Last year I wrote a post explaining how I was unable to recover my former account, @jlwkolb.
Here is a summary:
On July 25, I created @fairytalelife with the idea that this new name would be more memorable than @jlwkolb. It was part of a re-branding that resonated more with the kinds of stories I post. My @jlwkolb account was working fine. I had been using @jlwkolb in my Safari browser so I decided to use @fairytalelife in Chrome. While I was switching over I wouldn’t need to log in and out of accounts on a single browser because @jlwkolb was still active at the time.
I never signed out of Safari except once when I had to log in again after Safari crashed around July 30. After this, I signed in normally with my posting key password from keepassX with no problem.
However, when I tried to transfer my SBD to poloniex on August 2, I was prompted to enter my active password. This step was not required when I transferred SBD on July 25. I wasn’t too worried, knowing I had my passwords safely stored in keypassX.
At first I didn’t panic. I had my old passwords, and knew there was some kind of recovery system in place. I tried every single password I had, old and new. According to Steemit’s recovery system, they should have worked.
I decided to reach out to the Steemit community for help. The original post is here.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@fairytalelife/incorrect-password
I was so happy to see the support I received. Dan even stepped up and offered to help, as you can see here.
Of course I took him up on it and emailed him. Here is the email I sent.
Sadly, I never got a response.
I refused to let it go. I knew there had to be some sort of recourse.
I worked hard on building up my reputation and managed to acquire a nice balance of both Steem and SBD with my posts. It's horrible to see this stuck here in an account I can not access. I have four children, and my living expenses are considerable. I need these funds for basic necessities that go with raising a family, starting with food, rent, out of pocket orthodontic care, as well as expenses for school which are not insignificant.
This income was a godsend.
The reason I am posting today is that there has been a recent development. I finally found the right person willing to help me, the wonderful witness @jesta.
He did some fancy stuff, trying the passwords I had on the "CLI," as he calls it.
They were the same passwords I tried many times in the recovery input.
When I went back to inquire about account recovery with the password that jesta proved worked, I was told it was impossible due to a 30 day limit in the account recovery procedure. This was not in place when I tried account recovery last summer.
Why is there a 30 day limit to recover an account? What is the reason a 30 day time frame was implemented? It seems rather arbitrary.
I could recover my account right now if it were not for this 30 day time frame limit.
The thing is, I did initiate recovery within 30 days. There is proof to be found in my original Steemit post. You can see the date in the email I sent Dan.
I have absolute categorical proof that I was actively trying to recover my account. This 30 day rule as it stands means I have to be successful within 30 days.
That just messes anyone up who has more difficult problems or experienced some technical issue with the recovery process that was beyond their control.
I clearly demonstrated intent to recover. I opted in to the process. However, within those 30 days, no one responded to my requests for help. What then? If it is day 31 someone can no longer recover something they can prove is theirs without a reasonable doubt?
This rule must be changed. So many others here have had problems with their accounts being locked, I’m sure, for similar reasons. Most of us do not have the computer skills to work through these issues without help from those here who do. That is why companies have support. But if you do not follow up with support, how will this work?
I have been trying to get my account back for 10 months.
It is my hope that by posting my story, Steemit will consider changing the rules to make this platform a more user friendly place for everyone. Technical glitches happen. The issue is, what can or will be done to fix them?
I would like to propose you remove the 30 day time limit, or modify it in some way so that the owner of any locked account has a way to unlock it with proof of ownership. Again, I want to reiterate that while I was actively trying to recover my account, this policy was not in place.
Meanwhile, I am led to believe that I will never be able to access my account, and I have been blamed for being careless with my passwords, and that I learned a valuable lesson.
No I didn't.
I asked the Steemit community for help, and I am still waiting.
There seems to me a misunderstanding that I was asking the overall community here for help. What I was really asking for was help from the Steemit creators. They were the only ones who could have done something to help me recover my account.
I am really sorry to hear that, but the tone you set here is quite demanding, don't you think? I remember your situation, and when you finally sought out help it sadly was too late to do something.
There's no one to blame for that (//edit: okay, right. @dan is. definitely. But pointing fingers won't help much i'm afraid).
Why the 30 day limit is necessary was explained to you quite some times already. Consider the account lost, refusing to learn your lesson will keep you unhappy for years.
Actually, you are wrong. She sought out help well before. The reason you remember this case so well is that I tried to assist her in recovery only a few days after her last use of the password. She and I reached out to @dantheman, and you can see he made promises, but ignored her.
What @fairytalelife could explain better in her post is that she had the password all along. She (and I) tried the working, now proven, password many times in the recovery option, well within the 30 day window.
If someone from steemit had looked into this issue, she could have recovered her account easily.
Knowing that she had the correct password at hand, I would have tried it in the CLI with the
get_private_key_from_passwordcommand, but I assumed, erroneously, that the recovery field worked as advertised. But the recovery field did not work. I conclude now that it was broken.The developers at steemit should have looked into their own code and found that it was not working. I implored them to try to look at the code at that time but got nowhere. If I had known the recovery field was broken, I would have tried direct key recovery myself.
