Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S16W2: STEEM Blockchain Privacy

How does the STEEM blockchain incorporate privacy features for users, and what security measures are in place to protect sensitive data?

How have privacy mechanisms, such as private transactions or account privacy features, been implemented on the STEEM blockchain?

How are security protocols, such as data encryption and protection against potential attacks, strengthened on the STEEM blockchain?

Can you illustrate specific use cases where STEEM's privacy features have been particularly beneficial to users?

What do you think are the next steps to develop to strengthen privacy and security on the STEEM blockchain, and how can these improvements influence the adoption of the platform?

This is another engaging and very powerful contest I must say I really appreciate, just as I would always say it has been time-consuming which shows it's quality of the contest and I really enjoyed it because I learned so many things. i hope you enjoy and understand while going. thanks for such quality content professor. To be sincere to you I broke my phone while engaging on this contest because of how interesting it was. kudos to the organizers once again

Steemit is one of the best social media platforms, this is because it has always prioritized the security and safety of all its account holders. since its official innovation and introduction, there have been many different security upgrades to ensure that all account holders and their assets remain safe and secure by improving the working structure and nature of the platform. in case you don't know about steemit I would gladly tell you about it, this is because it has a big influence on the type of output and understanding you will get from this poster.

Steemit is like a unique and very special platform on the internet that is used as a social media platform where data and information are shared to people for free all over the world and the sweetest thing is that it doesn't focus on stealing our information to selfishly make money as most social media platform do instead it helps users easily make money through steem coins for sharing their special and unique knowledge without or any excuse or delay (as soon as your post expire you get your coins on your asset). it was officially launched back in the year 2016.

Please focus here because there are very vital data here, steemit was developed on stem blockchain, which means that it stores its data on a powerful, upgraded, and very efficient, upgraded technology, unlike the old storage mediums like databases, blockchain secure data permanently and efficiently, the reason i said you should pay attention is that this could act as on of the data security technique that protect data authenticity and data originality, this is because no one can totally delete a data or information stored on a blockchain.

Also steemit works on a peer-to-peer network that could also act as a medium of security within the platform, this is mean all Steemians can't be hacked at the same time like other platforms that work a centralized network. if any strong hacker targets Facebook there has a higher chance of affecting all Facebook accounts at the same time, now i believe you get the point i am making to you.

In other words, steemit itself has the ability to secure its account because of the technology it's made with, every aspect of steemit has a power technique that could be used to develop an attack-free environment or society for ever-loving Steemian. although i take this as an extra summary of the course to prepare your mind for what is to come.

what security measures are in place to protect sensitive data?

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as i have said before there are so many effective mediums and efficient measures that have been put in, right from the initial development to fight and defeat insecurities on the Steem blockchain technology as you go through you will totally understand and enjoy knowing them.

The power down time on steemit is another powerful strategy the steemit team uses to fight insecurity on steemit, the power down time was purposely set aside to delay the withdrawal of Frozen Steem (in a new format called steempower), this was set as a counterattack to buy the legit owner of an account and the steem security team time help recover stolen asset on steem blockchain or an attack to delay thieves from stealing or moving out someone steem assert illegally

For example, if Mr A who is a powerful hacker breaks into mr B account illegally with the aim of taking all Mr. B's assets secretly, imagine mr A succeeded in triggering a power down on mr B account but mr A is sad that the power down is expected to take approximately 1 month to successfully transfer all mr B hard earned assert into a secret exchange or wallet. because the real owner has a lot of time, mr B reports to Steem Detective Team and also steem witnesses because the have enough time to settle down to log out the threat before the complete power down time.

I have also spoken about this awesome feature that makes steemit very secure and efficient and trustworthy, in fact because of its efficiency most companies are speedly diving into the blockchain technology to upgrade the company or platform security in a short period of time and at a cheaper means. before i continue i would gladly define blockchain in the simplest format and term, this is to aid a simpler and clearer understanding of the term before saying its basic and advanced purposes.

Blockchain can be easily broken down into two words which are Block and Chain, Block in crypto ecosystem are the actual storage medium that are used by technologies to permanently store data (NOTE that every block needs to be validated before it becomes permanent) thats to say a block need to be validated before it becomes permanent. validation as the name implies is the medium or process of confirming a block before being added to the chain where other blocks are located, the validation is usually done by validators or verified blockchain witnesses. Chain on the other hand has to do with the linking of one or more blocks together, for the sake of orderliness and strengthening the blockchain.

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Decentralization has to do with the method every account or nodes on the blockchain or networks are connected and how information are shared between or within the network, before now most platforms were built on blockchain technologies were built on centralized mediums, for example, most native banks were built on this medium. because they are centralized if anything happens to th admin node, then the whole platform would be affected. Also the Admin can compromise the data and information on an account at their own will which make centralized applications very scary.

But with decentralization, most of this problem could easily be settled because if any cyber attack or accident occurs it can only affect the node that has the issue while the other account would keep performing as if nothing actually happened, this make it easier to resolve and settle the matter. Because there's a saying that says the first step in solving a problem is discovering the problem and in this case the problem is easily solved and settled.

The privacy mechanism is done with the help of an awesome technology known as Cryptography , because its one of the most efficient and Trustworthy techniques. This question is actually two-sided and for proper understanding, i am going to do my explanation in a way that covers both dimensions. First i actually believe that the professor was asking about how transactions are done on steemit, I would say that indeed the the steem transactions are done privately. This because any successful transaction has to do with the approval from the account owner with the help of the private active keys and the making or creation of post are done with the help of the private posting key not the public posting or public active key.

