I must admit the whole "locked out of accounts" stories are unnerving. I've seen stories on the steem subreddit where people have been locked out for four to five days which must be upsetting if you have made real money.
I've tried to find the full story about the lockouts but can't get a handle on it. In some cases people have had their coins stolen, but in other cases the lockouts have been totally random, with no way to contact steemit (apparently they are responding to emails with a form letter saying they will respond in "ample time".
Can you or someone else knowledgeable do an investigative journalist piece where you detail just what went down, and explain why recoveries are so slow? There is a lot of discussion about this off-steemit (for obvious reasons the affected can't post here), but they are speculating in the dark.