My First Big Steem Clusterf@ck + Problems Changing the Master Key
Good night, everyone.
Yesterday I had finished publishing a post and, as usual, I go to some groups in Discord to promote my link and, by accident, I posted my Active Key instead! 😱
Yes, I posted my Steem Active Key on a public forum! First, my heart almost dropped to my stomach, Then, in a state next to panic, I said "Argggghhhhh!" and went looking for my Master Key to update all the keys, hoping I would be quick enough or else I would get stolen.
Source: Giphy
First, I tried changing the Master Key through SteemWorld + SteemConnect and it failed... I tried 3 times, always encountering the same error.
Source: Giphy
Then, in a state of confusion, I typed my Master Key directly on SteemWorld, which gave me a warning that it wouldn't allow me to do that as it would be an unsafe operation.
Source: Giphy
My last attempt was through SteemIt.com ... and it worked. Ufff... What a relief. I dodged a bullet.
Source: Giphy
After the dust settled, a question popped up in my mind:
- If the SteemIt.com website was down for any reason, what chances would I have? I'd be a sitting duck, waiting for someone to get into my account, with my hands tied. 😮
What other options do we have to quickly change our Master Key, in case of an emergency?
My goodness! I was distressed as I read, that is one of my fears regarding that dammed keys, what to do if I miss-use one, is not something I what to experience and I would not know where to begin.
Thank for sharing your experience @trincowsky, if that site was down, I don't know 😱.
I got lucky this time. Better be more careful from now on! Thanks for your comment. 😉
What a scary thing to happen.
I am glad it worked out.
Just goes to show you that shit happens .
I was so calm in a second, so panicked on the next. Ahahahhah! Live and learn, I guess!
All it takes is one bad click.
How many times have we seen that go bad. Glad it worked out.
Wow that’s pretty crazy, I’m glad you were able to change your keys (: You’re lucky it was on discord and not anywhere on Steem because there is a bot looking at the block explorers for when people use a private key in a memo or comment. Scary stuff in crypto land, protecting your keys, but luckily we can protect them ourselves instead of the banks (:
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Yes, I know about those. I'm glad they aren't lurking on Discord. Recovering my account could have been much more difficult.
Thanks for stopping by! ☺️
Just a thought for you, if that ever happens again feel free to transfer all your liquid steem and SBD to me until you get it fixed. Or to PIFC, either way I can at least keep your liquid funds safe for you.
Now something I do with my keys to avoid stuff like this, BUT it does cause more work repeatedly. I only most of the key in a place I can cut and paste, the rest I have to type in each time. This way if I do what you did, or someone somehow gets access to my computer they wouldn't ever have all of the key. They wouldn't know where to add the characters that are missing either as it's not the start or the end making it much harder to work backwards.
Ah, don't worry. I have another account and I did just that. First I transferred the STEEM + SBD to @trincowski-pt and got them back after changing the password. 😉
I forgot about your second account. That at least gave you an option to protect the thing they go after first.
Sooooo scary! Fortunately everything worked out fine.
Yes, that was a monumental f@ck-up. I still can't believe I did such a stupid thing.
Oh darn, I wonder if the [email protected] e-mail is already in use. I mean, just thinking. That would be an awesome e-mail to spread around to people.
Ahahhahah! For sure, that would be awesome!
Yep you would have been fucked. But glad for you that it did. I think the best way to do is to react via steemit.com it’s the shortest way to success as you experienced. And this will never happen to you again !
It took me a while to get the keys changed. I was very lucky that no one evil was lurking. 😂
The keys area major scare once you realize the importance, a lot of new users don't realize how important it is. I have been backing up recently and using Keychain as much as possible on desktop, but man it can really leave you paraniod. I wish the finger scan could be used on desktops via smartphone too. Glad you got things done, LOL those gifs are too funny.
Hello trin,
I will be on full panic mode! But, thank you for sharing your story at least now, I have an idea what to do if indeed, I might be posting my master key. hahahahahahaha
But seriously, if you wanted to post your master key, you can just send me a memo so I can get into your wallet. hahahahahaha
Not the Master Key, @nurseanne84!!! 😕
I hope you are not using that one. Nor the Owner Key. The only Keys you should be using are the Posting and Active Keys. Don't you go and do an even bigger mess than me.
If you lose your Master Key, it's all over, as anyone using that can generate new keys and you will be locked out forever.
OMG. during the early days of the new wallet- that was like one week/2 weeks ago, I had been warned by the network to use my owner's key to log in so that's what i do.
YOu know the funny thing that I did- downloaded a copy of my wallet keys so at least if my pc conks up/gets hacked, I have a separate copy in my usb.
OMG!!!.. Well, If I were in your place I had no idea what to do infact it's really scary experience... I remember I had lost my account once when I was newbie and it was a scary experience for me that time.. Hmm... I changed my password from steemit.com even I had to gave my master key to someone whom I trust to recover my account...I can imagine your panic that time... because if I were on that place may be I would be totally blank...
Thankfully, the Active Key is not the most important Key and I could use the Master Key / Owner Keys to update it. 😃
But now I know that, when something like this happens, it's better to use our Owner Key to change it. And not the Master Key, as I've used.