Account recovered after falling for phishing scam

in #life7 years ago (edited)

Hi Dear Steemians

Friends I want to inform you that I was able to recover my account, many thanks to those who cared and shown their support, it was a great effort to recover and I want to thank all those who helped in the process,

I fell victim of a phishing scam, and had the owner key of my account stolen, I'm telling my history so you don't fall for the same trap:

recoveredmyaccount.jpg

How did it happen?

I received a private message via discord by an impersonator of the chief of a big curation project (which I preffer to avoid naming), he invited me to participate in his project as a curator.

Offering me a delegation of 29.000 SP and a payment of 20 SBD weekly, besides being able to count on the vote of the project in all my posts (an offer that I found wonderful). Knowing that this project has a lot of credibility on the platform and assuming that I was going to be able to help and that they would fulfill their promise.

I accepted the offer and he asked for my key, which I refused initially, and asked if I could rather use Steem Connect or other application, and he replied that they didn't have those options.

proyecto de curacion.jpg

A week later he wrote me, telling me they have made a trail using Steem Connect, thinking that they will not have access to my key, ans as I already follow several trails with Steem Connect, I trusted to follow the link, once i put my key it tells me it is invalid, I then tried the AK and believing it was a mistake to enter my proprietary key, I also got an invalid key and as I was already late to go to school had to leave.

When I arrived almost at night I realized that the liquid funds I had in my account were withdrawn trought blocktrades and binance a total of 49SBD and 31 Steem, in a nutshell, I was robbed.

transacciones.jpg

My account was still open on my PC so I tried to change my password, but it failed.

The account was kidnapped and a Power Down started, the countdown began to recover my user key and started crying all night , because I knew I could lose my account and my savings forever, which worries me more when my job at Steemit is my main income. I spoke to friends of the platform and asked @nnnarvaez who told me to start the process of stolen account recovery, I had already done that, he reassured me that in his previous experiences the mail had arrived in a matter of hours. He inmediatly notified @guiltyparties of Steem cleaners.

As the days passed and the mail did not arrive, I checked constantly and I was attentive, I wrote to the technical service of steemit and they never replied, Nathan kept and open line with SteemCleaners to flag the posts about to payout and avoid the robber stealing more from me. He was devoted to my case throughout the week, fact that I thank you with all my hearth, he kept contact with Tim Cliff asking for help, but the mail still did not arrive.

error 1.jpg

I finally asked @gtg a great witness who has been my friend since my introductory post. He checked and told me that were no pending recover requests, and asked me to try the process again.

And to tell him what error came out, incredibly upon trying i got an error that my password had not been used in the last 30 days and could not do the recover. and sadly I lost contact with Gandalf because he had to go on a trip, I was back hoping for a miracle.

I did nothing but pray and I had a very difficult time as Steemit is my life and so it has been since I entered the platform, and all my savings are in my account. I was scared it would be impossible to recover it.

With a day left for the first power down payment my stress was at its peak and I went to the STeemit abuse channel and the help channel at Steemit.chat to ask about news about my account recovery, were @guiltyparties and @drakos told me to speak with @andrarchy, I had already written to him and didn't get an answer, I asked them to speak with him on my behalf, also @nnnarvaez had spoken to him the first days so he had knowledge of my case.

@guiltyparties and @drakos were very kind and tried to calm me, I only saw the hours, as in 10 hours the first power down and my case was in the hands of God no one else was able to do anything, (which I find very disturbing, it seems that we lack a good technical service), we invest in the platform and our funds are threatened by lack of response to a hack I hope this post serves to steemit improve the technical service and time to validate information and recover the account of its users, we have funds here that are an important part of our investments because we believe in the platform.

How did I get it back?

My decision was to leave everything in the hands of God and ask for the support of my friends in a chain of prayer convened at 10:50pm Venezuelan time, all were available and willing to pray and cry out to God for his help, which
apparently worked as the recovery message for the account arrived 9 minutes later.

I jumped out of joy and ran to recover my account, stop the power down and warn all my friends and family thanking them, Iwant to see it as a test of faith in God to which I thank immensely.

