Dear Steemit community members, my account has been hacked in past 24 hours! The hacker was posting from it, left and right, spamming comments with phishing links, with an apparent attempt to hack any of you as well who might fall into that trap.
Image Source: Pixabay. Credits to geralt for binary-black, used under the CC0 Creative Commons license.
Over 200 accounts have been affected by that comment massacre. Last 18 hours (night and day) I've spent by deleting them and by trying to warn those members from whose accounts (for some to me unknown reason) I wasn't able to remove those hacked comments.
If you come across any of them that have been posted in past 24 hours,
PLEASE DON'T CLICK on any of the links in them, and especially don't try to login to that phishing site by any of your Steemit keys!!!
Image Source: Own derivative work with screenshots and illustration from Pixabay. Credits to TheDigitalArtist for hacked-cyber-crime, used under the CC0 Creative Commons license.
I didn't notice what was going on for several hours, but when I finally did I took all the actions I find necessary to bring the full control of my account back!
However, I would like to make a special apology to those members on whose blogs I wasn't able to delete those hacking comments (@scandinavianlife, @williamwest, @tasauver, @camilus, @czechglobalhosts, @avesa, @buggedout, @pyaesonekhinkhin, @taphophilia, @splendorhub, @aweber, @rockingluis98, @imranafridi, @antomil and @juanmiguelsalas).
As well, my additional apology to every and anyone of you who I maybe missed while going through whole this hacked data.
Also, and for those of you who are used to my regular curation activity, as my Voting Power has been entirely drained down, I have to inform you I wouldn't be able to upvote your posts in the following few days until my VP at least a bit regenerates back.
My special gratitude and a big thank you to all of you who recognized and realized what's going on with my account, knowing it can't be me, as well as for your support on the way out!
For all the rest who would find about my case through this article, but as being affected, my apology once again, and hoping for your understanding I'm thanking you in advance!
TAKE CARE & STAY SAFE!
Posted on Saturday, March 3, 2018
Thanks for putting this to everyones attention! We all need to be aware that these kind of things will happen way more in the future.
Dont apoligize for it..could happen to the best! Take care and I hope nothing else was stolen from you
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This is a sobering lesson on how vulnerable our accounts are online.
I think having multiple backups, logging out when your not online, and allowing password recovery via steemit can help keep our accounts safe.
Unfortunately nothing is safe but we can only make our accounts less vulnerable.
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A suggestion would be to use @ginabot to get notifications on your discord app about activities happening in your account. This will help you easily identify activities that you are not actually performing.
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Great advice! Didn't cross my mind! - Many thanks!
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Sorry
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all these are phising links
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SORRY I WAS HACKED
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detail oriented with nice information. thank you for sharing
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Sorry to hear that, it sounds bad. We need to be careful.
I've seen a few posts about hacking. Maybe we need some clear do's and don'ts
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Thank you for understanding!
I just made a comment-reply almost on the same question to @lifeaef, so not to retype the whole thing all over again, I hope you would be so kind to take a look at it.
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Thank you. Yes, I read it. I think the main thing is to avoid logging into the phishing sites, in the first place. I know I get plenty of emails from banks, PayPal, Amazon, etc. I always look at the URL before proceeding.
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This is terrible, so sorry. You can count on my support in any mater.
Stay cool- we all love you!
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Thank you very much, Oleg!!!
It was really a shock to me, but I am OK now, and just want to leave the whole thing behind.
And waiting for my Voting Power to regenerate itself... 😉
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That's terrible ... I'm sorry to hear what happened to you. Keep safe and maybe share with us some security tips you find important
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Thank you very much for the support and understanding!
The best tip I could give is never use your master key and don't keep it and store it on your computer. Write it down carefully as it's case sensitive and keep it somewhere on the paper, notebook and lock it.
Use only your Posting and Active keys, and above all watch out NOT to land on some phishing site whose domain at first glance may look very similar to steemit.com but, in fact, when you take a closer look it's a different domain maybe only with just one letter of difference which site might ask you to log-in again (as like you are logged off from steemit.com). Don't log-in there even with your posting or active key!
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Resteemed to spread the word around on this new scammers. Can happen to anyone if it happens to the lovely @ana-maria who is usually more than careful.
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Thank you very much for your support, dear Uwe!!!
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This is very frightening, Thank you for sharing. I am going to resteem this for awareness.
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I am so sorry it happened to you.. I would suggest reporting that to the steemcleaners discord channel and let them know so that some of the votes can be removed or just for informing them.
Have a nice Sunday!
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Thank you for understanding!
And yes, it was reported right away as I figured it out.
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I'm resteeming this. Thanks for letting us become aware!
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Reestimed! Good luck!
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Do not enter your key to steemit anywhere and only, ONLY to the official login page, after checking the URL and the green certificate lock in your browser. You could add sttemit site login page to your favourites and only enter it this way. Get some good security product on your laptop too!
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