Back From the Dead!!!!

in #steemit7 years ago

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Hello Everyone!!!
As many of my followers may be aware, I as a regular steemit user, dropped off the radar for close to 3 weeks now. Why??

Was I just sick of Steemit? Nope!!

I WAS HACKED!!

It is the thing I never thought would happen to me. As a somewhat tech savvy person, and generally intelligent human being, I have been "online" for quite a few years now.

Well, more than a few. Most of my 30 years of life in fact.

And in all of that time never hacked!

Leading up to the hack, I had a couple folks seemingly become increasingly interested in chatting me up via Facebook in private message and video chat.

Well more like one person.

I won't get into pointing fingers.

You know who you are.

Just beware of steemians on here whose interests seem to fluctuate because they aren't GENUINE.....

Interesting that this happened not too long after my "share the wealth" and lets shape up steemit posting that you can see here:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@chelsea88/why-it-is-a-good-idea-to-reinvent-the-wheel-sometimes-warning-major-rant-calling-for-a-whale-wake-up

I'm somewhat of a rogue on steemit. I'm not really a part of any of the major groups like the alliance or what have you. Not that I have an issue with such groups. ❤ I'm a proud member of #steemusa though. :)

I'm the founder of @eastcoaststeem that I lost access to as well and not sure how to proceed with recovering it but it's the least of my concerns currently...

I've literally spent well over 9 months on here with postings of ONLY #originalcontent. I've spent massive amounts of time manually curating on both my personal account and over @eastcoaststeem.

The night of March 1, I left an unsecured video chat with a steemit "colleague" open for too long. March 1st was my birthday too. Guess I shouldn't have had those 3 margheritas. (Detect: dry humor)

Asides from my personal account and @eastcoaststeem I was also busy with the Facebook group I had started last summer called steemit dreamit, which I have now archived.

This "colleague" was loosely associated with my Facebook persona and steemit friends from fb.

Again I'm not gonna point fingers or say a name but cyber bullying comes at a high price for me.

After all, I lost a dear friend in part to repercussions of cyber bullying and steemit lost a bright mind @lauralemons. RIP.

I keep much of my super personal life personal at it should be. But I do have friends and associates within the legal system and the IT world outside of steemit.

This low life that hacked me had my personal email account BLACKLISTED. that's why i couldn't access steemit.

Because, despite having all my keys like a good little steemit girl, we all know you gotta have access to the backup email recovery option.

It frustrated me to no end as some of you well know that there wasn't another recovery option. But hindsight being 20/20, I am glad there wasn't and I am sure the dev's and steemit support was pretty sick of hearing from me.

To complicate matters further, my entire wifi was hacked, of Nigerian origin. That cost me $444 USD to fix.

I was in contact with the authorities to include my other afore mentioned associates. At times I felt I was completely losing it.

This hack came at a very high personal price. I spent a day in the local "crisis center"
suffering from horrid panic attacks.

I spent nearly a week without much sleep and started having delusions and visual/auditory hallucinations.

I have PTSD and started thinking, nay, over thinking - that maybe someone from my past did this to me.

Although it was pretty clear all along that was not the actual case....

It was not a pretty time and the aftermath of all this has left quite a bit of damage.

I lost my job too due to "absences" that even though I was medically and otherwise covered, I was in my first 90 days in an "at will" place of employment.

Luckily, I do have some wonderful things lining up for me in that regard. I work as a physical therapist assistant and there is a lot of growth in the field currently.

Repercussions associated with this hack have cost me nearly 1000 dollars. My Facebook was also hacked and replaced with a lude photo.

Luckily for me I did react to all of this VERY quickly. And I do keep my keys offline in an obscure location.

But I cannot emphasize enough MAKE sure you have a 100% full proof way to access your gmail or you're f*cked if you get hacked as you only have 30 days to secure a hacked or stolen steemit account.

All this being said, I am happy to be back and I greatly missed all my steemit friends. Big thanks to many of you who tried to help.....I reached out to several of you and I received support in various fashions and I DO appreciate it!!

I will be doing some follow up posts on general internet security that has to do with fb & gmail & a few other things later.

Thanks for reading and be safe on the interwebz. 😎
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I am so happy you ara back, I missed you. Not! As the phoenix rose from the ashes on Sola. How do you find Sola by the way? Are you enjoying it. I rather like the interface, can’t wait for the user base to get a little more massive but it is very international. Also the price of Sol is very low but that might change.

In all seriousness I really feel for what happened to you and I did miss your presence on Steemit albeit your commenting on Sola has been EVERYTHING! I know how much knowing this profile is secure means to you and that is really the big relief here. You are an awesome blogger, you care, you pay attention, you strive for more and you believe in yourself. You are someone I look up to and I hope we have many more adventures together on the blockchain.

