I am posting on behalf of my brother @decryptson, who has been locked out of his account after resetting his password to the new 32+ password. This is what happened, please be extra careful!
Yesterday afternoon after getting home from work I told my brother that I was finally able to regain full access to my account (sadly I was one of those affected by the hack) after they released the new password reset. Everything went smooth for me, so I advised him to do the same. His account was not compromised during the hack however, mine was... not sure if that has anything to do with it.
Everything went smooth, he changed his password and was excited that Steem was finally taking their security a little more seriously. He wrote down the password he was to use first in his notebook, as he always does. After writing the 32+ new password down he went ahead and changed his old password to the new one he had written down. After the change, everything was fine. He went about his day, logging in with his new password twice successfully after the change. No problem so far.
Towards the evening he went to log back in and all the sudden the password was invalid. He tried his old password in case, invalid as well. Since it was written down he tried a few more times from his phone, computer & my computer as well, all failed. The password was written down and was accepted logging in with it twice after it was changed, and then, not at all.
He contacted contact@steemit.com and was told that there would be a record of it on some SteemIt tracking website. That was all. He contacted them back giving as much detail as possible and has never received a reply about it since. This was yesterday evening.
What we know:
- The password he wrote down was typed in twice and accepted, we are 100% certain the password written down is the password that was given.
- The new password was successfully used on two occasions to login writing it in exactly as it was on paper.
- The same password that was able to log him in, now does not work to log him in. No difference in password though.
- He saved his (new) private posting key to log in with as well, and no longer does the posting key work to log him in.
- None of his private keys work anymore, his old passwords are unaccepted nor are his new ones.
What we don't know:
- What is causing this problem?
- Why the lack of help from the devs?
- Why he was able to login twice and then it just stopped working?
- Is he permanently locked out of his account and therefore his money?
What we would like:
My brother would like to be able to re-access his account, as he has a good amount of money invested into SteemIt. He would like better communication with the devs, especially since there is money involved. My brother fully supports and respects the SteemIt devs and how busy they are, all he wants is the same support and respect shown back to him. He is extremely paranoid that some glitch has wiped out his account for good, and is acting really depressed over it in general.
Personally, I would like to see much better security, and a lot better communication when problems occur, especially ones so serious that they completely lock you out of your account with almost $2,000 sitting in it. Just like me as well, my brother didn't earn most of his Steem, he purchased it with Bitcoin, which he worked his ass off for. This isn't $2,000 of "free money" we're talking about. He has lost access to $2,000 that he worked his ass off for at his 6am-2:30pm bullshit job.
After trying to reset his account once more last night, it went so far as to say his account was not found, even though I can still see his posts, replies, wallet, etc on the blockchain.
Conclusion:
Please, all of you... be extra careful at this period of time how much of your personal money you invest into SteemIt. My brother and I both are still strong believers and supporters of SteemIt, all we want is better security, and at least access to our personal accounts and money. I don't believe this is too much to ask.
Be careful changing your password:
Any of you looking at @decryptson post history can see a lot of his posts were about password security and giving tips to the SteemIt community on how to best secure ones own password. The fact that this happened to somebody so keen on password security, so uptight and anal about his passwords, should be a lesson to the lot of us to be extra careful while changing ANY settings or passwords during this extra rocky beta period.
I will keep you all in the loop about where this goes and when/if he ever gets access back to his account and money. Hopefully there is something the devs can do to help this poor guy out. Believe me, he is the last person who deserves this stress right now.
Jah bless & Happy and careful Steeming to you all!
(notice: posted a 2nd time as the first one barely got views, trying to post a little later in the day to get it out to as many people as possible.)