Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful response. Maybe the bot I mentioned could remind people to use their posting key like you mentioned and to also not click on suspicious links. I don't think it would solve the problem by any means, but I do think it would probably help a certain amount of people not lose their money.
This phisher keeps getting more and more accounts so clearly there isn't quite enough awareness out there about it in my opinion.
In regards to the blacklisted on blocktrades, I can see your point, but wouldn't it be better to just keep blacklisting all the new scam accounts instead of just letting it run rampant? Seems like people should try to make it as hard as possible for the criminals to do their deeds.
Also thanks for the empathy and support and yeah it's a bummer he lost the SBD, but he's handling it very well and it wasn't enough to stop him from posting.
I have actually been thinking a lot about this bot idea and i will be looking more into it tomorrow. I may look into what it would take to create one and make an account for it. I do like the idea of trying to teach the new people the importance of this from the start. I just hope that it can cut back on some of the victims.
As far as the blocktrades blacklist, that would have to be something that is implemented on their end as well. If blocktrades started a blacklist and managed it, it would be a hurdle for the phishers to jump through and slow their process down a little, but they would adapt to it.
Glad to hear you're giving it some more thought. There's so many bots out there, even if it only helped a few people I think it would be one of the more helpful bots, but it could have the potential to help quite a few over time.. Especially if steemit continues to grow. I think it might be good to also include the link to the steemit restore account page link and perhaps a link to like a general sort of "tips and tricks" to keep your account safe and to avoid scams, I imagine some people might not even know that they can restore their account or might not know a lot of basic things some people who know a lot might take for granted, especially older folk who don't use computers as much.
"it would be a hurdle for the phishers to jump through and slow their process down a little, but they would adapt to it."
I agree. It probably wouldn't solve the problem but it would at least make it a little bit harder for them and might as well shut the doors they have open rather than to just leave the doors open, make them work a little harder for it and not just have an easy steal.
I mean.. I think in time some of these things will probably have to be considered more as crypto becomes more mainstream, people over time I think will more and more figure out better ways to do these things, but as I'm sure you know.. The "dark hats" are always evolving as well.. So it'll likely be a never ending battle.. But.. Whatever "side" you end up being on, you do what you can eh?
My father also thought some kind of "notification bar" would be good to alert people of scams, that like it would light up when there was a new one and alert people to it, however as I told him that would require either steemit inc to do something like that or it would have to be an independent app. Neither of which I'm capable of influencing.
Anyways... I tend to ramble so I'm going to end it there, once again glad to hear you're giving the bot idea some more thought and thanks again for all the help!