I was hacked in April, and life changed DRASTICALLY for me. Ever since then I talk about my PHSD (post hack stress disorder) which I coined, yes! But it is VERY VERY real. Ask MANY people that have been hacked and you will see, that they suffer from the same paranoia, anxiety, fear, shakes, etc... when they go near their wallets again. It's kinda like returning to the scene of a crime, I guess? It's nasty business for sure!
So - I thought I was DONE with hacks - cuz I'm so super secure now - right??? RIGHT!
Well - for the entire day yesterday, I was sweating bullets. Were we seriously about to take another crypto hit in this family, this soon?
Honestly! It makes you pause and just before the top of your head blows off and the tears start to fall AGAIN - you have a moment to just speak "How much more can I take?"
My day started off GREAT yesterday, and then shortly after - my son texts "Can you take a look at my computer?"
"Of course. Bring it upstairs."
Brand new computer, 6 months old. solid state drive (that is supposed to be more reliable, yes??) no. The drive was trashed, no way to unlock everything in there - but THANK GOD I told my son to save his crypto keys!!!! Right? RIGHT?!?!?!!
"Yeah. I saved them. Just like you said............on the computer."
PAUSE. BREATHE. PAUSE. BREATHE. SCREAM. BREATHE. DIE.
Let me just cut to the chase. After 8 hours of what can only be described as "panic anguish desperate brain torture" (and that is putting it MILDLY) we got the keys from the computer.
I cannot tell you the relief. I think I just sat there saying OH MY GOSH for about 5 straight minutes as the anxiety finally melted away in waves of exhaustion.
So - today I needed to shine the light on someone amazing (who is either ignoring this post completely or cringing that I'm about to gush LOL)
To the knight in shining armor that spent the ENTIRE day rescuing a damsel in distress. Lolol
Thank you Sir @Penderis.
My brain is fried like the hard drive you recovered and forced to unlock its mysteries! You're an angel 😇 You're a beautiful human being. You're a good egg. I don't care what you say. You're a pumpkin! Hehehe
You did more than make us smile yesterday. You put my family and their desperation lol - far above your love of sleep! hahahahahahahahahahaha And that is like - THE HIGHEST PEN HONOR IN THE WORLD. Thank you for never giving up!
CRYPTO PEOPLE.
You think... that you have 👉allllllllll the time in the world👈 to grab those keys and put them in another safe spot. You don't. YOU DO NOT. You have no more time. Right now is the best time to go store you keys in another safe place.
Have those keys in MULTIPLE SAFE places.
You don't have to only fear hackers. You probably should fear your own procrastination 100x more than you fear hackers!!! LOL You think I'm kidding? I guarantee - someone is reading this right now and thinking "Yeah, she's right. I'll do it TOMORROW."
Don't wait. You will REGRET waiting.
or else...
bye bye crypto
Image source
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This post was edited but previously published on my account HERE
Nice to meet you too 🙂
This is going to sound counter-intuitive but...
Print off your keys.
You don't need to print an identifier to say what they're for - you'll know that.
Hackers hack. They're geeks sitting behind a computer screen. They won't break into your home and steal paper.
Then if anything were to happen, you can change your keys on another machine.
It's late here, I must sleep 😴
oh... hehehe
I have multiple copies of my keys! LOL and yes one of them is on paper - in 3 sealed envelopes, given to 2 people that i trust with my life - AND one for myself in a safe location.
I've always had those - but unfortunately as you said... hehehehe they didn't steal those.
Somehow - that day, I must have clicked something that opened myself up... OR. some have suggested that I did much earlier, unknowingly to a "friend", and they waited for the right time to steal it.
Given the very suspicious timing of the hack - the latter could very easily be true.
gross. thieves are slimy and gross. lol
you have a good night :)
Currently the security issue, hacks have become a recurring theme not only in blurt, even I myself have been a victim of an attacker. With the use of browser extensions, wallets like metamask are affected by copy and paste, the attacker somehow tells your operating system to always paste his eth address, thus stealing millions of funds daily. All of us in the crypto world must implement many things for security.
Yes!!!!
my metamask is the one that was the culprit!
I have some posts that I'd like to share to help people with lessons that I've learned from the hack!
I will post them this week! I'd love to get your viewpoint on it! I'll see if i can tag you in the comment section when I post it
Of course, after reading the whole kerfuffle on the other side, I had to come to check to see if you were/are here and ta-dahhhh
I had to read this to D because he is always going to do it...
