Many of us were hacked the past couple days, and I was one of them. Barely one day after I had posted my #introduceyourself post (which you can see here if you'd like to know a little bit about me) I had tried to log in early yesterday morning when my account kept telling me that my password was wrong. Naturally, I checked caps lock, slowly typed out my password, and even typed it into a notepad to make sure that I was without-a-doubt entering the correct one. Each attempt made, the sinking feeling in my stomach got worse and worse.
Of course, the hacker took the pennies I had in my account, which basically confirmed to me that I was hacked and locked out of my account. But, that didn't really matter to me, since I only had a few pennies accumulated since I've been on #steemit. My #introduceyourself post did better than I expected, accumulating 72 upvotes (EDIT: 73 upvotes), so I figured since I was on Steemit to begin with, I might as well check on my other posts.
That's when I saw that the hacker had used my account to comment on another Steemian's post.
I would take a screenshot of the post, but I want nothing to do with it and hope that it can be removed if this gets the attention of @dan and @ned, if it can even be done. If you want to see it, you can check out the hackers post here. I felt, and still feel, sick to my stomach. Especially knowing I couldn't even log in, delete the comment and apologize to poor @kim-dahae, who understandably made a post of her own labeling me as a racist. It was a long day trying to get in contact with someone to remedy the issue, and every time I checked on Steemit, that post was burning into my retina, knowing it will forever be part of my account.I eventually came into contact with the creator of Steemit's Facebook page, @cryptoctopus, who was a tremendous help in pointing me in the right direction and I thank them for their efforts. They pointed me out to the contact e-mail for Steemit (contact@steemit.com), and also created a post on GitHub to get attention. Nevertheless, the 24 hour countdown was still ticking, which I believe after 24 hours, your posts are burned into Steemit forever and cannot be removed or edited.
Now that I finally have my account back, the first thing I did was try and edit that post, but of course I can't delete or edit it anymore. It has been over 24 hours.
The error I receive is: Transaction failed: comment.last_payout == fc::time_point_sec::min():
To me, that sounds as if each post is locked into the blockchain after 24 hours. I have no issues editing fresh posts under 24 hours. I've understood that you cannot delete a post after it has been upvoted, or replied to, so editing was the next best choice. But, I couldn't.
My face, my account, my life is now tied with this racist post made by a hacker on the internet. This is one reason why I never participated in social media in the past, the fear of being associated with something I am not, the fear of negative public exposure when I prefer a quiet more private and positive life. But, Steem is cool, embraces the positive, and the community made me feel comfortable, so I tried it.
Even though I did not do anything wrong, I still feel that post breathing down my neck and feel that it puts a mark on my reputation. I don't know if anything can be done to erase what happened, but I had to at least find a way to try and move forward. Believe it or not, my heart is still pounding over this and the pit in my stomach is still churning, but maybe someone can help out in the comments.
If you haven't secured your account, do what I failed to do and listen to @wang! Wangs first bullet point is there for a reason! If you see someone using hate and racism in your comments, its possible that they have been a victim of attack, we must find a solution to this as a community.
