Ways to verify your Steemit account

Although Steemit is still a relatively small platform it has already attracted some fraudsters who pretend to be someone else. I just saw this post about a fake account for a popular photographer. He's been in touch with the real guy to confirm he's not on Steemit, yet. Of course his preferred name is already taken and cannot easily be recovered.

The easiest way it to link from a site you control that people already trust. It's not easy to build up a Youtube or Twitter account with genuine followers and if it's been been verified by the site then that's even better. I'm not exactly famous, but I've included some outgoing links on my Youtube. Of course it links to Steemit.

If the link on your Steemit profile links to a reliable site that links back then people can be pretty sure you are for real.

You may have noticed the neat badge I have in my signature block. That was provided by SteemVerify. I paid them a small amount and they did some manual checks on who I am. There may be potential for more rigorous versions of this for those who need it.

A geekier way to do this is using cryptography, which is what Steemit is based on. GnuPG and PGP are public key encryption that have been around for decades. As well as being able to encrypt data you can also 'sign' it in ways that nobody else can fake. Keybase is a site that makes that simpler. I have an account there and I have used to verify that I control various accounts and sites by uploaded signed messages to them. You can even verify that you control a Bitcoin address. Unfortunately you cannot so easily verify a Steemit account as we cannot place data in the html and Keybase doesn't know how to verify a Steemit account, yet.

What I can do is to include a signed message in a post as below. If you paste the whole block with all the dashes into this form it will verify who signed it. There's a Keybase app for various platforms that provides things like encrypted chat. I've already linked to a few Steemians using it. Look me up if you already use Keybase.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 This is to verify that user steevc on Steemit is the same person as https://keybase.io/steevc Check that page to see what other on-line accounts, sites and other things I control. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCgAdFiEEpdKE0AWevLT4ByqZQXXc8D+aJBoFAltXc4IACgkQQXXc8D+a JBqudxAAhTh2ktcCJFGiIY3OVcL2m4NF5Q/wj6vjTDmkuV1QzWhWoQnWxBJfxotP jw6Bw9z2ZEybLen5RAiy3Kvz2Z+aBj74HmRFL5Bs3jJ+9Up01UwYPBAufV5pd8p6 gU8ro04P4I3DtoY2nlyRue5OMldNeyqT66n3zt/+C66N2TkgjwkDa0yv5JArpCTT Lgg6k1nN/P1Kx0xqtuPGP4yAEvkYs6s8jF0feBVIAtA8hLB9EwRXq64199LmZ4KU 6FePMh1wtKtyQNdy8vUrbmNQgD61l36IzeLt/rNlgzLXKhjZOf+lkUdJxMYzTMZk WDu6RiKN9dNi20KYOlTeOy6RxTLH7WeTrBJ3bs+vj0tet84qqrJqAC49vk6KHgPP 5OImLmoKcR2VslTx1G9hM9jPR4bCV3+F9fXhmDPOA9Aw2jby0YLNB3ICQCYExjzY nMxtSgjQXTJvv4jSyViz8QH9XC9EjXuZw5tqd56m7oT+sZMi+BUKhLMVUunu7IC8 qXkJoaLm/WQSXhCubFy4TMh0yLYZZqfjcgEn8HWcsEn5VyrX+CN3wzb3Wy0CQX3v cNLsMeq1928y32I90D/swqg1HeAnZyV8fgwbKvAgotZ91Z8HjFzXuf29JykthVUJ Zhrixx/qJivZiQkCiyl3VQqyYdIgLYsTWmePnd/3a13beZrKqVc= =UfJM -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Stay safe, and check people are who they say! I'm Steve, the geeky guitarist. I'll buy guitar picks for Steem Dollars Get a Wirex Debit Card to spend your crypto. Steemians can get Byteball airdrop Get some passive income with Mannabase If this post is over seven days old you can vote up one of my newer posts to reward me. Spam comments may be flagged. Beware of the Commentphant!