That's why you should use password managers. And take care of your Steemit account.

Let this be a warning to all of those thinking that Steemit account is something as unimportant as an account of any other social media. People who thought that it doesn't hurt when you forget your password will be seriously sorry if they don't use a password manager here. And I know that everybody who uses Steem knows that, but treat this like a warning to all of the newbies. Like I am right now.

This story is about how dumb I am and what did it take me to join Steemit. Well, it was a long trip for me to get there, but it all because of my stupidity and disorganization. But, let's start from the beginning.

Well, I was influenced to became part of this beautiful community by two friends of mine. I created my first account in January this year. Yes, I already had an account here. I remember doing that on my phone and I was surprised that it didn't ask me for password. My account got verified then, I joined and... I thought I have nothing to do here, so I just forgot about it. I did it many times, I thought "what could possibly go wrong?" And that was a huge mistake. The biggest one I could ever do.

Fast forward 4 months. I finally realized that Steemit is a place I can do stuff on. And, as you probably guessed, I wanted to go back. But, to my surprise, there was no way to do that.

Let's talk about how Steemit works. Well, we all should know what blockchain is, considering we're here. The key is, there is nothing like a mission control or something here. I thought that Steem support guys could help me with this. But, well, Steemit is a decentralized platform. And when they told me "screw you" (actually, the auto reply bot did that...), I finally realized what's going on.

ONCE YOU JOIN STEEMIT, YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN. And there is nobody that can save you when you're screwed. Why? Because they have no power here. Creating an account on Steemit is adding it to the blockchain, and since then Steem Inc. has no control of it at all. They just pay some money to help you get started, so your account isn't useless since the beginning. And that's everything they can do. They cannot touch the password, they cannot delete the account, they can't do anything. You are the master of yourself. It's beautiful, but it's also scary.

So, that account is now floating somewhere in the blockchain, while I don't even remember its username. It's kinda sad. You must remember - being here for free is a prize. It's a chance. Don't waste it.

So, what about the password managers. Why am I even talking about them? Well, as we all know, Steemit uses randomly generated passwords. It's friggin impossible to remember them, but it's also almost impossible to crack them. Well, you can't remember the password, so you must store it in a safe place. Using a piece of paper is as safe as tattooing it on your lap, and the convinence of a such solution is at least... little, to not say not-existent. One of the friends told me that from now I have a reason to use a password manager. And, well, he was right. This way, your passwords are always secure and there is no way you can lose them except losing the master password. It's like a wallet. And it's easier to remember the master password than Steem password, obviously.
Personally, I use and recommend BitWarden. It's open source and easy to use.

And remember, Steemit is not the only situation where this might happened. I have already lost a few Google accounts because of my stupidity. And a Battle.net account too. So, people, watch your passwords!

And, yes, I forgot. I'm Matt, by the way.