Drink lots of water!

Thank you so much. Your support really meant/ means a lot to me. I was actually on sola since probably November but along with hack lost also access to original account so yes started a new profile and will stick with that one. Obviously, in recent times sola has really grown on me. 😉
Sola has improved since i started on it originally and i will continue on there. I think it will grow in time. :)
Its been around since 2015 though.... longer than steemit. And, not in beta :)

P.s. i think it is perfectly understandable that you had a panic attack, you have invested so much time and energy here! Great header!

You have been missed! I had feared you had given up and Steemit and moved on.

Sad you had to deal with such a scum bag. Seems these days a lot of this is going around.

Thank you and no def didnt give up. I have been on here full time at certain periods :)

I'm happy to hear that you're still alive and that you've unhacked yourself, chelsea! Yikes!
What a world:( What demented minds we have to deal with sometimes although of all the things I miss I miss my mind the most:)(even if my thoughts wander at times)...
Happy New Year! March 21st!

Happy new year! Thanks for coming by and glad you didn't forget about me lol.
Fight fire with fire works well with these demented individuals.
Fight fire with water also does. 😎

Glad you are back and safe.

If at all possible, please detail how you got hacked.

I'm not sure how someone could hack me and get my keys and blacklist my gmail account etc, so if you could share the mechanics behind this I'd love to know.

Maybe I can come up with something to protect other Steemians.

Anyway, glad you are back and (once the snow is gone), the days are looking brighter for you.

Hi there! I know it must all sound like a bunch of gibberish but it's all true!

In a nutshell, the individual i vaguely referenced in my post attained access to my Facebook.
Gmail account was under the same Facebook.
They then proceeded to spam my personal contacts in my personal email and replaced my fb with a lude photo that was NOT me. I lost complete access for a period of time to my primary device.

Getting the email back was no easy task. That is the only way i could reset my steemit. Is this making any more sense now?

But the question is how did they get access to your Facebook? That's where it all went wrong, right?

If Facebook is that easy to hack and then the email can get mis-used, then maybe I need t make up a Facebook email account that has no address book etc.

Hmmm.......... that's actually not a bad idea now that I think of it.

I was on a video chat through the fb messenger that's where it started. You're process of deduction on here is getting close. I'm not a hacker or an "IT" professional so...
🤨

I'm terribly sorry this clusterfuck of a situation happened to you @chelsea88 So the use of a two-step Facebook verification might not be such a bad idea although it's a nuisance? I think it's a great idea of you to write up a separate post about what to do/not do once your heart rate and heartbeat stabilizes. Dang shame there are such evil people lurking on the shadows. Hugs!!! Upv and Rsd

Yeah I had that setup on everything but fb. Smh. Thanks for the support by the way =)

Go figure @chelsea88 "Murphy's law!"
Hold your head up high! You might have lost your last job but I guarantee something better awaits you.
Plus you now have some excellent cyber security experience and skills that are in demand.
Seriously, add it to your resume.
Enjoy your weekend, hun!
💻⌨🖱

Congratulations, hope now all ok again, glad to see you back here.
Best regards
Tom

Thanks, still a lot of work to be done following this but I'm very happy to have my account back and hope the asshole that did this to me learnt some sort of lesson

Karma will do the dirty job.

I'm sure it will. 😎

Coming over from Sola. I‘m one of your followers and glad that you are back. Thank you for sharing your experience and good luck.

Thank you and thanks for reading & commenting!

I am so glad that you are back! I know how hard this has all been on you and I wish there was more that I could have done to help. Hopefully the person responsible will at least have to deal with Karma for his actions.

Love you♥♥♥

It was awesome talking with you though. Even under such circumstances. Lol. Your voice is exactly how i thought it would. (Wait does that sound stalker-ish? )
LMAO. I am your original stalker.
Love you and thanks for all the support

ROFL Of course it sounds stalker-ish, but I would expect nothing less from my #1 Stalker ♥♥♥♥

Good to see you back @chelsea88 . I figured you would find a way. Will resteem .
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Thanks very much. Missed you!

Im very sorry to hear what happened to you, it can happen to anyone, i wiuld also loose my mind if that happened to me, im glad your back!

Thanks for the kind words and i think it's safe to say i did lose my mind for a bit there

Fuuuuck! Why would somebody blacklist your e-mail on steemit? Im no techy but that would have to be a witness?

No it's because they were sending spam from my account.
My gmail was blacklisted steemit didn't blacklist it. It was HORRIBLE!
No the witnesses i did talk to were helpful but certainly did not do anything to make matters worse off if that makes sense.