This week's task is special to me since I will be talking from a more personal experience of what happened to me almost three weeks ago. Although I didn't wake up one morning to find out I lost my hive account 😂 Rather I came back from school to discover all my hive and HBD were gone, only to get a thank you message from the account they were transferred to. (Who I believe orchestrated the whole thing). I didn't even know when it happened until merit.ahama notified me asking if I knew the person that got my hive and HBD. It was in that moment I knew my hive account was compromised. So I guess there's no need to imagine what I would do in such a scenario, so I will go straight to everything I did through and through.
It was really heartbreaking seeing all my hard work go away in the twinkle of an eye, I couldn't find the tears physically, I remember laughing in agony in the process of digesting everything when merit.ahama told me. I couldn't even eat that night, as I wondered how the whole thing could have happened.
WAYS YOU CAN GIVE UP YOUR HIVE KEYS
THROUGH LINK: This is one of the easiest ways fraudsters can gain access to your hive account. For example, you see a post that directs you to a link that requires you to open an account with your hive keys. Once you open the account, you have automatically given access to your hive account. So ensure any site you are entering on hive is legally verified by hive, with trusted owners.
NOT KEEPING YOUR KEYS PRIVATE.
Perhaps you are not the only one who has access to your phone or laptop, and you keep your keys in a very known place, it would be easy for someone to get access to your keys.
Despite the various ways you could lose your keys, it's important to note, that no one can have access without a loophole. Although in my case I haven't been able to figure out how mine was accessed alongside a close friend of mine and the person who onboarded me.
I didn't know the importance of using so many keys until I lost my hive account, I started researching about the importance of these keys in a quest to see if there will be anyone I could use to recover my account, and this was what I found out.
This is a viewing key that only gives you access to view private messages sent to you, you can't use this key in making important changes in your account making it the least among all the keys.
As the name implies your posting key allows you to make posts, comments, and vote on any frontend you use it for. You can use your posting key for frontends like Leo-finance, Neoxian City.
Anyone with access to your active key can do a lot with your hive account. Like transferring funds, delegations, and powering up and down. This key is only used in frontends that require you to perform transactions on the hive Blockchain like peakD and ecency.
Anyone with access to your owner key can do a lot worse damage than with your active key because this key can completely lock you out of your account if the person with it decides to use it in changing the rest keys.
I call this your personal fail-safe because it's the only key that can be used to automatically change every other key including your posting key. Make sure to never lose this, because if you do, there's no Jupiter that would be capable of recovering your account.
The public keys are quite different from the above keys I mentioned. All the above keys are known as private keys, how ever these keys are use to look up transactions on hive, and there's really no need securing them because they can't be use to access your hive account.
Another important security for your hive account is the recovery account, you can see it as a safe house when all hope is lost, so make sure it can be trusted in times of trouble. For me, I was able to discover my Trustee account with the help of friends on hive and hive witnesses who gave me the hive-block link. https://hiveblocks.com/@username with this Link, I wasn't able to just see my Trustee account, I was also able to see all the unseen activities that went on in my hive account, up till the very moment and time my keys were changed.
I also discovered you can change your Trustee account, which takes 30 days to effect, however, if you ever wish to do so, pay attention to the following;
This is like putting your personal phone number as the line to be contacted if you are ever in trouble. If you do this and your security is bridged, consider your account gone for good.
Imagine if my trustee account wasn't trustable, I don't think I will be making this post today. Trust here means whoever you are making your Trustee should be someone who you are sure is never leaving the hive Blockchain, will be always available when needed, and of course willing to help in times of trouble.
I was able to get back my hive account after doing all I have mentioned above, but in all, it's safer not to even lose your account at all, so you don't need to go through the stress and pain of everything that comes along with it.
Since I got back my account, I have ensured to always do a routine check on my account activities, which has further made me change my keys from time to time. In doing this even if someone has your owner key and changes it, you can automatically change all the keys by just changing your master key. I found out three ways to change your keys depending on the frontend you are comfortable with
All you need to do is login, go to wallet, you will see a change password option, and then you can change your password.
Login to your ecency account on your browser, go to settings and then click on permissions, you will see this.
In conclusion, if your hive account is important to you, safeguard it with everything, always watch out for it, and make sure to never lose your keys. This is my entry into the newbies initiative program task 3. Under the leadership of 
Thanks for stopping by my blog today, until next time.
