Hello Steemians and Steemit Community! Today, I want to share something with you. It's about the steemit's important security warnings and it is really a helpful warning for newbies and noobs about steemit security risks.
But before that, lately, I came into some realizations that the steemit wallet is one of the most secure wallets among other crypto wallets, exchanger wallets, desktop and mobile wallets and many more. And just recently, I decided to store my liquid steems in my steemit wallet. Exchangers are not secure and don't ever think of storing your liquid steems or sbds there for long in hope for the next possible pumps. It is better to secure them in your steemit accounts. Just don't be so careless with your private keys, especially the active key and the master key. Save them securely at your own convenience.
Now going back to the main point of this post, steemit or rather, the steem blockchain itself has a well-designed security for your earned STUs. It protects steemit users from compromising their steemit wallets due to negligence and improper usage of private keys except for being so careless with your keys/password like showing them to other people or allowing other users to use your account using active keys and master password. Prior to some experimenting and explorations, I discovered these two important security features of steemit.
First is that, steemit does not allow its users to log-in using their active keys
Similar to master key that you get upon signing up, active key has the same length of characters and numbers in combined and it looks like this 5Jc3Vv913bMWJKtbbQ8wMEVzaYis7hcB2rgruz4HqK9i.
Steemit does not allow steemit users to log-in using their active keys. And when attempting to do so, it shows a warning message that active keys should be used on other secure pages like your wallet account and currency market inside steem. The active key has a specific feature not common to the posting key (the posting key is used for posting, upvoting/downvoting, commenting and resteeming activities). The active key allows steemit users to transfer steem tokens and sbd inside and outside the blockchain. It serves as an alternative key for wallet activities other than the master key.
Second thing is that when you made steem/sbd transfer, steemit gives warning message when you accidentally put your posting key, active key or master key in the memo.
What was steemit referring to as a private key was either your posting key or active key. I also tried putting my master key/password and the same warning message pop-ups! It won't let me press the confirmation button if I put my private keys in the memo area.
The memo area in the transfer section of your wallet acts as a personal tag for specific steemit accounts especially traders/merchants on exchangers. One best example is the @bittrex and @poloniex account. When you transfer STUs to these exchangers/steemit accounts, you'll be asked to input your personal tag from your account on those exchangers to your steemit wallet upon making transfers. Without this memo, your transfer will go directly to those accounts i.e @bittrex, @poloniex, and many more. Another thing, the memo is used for sending personal messages to other steemit users. You can also encrypt your message by adding hashtag sign i.e # your message where only you and the receiver can see the messages.
Quick Tips
Don't EVER use your master key to log-in into your steemit account - Take this as an advice and deal with it seriously. Also, help other steemians by giving the same tip. Your master key/password is your one-time password. It holds all your account activities. Moreover, it's the only password that can be changed. Upon changing this key, you are also changing other keys like the posting key and the active key.
Use ONLY the posting key to log-in into your steemit account - Another important thing, if you find it convenient to save your password on some browsers you use, better save the posting key and not the master or the active key. You may find this very inconvenient because you need to relog-in your active key when making transfers but, better late yet safe than sorry.
Use ONLY the active key when you're trying to access another steemit front -ends and steem dapps - We all try to promote diversity in our blogs and by reaching that, we used steem Dapps like @utopian, @dtube, @steemhunt, @dlive, @fundition and other steemit front-ends like @busy, @esteemapp and many more. But to access those applications, you have to log-in your steemit account with the help of steemconnect. Steemconnect asks you to sign-in yout private keys to access Steem Dapps. So, to give you a little hint of protecting your account, use your active keys upon signing in and that's it!
I really like how the security features of steemit work. It's not just a simple and plain security warning but conveys also the features of a more secure wallet and blockchain. I think that's all for this post. If you have found any other security features of steemit that mainly promotes common good especially for those newbies and unknowledgeable about how the steem blockchain works and how steemit should be treated as personal assets, feel free to put them in the comment section or make a post about it. Thank you for reading. Don't forget to hit resteem button if you find this very informative and helpful! ;)
EXCELLENT TIPS. WE MUST BE CARERFULLY
Thanks for this.
We will be careful
I'm new to Steemit and it's good that I've come across this post, I'll be careful and I'll be waiting, thanks.
Good for everybody security is a great concern
Very important for the newcomers. Thanks for the tutorial.
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Wow, thanks for this. I didn't even realize how secure steemit is and I also learned a bit more about the master key/posting key.
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