And yay... Pen to save the day :D
We all need a friend like Pen
hehehe hi you!!!
let me add you right now!!! oh i'm so glad to see you <3
I'm going to be adding my lessons from the hack here - i think it will be really good to share across the platforms!
and yes - @penderis to the day! hehehehe he's the best (even though he denies it) hehehe
Hello,
First, let me say welcome to Blurt. I'm excited to see you exploring here with this post, although we never interacted really on the other chains. Our primary interests are likely in differing areas, but as I've found many years ago, there are usually many more areas of common overlap between all of us that despite the often different areas of passion we all share many as well.
I do hope you find Blurt to your liking. I noticed a recent exchange between yourself and Lucylin on Blurt, and it resonated within me as one of our common areas. You voiced things I did with him many months ago, as you can see here.
https://hive.blog/hive-150329/@practicalthought/qvhgp2
Which ultimately helped him give Blurt a look.
Your points you made in your comment were good ones, and I'm glad you decided to look for yourself what Blurt is about without allowing his anger to taint your vision in deciding for yourself. He has a lot of anger, some of it justified, some as a result of his own actions that manifested from his initially being wronged. When I was younger I too sometimes would allow myself to get hooked onto energy calling for battle and charge ahead into that battle squandering my time and energy in areas that were really a waste of time.
Blurt is so much more than that, it was not created with any malice towards Steem or the branch called Hive. The founders here had their own vision of what a better social blockchain would resemble, one major difference being no downvote theft. And here we are.
Please feel free if you ever have any questions or concerns to feel free to reach out to me, through this comment even if you want. I may not know the answer, but will try to give you an answer based on my own understanding and observation. I believe mine to be honest, as if you have time and look through my own blog you will see there are times I've been critical of ideas presented here at Blurt. You'll also note my critical words were at the idea, not the founders. Their conduct always humbles me, their quickness to answer and uphold views of honor and integrity and never take my criticisms of ideas personally a demonstration of how a mature person of good heart conducts themselves.
Edited to add:
Yikes, I was so focused on being excited you were here and the exchange between you and Lucylin I forgot your actual post. My apologies.
So good that you were able to recover the passwords.
I hate how much the world tries to force us to do everything online. I can sympathize much with you, to a lesser degree.
I've had my info compromised so much over the years, with hacks that didn't even happen to me directly. My info compromised at
United Airlines
DOD
Ebay
and many others. Yet they still try to push us to do everything online or through apps. I can imagine how sick you must have been, remembering your previous experience as you watched in horror the appearance of your son going through it with a large financial loss attached.
I think everyone needs to force themselves into never having their keys and passwords on their computer. All it takes is one second (even that initial second of getting the keys/passwords) for a hacker already present to copy them. I read one IT guy years ago write he always leaves a bitcoin wallet on his desktop and throws a crumb in it. He uses it to see if he is hacked, because despite how small it is most hackers will reveal themselves and take it.
Glad to read it all worked out. :)
Hello there! Thank you so much for the welcome! I truly appreciate when people leave genuine comments that try to GENUINELY connect (and I felt that from you!)
As far as checking out Blurt - hehe actually, I was already here before that conversation hahahaha (though not posting) And I have a project (not sure if you know about it yet) that connects users from all platforms to join in supporting one another! Not just crypto-social blogs. All blogs! Medium, Vocal, even personal blogs! It's the first of its kind, and I think it's going to be a very special project! I'd love for you to give me your feedback on it? May I have permission to tag you when I write a post about it soon?
It's called DreemPort! (@dreemport - we will be posting here very soon, but nothing just yet! hehe) And we are branching out to Blurt users to have them join in the fun too! So - yes, I had wanted to start posting here, because posting on multiple platforms makes great sense! And how can we reach people on platforms - if we don't have a presence there? We have our favorites of course - but earning eggs in multiple baskets should never be seen as a bad thing!
But - it was a very interesting conversation that lucylin and I had! hahaha I wasn't at all offended by his anger - I was really trying to get him to calm just a bit so that he could make valid points! I think that many people have so many valuable things to share - but they get caught up into so many emotions that distract from the treasures that they should be imparting to others. I like to think that as the conversation went on - we were able to get the emotion to calm a bit, and more of the conversation through! hehehe
I laughed when I read that when you were younger - you also would charge into battle. hehehe I'm laughing because I'm seeing myself!!! Sadly - I can't say it was 20 years ago, and how I've grown... LOL I can only say it was about TWO YEARS ago that I decided to take a new route! hahahaha
When I left Steem/Hive (not sure if you knew of me then - probably not. I was a small voice in a sea of voices) hahaha but I spoke out about many things I didn't agree with.