That's an issue between her and steemit then. They should definitely reimburse her if that's the case. Too bad the code wasn't open at that time.
But she held the community accountable with this post. We can't remove the 30 day limit, and she knows why. I wouldn't have commented like this if she asked for money nicely, but that's all anyone here can do for her.
I don't see where she holds the "community" accountable. Maybe I misread it. I believe she mentions @dantheman in her post. By "no one would help me", it is pretty clear she means no one at steemit.
In the last sentence
The community has always offered help. She decided to try her luck with STINC first. Anyone of us could've told her that's a mistake, but of course it seemed like the logical way for her. That's happened and can't be changed, no one in the community can help any more.
Also,
is a valid answer to her situation regarding the technical background, if she wants to hear it or not. Just keeping on pushing for a change that can't happen is not helping.
@phareism, by community, I meant those that could have helped - the ones who created the whole idea of the steemit community to begin with. I never asked for handouts.
Okay, that was misleading.
Still, the change you proposed isn't possible, and there's really nothing anyone could do. Except Steemit Inc. reimbursing when they admit it's their fault (and at least @dan has responsibility for letting you stand in the rain).
@phareism, are you kidding? When I "finally" sought out help? As you can see I sought out help immediately. No one responded.
And for the record, if you were really sorry to hear it, perhaps you personally could have stepped in to help. Refusing to learn my lesson? That is exactly the attitude I have been shown this whole time. It's so much easier to blame me than accept this could have been something on Steemit's end.
I am not kidding.
There's not enough information here to judge when, where and why the fuckup happened.
Your post at that time received quite some attention, @roadscape's comment seemed very valuable but went unanswered by you. No idea who else you contacted at that time, obviously not the right persons to help you.
So while it may very well have been a fuckup on Steemit Inc.'s site, there's no proof for that yet.
Either way, the community is not at all responsible for what happened. As there's no way to fix it on a blockchain level, it would be up to a court to decide if the company running this site is liable or not.
You have been explained multiple times why there's a 30 day limit, and wrongly claim it wouldn't have existed before.
Again: No one can help you, except by supporting you directly. I thought about doing so after seeing @steemed mention your situation, but decided against after reading this.
What do I have to do with her? I helped her, that's all. I sincerely doubt that my response suddenly made you grow a cold heart. You just look for an excuse to be lazy. There is nothing wrong with laziness, just don't blame it on me.
Nooo :D On the contrary! You mentioning it on slack made me look into the issue, with the idea to help crowdfund her losses. Then I read this OP of hers.
Yes. And Dan's email went unanswered by me. Was Dan not the right person? He offered, after all, and never followed through. No one explained the 30 day limit. I'm not sure how you can say it was explained to me many times. This is the issue. My requests went ignored within those 30 days.
Those are the facts.
I'm so sorry that you built on @dan - an earlier visit to the chat would've pretty certainly got you back up. Or roadscape :/
So obviously, no, he was not the right person. Or maybe it would have helped to be more insistent. No use thinking about that now. There are a lot of things to blame him for, and this is pretty far up the list now. No matter if the fuckup was caused by them or not, one doesn't offer help and ignore the request then.
I'm not following, @phareism. I think you are missing the point entirely.
For the record, I communicated extensively on @fairytalelife's behalf with roadscape by private message. Saying she did not follow up with him is absolutely erroneous.
That's just what's visible of course.
Weird that he couldn't help back then either. So everyone just relied on the broken form? :/ Fuck.
11 bucks from one comment is so truely amazing! u should take a screenshot of this for people an show it to instagram facebook and reddit!
Feel free to do that, I'm on neither of those platforms ;-)
I would love to help be ambassador for instagram and facebook I already canged my facebook and insragram an google youtube profile pics to steemit logo to show peope i a serious!
i am tryingto get whales support for my idea to rent a ferrari spider for one dday for cheap, put steemit temporary sticketrs alll over it cover in steemit logos and drive around handing out $1 bills and steemit brochures explaining how to singup and post what u normaly post on instagram or rfacebook or reddit and ow to monetize ur social media and i will get on the local nws handing out money downtowwn !
I'm so sorry this is still yet unresolved @fairytalelife! This is completely unjust - and I'm shocked that anyone would dispute this. It's obviously a result of technical issues within steemit that the developers could have helped to rectify. Perhaps this post will elicit the help you need. And kudos to @steemed and @jesta for helping!
Ruth! Thank you. I have missed you. Thank you for reaching out to me here. Your support is so appreciated. xo
Likewise I've missed you! Really really hope this is resolved...lots of sbd at stake and they are yours! xoxo
Wow, what a journey. I'm sorry you had to go through all of that. This hits home for me because I had issues years ago where I misspelled my password hardcopy for an LTC wallet. Then the value was $10k when LTC was about $1.00
Also, I just went through the process of changing my Steemit master password because I doubled up in Steem Power and had been logging in with my master password. It took me about 2 hours of researching posts and videos before I felt confident enough to change the password.