I want to finish with a fraternal greeting for all, a big thank forall who reached out with a friendly hand to offer support and help, starting with @nnnarvaez who was on top of the case at all times, as well as @annomadsoul, @nainaztengra, @matuca, @dropahead, @efrageek, and @chitty for their words of encouragement and Friendly support, @gtg and the team at Steemcleaners, especially @guiltyparties also @drakos and @timcliff for all they did to help me reestablish my account quickly.

Today I'm back and I'm happy for that, after a loss on the platform that for me is significant i tell my story in this post, hoping that my voice is heard and taken into account so that situations like these do not happen again, please be attentive to Phishing scams, this was a very well laid trap, but also I hope that Steemit improves his response times and does their part to solve these cases, as what happened to me could happen to any of you.

Don't forget to follow me and comment

Thank you for your attention!


betamusic

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Greetings, sweet and beautiful Betamusic

Glad you could get your password back. I saw your wallet and noticed that you have a good amount of sp invested. I put myself in its place and tried to imagine how it is the pain and despair of losing that amount of sp or get in here or invested from outside to someone else. Must be something terrible.

I'm Brazilian and yesterday, we were discussing the issue of steemit passwords in the discord. We came to the conclusion, that, with the utopian question, it was better to change the passwords so as not to take risk, besides never by password in anything other than steemit.com. I once saw my account voting for a curatorial project and I had not authorized it. After I realized, I withdrew the authorization ...

We have to be very careful here, because, unfortunately, the wallets are open and everyone can see how much sp. This can cause malicious people to pursue those who have a good quantity ....

I was very happy to have your account restored. I'm following you from now on.

Good Morning!!!

Thank you very much friend, if it is a big problem that the wallet is public, that terrifies me sometimes.

I do not speak much in my real life of my work here because I can be a victim of things worse than a phishing, God takes care of me, but hopefully change this kind of thing.

A hug @julisavio, thanks for commenting is a pleasure to meet you!!!

That was really a appealing. We can teach from your experience. Bcoz steemit is now everyone income source. If we loss it we are really feel alone. Thanks to know that you recover your account.

Thanks for your comment, that's right, you can teach with this experience, that's the main reason for this post. A hug!

¡Me alegra mucho que ya tengas tu cuenta de regreso!

Recomendación de seguridad para todos: USAR solamente las "Active Key" y "Posting Key", evitar a toda costa usar la Owner Key o Master Key.

¡Háganlo por su propio bien!

Gracias si es lo mejor, gracias por tus recomendaciones querido!

Well done, congratulations fot recover.Discord is really a helfull comunity.Thanks for sharing this update.

Good to hear you got your account back. Only go with communities with a track record or you can investigate them first. @drakos is great. Always there and helpful. Vote him for witness.

@betamusic What fishy phishing scam... Thank you for sharing this so that we can all learn from it. Sorry this happened to you.

Yehay! Must have been a headache. Now it's over! You got it back!
Yehay! Happy for you!

Gracias a Dios y a los Amigos quienes no te abandonaron nunca. Felicidades por recuperar tu cuenta.

No hay fracasos, derrotas ni pérdidas, tan solo son precios que debemos pagar por Aprendizajes y Experiencias Ganadas. Saludos.

Tu experiencia me hizo reflexionar sobre lo importante que es Steemit para nuestras vidas, así como para ti para mí también representa una fuente principal de ingresos, y al ponerme en tus zapatos, y pensar en que todos tus ahorros se vieron comprometidos, me sentí muy mal; pero también siento mucho alivio al saber que recuperaste tu cuenta.

En una ocasión quería cambiar mis SBD con una casa de cambio, y envié el dinero a otra cuenta porque me equivoqué en una letra al escribir el nombre, lo peor es que no pude recuperarlos porque esa cuenta había sido creada hace mucho tiempo y nadie la utilizaba; aún siento una puntada en el estómago cuando lo recuerdo, pero son experiencias que nos fortalecen, por eso te entiendo.

Y tranquila, verás que todos los ingresos se te multiplicarán nuevamente ❤️

Glad you're all restored and back now.