As the name implies the privacy mechanism has to do with how one's access to an account is done, due to the fact that steemit sends one keys privately that even steemit team know noting about your keys details and that's why we are advice to protect our keys because it cannot be recovered at easily of which I am not sure it is even possible to occur, Its advice that we keep our keys safely to avoid losing our keys because the loss could turn out to be a permanent loss.

To be sincerely initially i thought about this when i initially saw the question, the transaction on steem blockchain is done privately because it only accepts its verification privately and i would tell you more on the next topic because this tell us more about cryptography, which i want to talk about in the next topic. As i was saying steem blockchain transactions are private but steem blockchain transaction data is not private. because as we all know transparency is one of the major goals on steemit, which makes steemit and most blockchain technologies make their transaction data visible to the public. For example, on steemit, we use private keys to assets our asset and run activities which make steem blockchain technology private, but on our Steemwallet and steemworld all our transaction data can be seen by whoever wishes.

Finally, this is where I have been waiting to unleash the final privacy and encryption property that steem blockchain posses, the security structure of steem has and cannot be completely defined without talking on what cryptography has done to improve the security and privacy on steem blockchain. as usual before I start I would love to talk about cryptography in the simplest format possible.

Cryptography was discovered from the Greek dictionary, the two words which turns out to be kypto and graphine which when translated to English means Hidden and Write. Joining the two words together would generate a solid sentence like writing secretly, cryptography was actually discovered as early as 1900. BC in the Egyptian kingdom. Although it was said that the famous Roman boss Julius Ceaser used cryptography as a way to encrypt messages he sent and received in the battlefield to maintain the originality and authenticity of the message.

Cryptography is a very powerful and important knowledge that helps with securing and encryption of communication, and vital data to ensure the integrity of the data is preserved through the help of advanced mathematical algorithms. Ithas a vital role in upgrade of modern-day technology or platform and that's why the web 3 project tries its best to make it success in all its exiting and upcoming project.

Cryptography has to do with the use of mathematical techniques to encrypt information in a way that only authorized individuals can decipher it and understand or use the preserved data. The science of cryptography has been upgraded over generations,basically it has to do with the encrypting plain text and converting them into cipher text hat looks difficult to understand with the mere eyes. unknown to so many there are two (2)different types of cryptography, there are symmetric encryption and asymmetric encryption.

Symmetric encryption is a type of encryption that uses one single key for both encryption and decryption of plain text and cipher text, this means that the algorithm used to encrypt the plain text to cipher text message is similar or same with the algorithm used to decrypt the cipher text to plain text . The only issue here is that if this algorithm falls into some stranger's hands, this stranger can have full control of encrypting and the decrypting of data so therefore compromising the integrity of the data.

The other is known as Asymmetric encryption, which is known to use two keys as algorithm for the job of encrypting and decrypting of data or keys. These two keys are known as Public keys and Private keys, the public key is usually for encrypting of the plain text and the cipher text can only be decrypted using the private key. so therefore f the public key gets compromised, the thief can not still decrypt a key without the private key this make this technique better
than the one-way algorithm (Symmetric encryption) and that's why steemit uses this Asymmetric key encryption algorithm.

Yea in my roughly 4 years with Steemit I have seen so many cases that the privacy feature on steemit came to the aid of Steemians but the most case have experienced was that of a friend who I referred to steemit, my friend @dybastos lost his account to a scammer because he carelessly clicked a phishing link out of curiosity, the owners of the link claimed his account. this act did discomfort him and this caused him to go very sad so he reported the case to me. i scolded him because I warned him about clicking suspicious links on steemit but as a friend, I contacted a witness and his recovery account @justyy who turned to to be friendly to me, I told him about the matter and he told me on what to do.

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He said I should use this link, luckily for him he was still in possession of his owner key, we filled all the necessary data for the empty box and finally he got full control of his account and we all were happy and thanked the steemit witness @justyy for his good job and nice responds with respect. Thanks to the power down time the criminals never succeded in their criminal act and he didn't loss any money or assets.

Although steemit is very secure it still need to add more security features to make it top-notch, one aspect I don't like is how anyone can come into steemit and just easily access your account details through Steem Wallet. i believe something could be done on this matter, this is because the already put-in-place data security can only protect account owners virtually and not physically. for example a criminal can trace your steemit username and trace your account value, this could lead to the criminal to kidnap the individual and force you to power down in their custody and make away with your hard-earned money and because your data is open to all you cannot lie that you don't have the amount they kidnapper seek. So therefore I am suggesting that there should be a feature that permit account owners to make the account data secret or covered with asterisk ✳, this should be activated on steem walletso that highly knowledgeable Steemians can still find other account details using special steem tools like steemworld. in summary I want it difficult for foreigner to easily view ones account details but at same time makes it visible to steemians to maintain stability.

Also, there should be a technology that would alert a user if his/her data are inputted in a new device, this has been successfully done on goggle. for example if someone logs in my Goggle account from different or new device goggle do notify me through my email and through my phone number as a message,for incase i am not the one, then necessary measure could be easily taken to stop the attacker.

I remember vividly well that i was told to add an authenticating method while subscribing for an online lecturing class this was done to help me strengthen the security of my profile and make my account access easier and faster, i also think most latest technology uses this method to secure user data and information and i think it would be lovely to see it on steemit someday.