I trust this wil work out for you in the end. As long as we hold for the long term we will recover our losses.
Good Luck!
Thank you, @sneakgeekz. It sounds like you went through an ordeal as well. I'm sorry about your LTC.
You ever heard of this guy... @fairytalelife @sneakgeekz what your going through is nothing to what this guy went through/is still going through. James Howells searches for hard drive with £4m-worth of bitcoins stored.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-25134289
Yeah I heard that story and Im sure there are more we have not heard of and many more to come.
saying that there are stories of people selling off priceless antiques for $20 when they sell at auction for $300,000.
Stupidity just knows no bounds. And getting damn unlucky on being locked out to your crypto wallet just sucks. I lost 20 BTC from 2011... :(
Hey man sorry to hear about your loss but as long we stay in the game the profits will come.
He did very good to share his sad story
Sorry to hear about this, sounds an awful situation to have experienced! I wish you good fortune and hope something can work out for you.
Thank you, @carface. That is my hope as well.
This is a huge bummer, and your post comes across as reasonable to me and it is unfortunate the way pharesim is responding to you. I really hope that something can be worked out.
Thank you, @gardenlady. I appreciate that so much! It's made me very sad, actually.
I am featured in Investorplace.com as being a musician on Steemit. The article talks about Steemit being the Facebook killer, I am featured on page 2! If you agree that Steemit is the Facebook killer upvote the post! Help spread the word of Steemit by spreading this article and post around! https://steemit.com/steemit/@wvm/i-am-featured-in-investorplace-com-for-steemit-com-check-it
Clearly you did not read my post, @wvm.
I did, this article is about spreading the word of Steemit and helping it grow!
No - this post is about how I have been locked out of my account for almost a year.
I see, that is terrible really sorry to hear about that!
All is well that ends well... U have progressed a lot with this account too. Stay blessed stay happy
Wow. I am speechless.
Yes, @pinoy. I am too.
I really hope you get your account back, I know how frustrating it can be to lose something financially so important! I'm confident steemit will resolve this for you eventually. Good luck :)
Thanks,@yonny. It is indeed frustrating.
How could Steemit possibly resolve it? They don't have her keys.
Sounds like a nightmare man, try and reduce your expenses in the meantime if possible until you can get your STEEM back. :)
A total nightmare, @thecynic. Thank you -
I hope this gets worked out for you.
Thank you, @dp1011
Don't worry, Steem may be overloaded but I do have a feeling that they somehow will solve it...good luck dear
Thanks,@qaopao.
I felt bad about your situation @fairytalelife but this is crypto currency world, password recovery is intentionally not design due to the protection of that identity. I'm not sure if steem engineers will make that change, now or in the future.
On that note, I'm also worried that someone will be able to take over my account. Because my username is public and the secret generated password which offer no security.
I just hope that 2FA should be implemented to add extra security to our account. We use our phone authentication during sign-up, why not extend it for 2FA?
I up voted this post. Hopefully this will help get you some coins to support your family.
Cheers,
@Yehey
https://QUE.com - I follow all who followed me. I think that's fair :)
cool followed
Like real password recovery, 2FA isn't possible. Both need a 3rd party involved. The blockchain can (shall) not be connected to an external centralized service. You never know how long those last. Imagine Google 2FA going down, and nobody being able to access their accounts.
The password recovery here is a compromise. By this feature, Steemit inc. (or whoever you choose later manually) has the option to revoke a key change, nothing else. This was introduced to help out when your account was hacked. The limit of 30 days is in place, because it wouldn't be possible to sell an account otherwise. The old owner could just initiate a change to the old keys any time.
Thanks, @yehey - but the real problem is why no one followed through when they could have.
I can't answer that question . I'll leave that to the steemit management.
Damn, a proper horror story this one! I hope you get your password back, I can only imagine what you're going through, specially since it had your finances! Have faith! :)
Thanks, droidsid. It's not about the password at this point. Now it's the 30 day policy.
Ah yes, still, hopefully both of them get resolved very soon!
The 30 day window for account recovery is not anyone's policy. It's part of the fundamental consensus rules built into the blockchain.
Upvoted to help you earn some money in the meantime. I hope someone who knows about these things will come forward and help you get your money out of your other account. You earned it. You should have it.
Thanks, @stephmckenzie. I hope so too. :)
This is terrible! I wish you the best of luck in getting what your earned and is rightfully yours! I really hope "the powers that be" do what is right here. Please let me know if I can help.
Thank you, my dear friend. I always know I can count on your support.
I feel sorry for you
I have backed my password in 3places just in case I lose one place or 2
I didn't lose my password, @greatvideos - that is the problem. It's good to have extra back ups, though.
After reading your post, I seriously thought about how it is safer to store the password from my account.
I hope you will restore your account! Your efforts will be rewarded!