When I left, a lot of people called me disloyal, and a quitter. When I felt very strongly that I do not quit, never quit, but often will choose to recognize when I'm fighting a losing battle and CHANGE TACTICS.
That departure was VERY good for me (even though it came with HARSH realities and beautifully difficult lessons!!! They cost me a lot of energy, time and MONEY... but what I gained was absolutely invaluable)
It also allowed me to come back to Hive with a renewed spirit that was ready to fight for people in the healthiest way I saw I could. I believe I'm doing that now :)
As far as you defending the way that Blurt was formed... It's not necessary to defend it. I am one of the people that believes people should offer new options! Healthy competition makes everyone better. There is no loyalty issues in my view. Different platforms meet different needs!
and now.. let me get to your comments regarding the post! hahahaha (and no apologies needed at all - as you can see - i truly love connecting with people! my problem is sometimes i try to do too much in one comment hahahahahahaha)
yes - hacking. I wish there was a proper word for how disgusting this is. detestable? evil? predatory? and so much more. One of the tenets of DreemPort is to fight against spamming/plagiarism- because I link hacking with that. It's so inherently wrong to abuse and steal. (don't let me digress hahaha)
I will definitely be sharing some of my lessons learned from my hack (it was $18000 USD, and I am still.... so very shaken by it. Not just personally - but it was a little nest egg that I had fought for - to fuel DreemPort. and now.... we start from scratch hehehe. Its ok. we are all motivated and it helps me to see who is there for the heart - and not just the money! but my gosh. to have it just swiped away without a care. I was/still am devastated!)
hmmm what a clever thing for that IT guy to do!!! scary though hahahaha As i said - i'll tell more about the lessons I've learned in some posts here... but one that I wrote is about "PHSD" and I tell you... lol so many people have admitted - they suffer from the same thing. It's like when they go to those old wallets - its like returning to the scene of a crime and they feel vulnerable, shaky, scared, panicked, anxious... whew.
I'm sure time heals all things - but let it never heal me enough to be complacent! LOL
hey... its super nice to meet you!
thank you for that amazing comment - I'll follow you on here- and on hive (if you're still there) hahahaha
and i'll open up that post too! :)
I'm not really who that is designed for. I only do Blurt for social media. No Fakebook, Twitter etc. I do peek at Reddit a lot, but don't have an account there.
Thanks for asking about tagging. So many do that to get upvotes its sickening. I even commented recently on this.
https://blurt.blog/blurt/@practicalthought/r2ilrt
Not defending it, championing it :) It's like discovering there is free chocolate and wanting everyone to know where they can get theirs too :)
Yes, I can imagine so. My condolences on your loss.
It doesn't but it does overwhelm us with new experiences often to the point we have no time to sit in the puddles of tears (or smiles) of yesterdays. But revisiting the event in our mind, in our feelings can definitely transport us back to those moments as though they were fresh.
Likewise.
hehehe yes - I like to ask permission (thought I'm sure I don't ALWAYS... sometimes I'm in the moment and just tag people that I think would appreciate the conversation!) I WAS a whale for a time, hehehe and I know how annoying it is for people to just throw your name around without any connection. It's sad - because I will answer most comments, most dms - the offer for a genuine interaction is there! But they would rather forego that for a quick upvote. hm.. unfortunate.
And sure - dreemport actually is social media. but - I won't press you to consider it further! hehehe When the time is right, you might just stumble on us and think - hey.... dreem told me about this! LOL
And yes, you're actually right - time doesn't heal completely. But it does lessen over time, and it DOES afford us the opportunity to apply the hard lessons learned to the future. Those of us who are listening and watching and yearning for growth....thrive! :)
have a few more of your comments here to respond to - running there now. LOL
What an unpleasant, depressing experience! The rate at which these malicious hackers are operating is baffling! It's a good thing you had a friend by your side to help.
PHSD (post hack stress disorder)? Hehe, it's a thing now? I'm glad you did not allow the experience weigh you down or affect your plans. Here we are today! We keep moving!
Welcome to Blurt! 😄 (since July 2020).
Hi honey!!!!!!!!!
here we are- we move!!! hahahahaha I'm just logging back in here now and I'll post a new post here soon hahahahaha
I need to get some Blurt in here so that I can start to have a good upvote LOL
right now i'm just a minnow again hahahahahaha