The cryptocurrency mining bots stealing millions for their creators
The rise of popularity on the crypto space has created a new version of malware which could be infecting your computer and siphoning off its power while you read this article.
Hackers and cybercriminals are developing Internet bots that sneak onto your computer and use its processing power to mine a particular cryptocurrency while you are oblivious to the fact. The more computers the malware infects, the more power the bot gets to mine. This involves the infected computers working together to solve complex mathematical problems.
For example, one botnet known as Smominru Monero which it's used to mine for Monero has made over USD 4 million for its creators. The Monero bot was quite large and had more than 600,000 infected computers at its peak.
However, bots are not only restricted to mine for crypto as they are also used in Steemit to generate profits for its creators. From a personal point of view I think bots in Steemit should be banned as they do not contribute with anything valuable to the community. I think that Steemians should put the effort to create quality content and be rewarded by the community, instead of cheating their way by creating bots. I predict that if bots are not banned, people will slowly start abandoning the platform.
If you think bots should be banned from Steemit vote, resteem and comment.
For a community free of bots
I saw your recent comments on @themarkymark post about scammers and totally agree about the monopolisation and invoting amongst whales. I wanted to ask you of you could explain how bots work on steemit and hownyou could spot a bot? Thanks
Hi, thanks for your comment. I do not know how to identify a bot with 100% accuracy. However, most bots on Steemit will comment on your posts and say something along lines of - I'm a bot created by this user and you received an upvote to show your support please send SBD to this user.
Bots work in a very simple way, they basically go to all the trending/hot posts and will upvote and leave a comment. The problem is most of these bots are owned by a few whales and they will use them to upvote themselves and to get new users to pay their creators for upvotes. So basically is like having a team of employees working for you to generate money from Steemit. Just imagine if just posting by yourself you can make 1 dollar with 10 bots you can make over 10 dollars.
Anyway, you gave me a great idea, I will write a detailed post explaining how these bots work so users can be aware of them and stop upvoting and sending money to their creators.
There are so many bots many of which are not upvote bots or bots that leave comments. Many users have bots that work on their account in addition to then using it themselves.
Like I have a bot that claims my rewards every so often and another but that sells sbd on the market automatically when I have a sell flag enabled. These help me do manual things I don’t want to do manual.
I also have bots that identify spammers and working on adding more to be more proactive.
Thanks all really helpful. I look forward to your post @stevekelly Before steemit leaves beta all these glitches have to be worked out.
kill all bots!!!
Most of the bots are listed on steembottracker.com, at least the public bots. There are thousands of bots doing varies things from collecting rewards automatically to more malicious things.
Hi @themarkymark thanks for commenting on my post. Since you are here, I would like to get your opinion on the topic. Don't you think bots are damaging this community? What do you think about the fact whales only like other whales' posts? Don't you think this destroys the credibility of the platform? What do you think of selling and buying likes? While I agree some bots are definitely required (for example cheetah) I feel bots are making more damage than good. Wouldn't it be better for the long-term survival and sustainability of the platform to ban all bots especially the ones generating revenue for its owners. Thanks!
If it wasn’t for promotion bots many minnows would have left ages ago. Almost every platform has a form of advertising. I post on my Facebook pages and within 30 minutes I get an email “this post is performing better than 95% of the posts on the page would you like to boost it for $5?”
Whales vote on what whales vote on just like minnows vote on what minnows vote on. Most whales have been here for a long time and decided who they like or have their own “scheme going”.
The boost of sbd changed the game dramatically causing things to get worse and everyone is trying to make the most money while the peg is off.
Do I think they are hurting the platform? No. What is? Steemit Inc’s lack of transparency, their large stake being used in dubious ways that abuse the platform, the fact 80% of the posts here are spam, the fact there is only one developer working on steem right now as far as I can see, the fact the a large portion of top 50 witnesses don’t even login to steemit anymore, and the fact the community has to sacrifice their stake to police the platform but no one wants to because loss of revenue and retaliation.
Those are the things that will destroy the platform.
First of all thanks for your reply. I really appreciate that power users take the time to address the concerns of new users. While I agree on several of your points I think the main problem with Steemit is the nature of Steemit itself. It pretends to be too many things at the same time. For many users in developing countries, Steemit is a way of earning a living. On the other hand, for most new users in western countries, the revenue is just an extra incentive as they do not see this as a revenue-generating tool rather than a social media that's free of censorship and red tape. I for one enjoy the fact we can basically share whatever we want without fear of getting our accounts suspended (like facebook does). Perhaps the problem as you said goes back to the developers of the platform and their neglect to address these problems. I'm not really aware of the ins of the platform and do not come from a technical background but I think revenue generating bots should be banned and users limited to just one account. That way we give a fair go to all users on Steemit, otherwise this will become the cash cow of those with enough money to purchase Steem power and technical knowledge to create their own bots. Just my 50 cent!
I'm inclined to agree. I don't think bots kill the platform, because at its core the value of Steemit is content production. I could see Steemit filling a niche as a creativity incubator. And that isn't affected by bots. By the same token, that also means the platform won't suffer from banning bots.
I hadn't thought of it like that, but after reading @santana33's post and yours, I will stop paying for votes.
Well said @stevekelly :)
#steemitwithoutbots #peoplepower
So true! I'm totally with you on this one!
Such a great concept (Steemit) to be lost to others greed...
Cheers,
Adrian
Someone should make a bot to kill the other bots. These bots are the worst thing, they kill all platforms,even buying sneakers!!
I personally don't think making more bots will help... just get rid (ban) the existing ones and we're out in the clear :)
Cheers,
Adrian
yeyya
Resteem.