This was one of the scariest weeks of my life. I'm not even kidding - almost no loss thus far can compare to The Alleged Loss of my Steemit Account. I actually hadn't lost my password but this series of unfortunate events led to me being unable to get back into my account since last weekend.
I remember signing up here and the form having 7 rules: never lose your password. And I saved it, with my other crypto keys, in case anything happened. But in my moment of need, could not remember that. I actually saved it thinking it was a recovery key. My Chrome browser was signed in and everywhere I went, I was logged in. No big deal. Never even had to think of what my password was because Google Smart Lock.
On Saturday, I was reading a post on Steemit about Brave and I thought, hey, let's try it out. So I used it for an hour and decided I liked it enough to set it up as my future browsing utility. Added a few bookmarks, and of course, wanted to add Steemit...
Click to log in but I can't remember the password. Figure I'll go check it out in my iCloud notes: Incorrect Password
Try the one above because I'm silly and it could very well be the other weird hexadecimal string thing: Incorrect Password
At this point I think everything is fine. I haven't logged out of Steemit anywhere, so I can just go change my password, save it, and bam, I'll be signed in on Brave. No big deal. Right?
I click my way through the extremely easy to find password page, input my password -the pre-filled one, obviously; generate a fresh new password that I promptly paste into my text file, et voila! I have a new password! It said so! The little nag message came up and said: "password changed" or something equally as clear in its meaning. So I'm stoked!
I paste my new password into Brave and there it is again: Incorrect Password
No big deal.
Go back to Chrome, but it's signed me out after not changing my password and try it there: Incorrect Password
Okay... Maybe it's the old password? Except, I don't have that...
I immediately panic. My eyes get watery. My heart starts pounding. I think of all the times I could and should have saved it. I think of the many times I thought I needed to back up all my wallet information, private keys et al. I think of the 61 followers I have and now they're going to want to unfollow me because I am stale!
At this point, I have saved 3 weird hexadecimal strings in my iCloud notes with no explanation as to what they are, but two of them definitely look like passwords to Steemit. I head over to the Account Recovery page and proceed to try all these numbers: This password hasn't been used on this account in the last 30 days
Pardon my french but what the @#&%! I literally just changed this password, at least one of them has been used on the account! So I remember I must have saved something in my recovery keys folder for steemit, there's no way I didn't. I look in the text file, find a similar text string and while completely dejected, try it in the account recovery fields.
It's asking me for my email to confirm it's me?
Eureka!@# I am saved!!!
I put my email in, and I get a message telling me it'll take a while to recover my account due to the high volume of emails...
There it is. Who knows how long this will take. I have heard of people waiting 2, even 3 weeks before they even got their account approval, let alone helping stoners who can't be bothered to follow the 7 rules of Steemit passwords. Not properly, anyway.
I looked at my phone every single day, waiting for an email from Steemit. I even resorted to tweeting @Steemit begging for help.
I decided to try this again. I wanted to at least try to fill out the form to recover my account again. My boyfriend applied to Steemit twice before they approved him, so who knows, could work, right?
I tried all the passwords I had saved again. And then I decided to check the pasted passwords after I pasted them. Seems I'd thought I had copied a few times, and in fact, it was still the old clipboard entry. **Something was definitely wrong here. **
Finally, I used the second password (the first one I generated when all was right with world): Logged in
If you have read this far, I applaud you and most of all, thank you. Thanks to Pavarti, the Goddess Perseverance for letting me get desperate enough to keep trying. Thanks to all the new followers, and the upvoters!
I can't wait to catch up on good reads! :)
❤️
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