that are here, many of them don't even log in anymore.
What can be done? Not a whole lot, it requires people with the power to do something which means throwing away money. It's not really a fair expectation of anyone. We can blacklist them from being rewarded by promotion services, but there is no way to ban a user in a decentralized system. That's the beauty and the curse of decentralization.
@patrice and SteemCleaners does a lot to combat this, but there is just far too much to find and counter. All the Steem Power used to spam has to be countered with an equal amount to bring balance. The amount of abuse is in the millions of Steem Power/day and there just isn't enough Steem Power being used to clean the platform as there is abusing it.
Until there more Steem Power devoted to fighting spam and abuse on the platform, it will be open season.
Great job. thanks!
Unfortunately as long as this platform technically makes such behavior possible nothing will change. Imagine steemit becoming mainstream, then we need a real police force.
Who's job is it to write the code that allows for bots? Don't you as a witness (or future witness) ever vote on improvements to the code @themarkymark?
Almost all the code done is by Steemit Inc, witnesses can refuse it by not updating or doing their own fork. As of now, no one outside of Steemit Inc has done forks. There have been pull requests by users and witnesses that have been approved, but most stuff just sits in limbo and never gets touched.
But theoretically a witness could produce a fork and get enough other witnesses to approve? And if so, is it 50% plus one to pass a fork, or is it actually on a consensus model?
Sorry, but wtf is buildawhale?
How to use it?
Send 3 SBD+ to @buildawhale with a post you want to promote as the memo. We come around every 3 hours or so and vote. The best posts get featured in our daily Curation Digest.
Great work @themarkymark - just a question. This is turning up as top trending post in #deutsch which is actually only for posts written in German aka #deutsch language - just wanted to raise this before you get some flags by our German management lol!
I'll remove the tag, I didn't have it there originally, but was told to add it as a lot of Germans vote for him.
no worries - seems most Germans are fine with it as it is an important topic! So you might keep it - was surprised to see this guy - seems a huge number on some platforms but never interacted with him or his 50 other profiles - not even following him. I am investigating this as well now a bit - seems at least the most do not support him.
Any time there is the potential for financial gain, there will be people trying to hack the system. The Bitcoin/crypto currency world itself is a perfect example as almost every day brings another exchange that has been hacked and robbed.
Kudos to you for having the skills, patience and the ethics to try and clean house here.
Hopefully, as time goes on, we will all become more knowledgeable in the signs of these fake accounts, and make your job easier.
That is a huge abuse, I didn't thought that somebody is capable of something like that, this guy dedicated his life to abuse Steem... That should get really big flags, for the good of Steem. This is a great job you have done!
Just a short observation, I am sorry I make it, but I couldn't notice it, you are overusing the word most(ly)
Hope you don't hate me for saying it :D
Didn't spend any time proofreading as I'm beat.
I swapped a few mosts out.
...that's how you become a true fan. Meanwhile most of the time....(in marky's writing)
To think i am a victim of these fake vote_bots is very hurting. I have lost my SBDs to some of these fake bots in past. Thanks for this information
Wow, so that's one down, how many spammers of this magnitude are there operating on Steemit? One thing that never quite gave me a good feeling on here was having to always be skeptical of posts that just didn't seem sincere, relevant, real, or...not a bot. I understand bots have their purpose for good here, but the majority of their presence appears to be illegitimate.
Go whale spotting, you have a starting number at least...
Oh my bad. they're not known as 'scammers' they're known as 'investors'.
So 'circle jerk' is the modus operandi. Not to be questioned. So move on.
Nice work. thanks for spending the time to do this. It's really very much appreciated.
Good work cleaning house! Screw that guy.
nice job👍
my thoughts exactly. it's not easy to do this type of research, i hope everyone in that space keeps getting exposed
now this is a massive breakthrough. really impressive. keep the hardwork going .. really appreciated ..
(Resteeming) Thank you for taking the time to expose this "spammer." It is a shame there are some who abuse the system and dont give back to the community. You gave up 4+ hours to expose this person. Maybe we can all join in and flag their account or whatever it takes to stop them in their tracks.
Nice detective work!
Also I've got to ask, Is Juny June, July, or both?
June, I'm running on little sleep. Thanks, I updated it.
Great Job! I have seen posts by some of these accounts and have been watching them. It seems they try to get a name as close as they can to the good accounts here so it will not be spotted so easy and they can get away with scamming longer.
good idea
Thank you for spending time investigating this.
Excellent
good job!
I am just amazed how much time was taken to create and monitor all those accounts. One is enough work already! that much time and devotion should have been used on just one account like everybody and the result would have been evident.
Great work all the same @themarkymark...
@iamjimmy
I'm sure there's some sort of scripting or auto-generation of new accounts being utilized
Oh I see!
Good work. It's appreciated
Dang, that's just dirty. But not unexpected. People will always try and game a system to try and get the maximum rewards for the minimum effort. Thanks for the time and energy you put into exposing this ring!
Keep fighting the spam bastards! Thanks for the info
Like seriously? Then how come no one got to find out until now. You must be prety good @themarkymark
Nice work bro; have resteemed it so more people can see and learn.
Very sad to see people like these, abusing these system. Thank you very much for exposing them.
Holy shit those feed screenshots lol.
Ah yes, I noticed some pingpong style activities a while ago with bots playing some kind of pingpong upvoting thingy amongst accounts, glad to see you are watching out for this community, where would you even report suspicious activities other then flagging?
Great observation! Now we just need to stop this spam by flagging it :)
Thank you for the information, the experiences and guidance from the people who better understand still I look forward to. Your next help I wait, do not forget my post. thank you
Accounts are added to @upme blacklist as well. Good work.
Someone asked me to buy a bot.But After reading your article I think isn't good for me.Thank for your research.You make steemit good
Dear @themarkymark
I become your follower and honestly love your blog!
Great work!
👍 great work @themarkymark most of the spam names are by juggling the bot names... Too shrewed to handle them..
Very interesting, I need to look more at it.
okay thanks for your information very useful for myself and also others, happy to work with the original results, not imitate someone else.