NO ACCOUNT ACCESS. ASKING FOR HELP WITH ACCOUNT RECOVERY.
Hello everyone,
this will be my last post on hive as I no longer can use my passwords to log in to hive.
How is this possible?
I had to decide to replace my old laptop with a new one as the old one is too worn out to continue working with it.
When I tried to log in to hive on my new laptop and use my password, I got a message that the password is invalid. I tried all the passwords (master key and activation and posting key etc) but none of them could be used. I repeated the process over and over again without success. All were said to be "invalid".
I don't know what happened because my account doesn't seem to have been hacked and no one else has gotten their hands on it.
Up until now, I was logged in continuously for years and was at least able to post and comment. But I wasn't able to make wallet transactions because I needed a key other than my posting key to do so. I discovered this earlier, but didn't give it much thought, thinking that maybe I was doing something wrong when I tried to power up.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to recover my account?
I am at a complete loss as to what happened to my passwords. I don't even remember changing them over time, but I suspect I did. But I'm not sure. If I did, I definitely saved the new password. I never used any other front-end than hive (no peakd.com etc.).
As far as I understand it, recovery is not possible as no one but me is in possession of my passwords. But since none of them work, I guess I have no choice but to give up everything and live with the fact that I can no longer participate in hive and am forever locked out of running my account and blog site.
I did some research on this topic on hive itself, but it didn't give me any further clue.
So I've decided to openly publish my problem and maybe one of you can help me with advice. If there is no way to fix the problem, this will be the end of my activities on hive, as the old laptop - with which I am currently writing this post - has reached the end of its life.
I will wait another couple of weeks before I dump it. So I can answer, if someone happens to comment. After that, I will not be able to do so. So, thank you in advance, if you have anything to say in order to help or give me a fare well.
With some of you I had very lifely and inspiring conversations and debates. I enjoyed them very much and I thank you for being in touch with me.
Good bye for now.
P.S. Re-hiving this blog post might help to generate to receive more answers on the topic. So I would appreciate it.
edit & update:
Problem still exists, for now I have to leave - German time: May 11th, 17:08 I hope to talk to someone tomorrow.
@antisocialist allowed me to copy our discord-convo. Since I want refer to it, in case someone wants to assist further:
Antisocialist — 16:26
Here I am.
You have keys but they are the wrong ones?
https://reazuliqbal.com/HiveAccountRecovery/
erh.germany — 16:29
Oh, hi, finally. Thank you for wanting to help me.
I went to the website edicted told me to go, I opened it up, typed in my username and key and there was a series automatically generated with public and private keys. I did nothing but copy them, did not press "generate random keys" so far.
Antisocialist — 16:32
Do you use keychain?
erh.germany — 16:32
no
Last time I logged in was before keychain existed
I never used it, was what I wanted to say
Antisocialist — 16:33
Oh, hell.
You have a copy of your keys?
Just the active key is good enough to get the value out.
erh.germany — 16:33
Of those, I just got shown by the website I went to? Or the old ones?
Antisocialist — 16:33
The old ones.
erh.germany — 16:34
Yeah, I saved them in a text file
Antisocialist — 16:34
Does the posting key allow you to login to hive.blog or peakd?
erh.germany — 16:34
no, not at all. I tried both
Antisocialist — 16:36
Is this the date of the keys you have?
picture shown
erh.germany — 16:36
... I don't know. Where do I get the dates from?
Antisocialist — 16:37
The file you have them in should have a modified date.
Or a creation date.
erh.germany — 16:37
let me check it.
... uhm pure text files do not give me such informations, the fields are empty when I press on "property information"
Antisocialist — 16:39
You are using windows?
picture shown
erh.germany — 16:40
Nope. I am using text files for all passwords I save.
It is named "text edit"
Oh, you mean the Windows operating system? No, I have an Apple laptop
Antisocialist — 16:42
Yes, apple, there is a date attached to that file, where I couldn't tell you, I use linux, but it should be readily visible on the file.
Perhaps if you back out of the file and look at it in a list of more files.
Have you used your owner key to login to hive.blog?
erh.germany — 16:44
Yes, I know the function and we call it “Show properties”. The program also does this for all other documents, but I don't get anything for my text file.
Yes, I tried my owner key to log in, I tried all of saved passwords.
Antisocialist — 16:46
https://discord.gg/uarrvmPZ
Tag kittygirl or mahdiyari in this server, perhaps they know more than me.
erh.germany — 16:47
oh, so you are leaving?
Antisocialist — 16:47
No, just at the end of my knowledge.
I'm hoping you saved the private keys and not the public ones.
We need to find the keys that were generated on the date of the pic above.
Mahdiyari is a programmer and may know other things to ask.
erh.germany — 16:48
Yeah, it could be that I have messed it up without noticing. It is a long time ago and I got very rusty since I am not so much active on the chain any more
Antisocialist — 16:48
It's easy to do, no doubt.
I lost the owner key to my original account, too.
But, I had keychain and got the active and posting keys from it.
We need to find the keys that were generated on the date of the pic above.
erh.germany
I cannot see the pic. It is not showing up
Antisocialist — 16:50
erh.germany — 16:52
will have to wait until tomorrow morning to get in touch with someone else of the people you recommended. Do you allow me to copy our conversation so far we had here into my blog-post, so that I do not have to answer the same questions?
Antisocialist — 16:53
Yes, I'd like to see you recover your account.
If you have your original owner password then you should be able to recover your account depending on who you have setup as your recovery account.
Thank you for commenting. I remember our convos:)
I cannot though remember to have set up anyone for a recovery account. These things passed me and I now feel stupid. Since I am technically not particularly up to date anymore.
I was once hacked and was assisted in recovering my account by @someguy123. He even discovered how I got hacked, and is the most likely source of the best advice and assistance I can think of.
I sure hope you are able to recover your account, because I have greatly benefited from your counsel and considerations. Even if you cannot recover your account, you can make a new one and continue to participate on Hive.
Perhaps you at some time or another changed your keys, and have forgotten the event. I have done similar things, and while in the process of fixing things, forgot to write down what I had done.
What account you have specified as your Recovery Account is important. I will also ping @antisocialist here, because he is extremely wise and knowledgeable in all things and all ways, and can probably fix whatever is wrong, or at least point you to the sites where you can ascertain your recovery account, when you last changed your keys, and similar important information that may well prove key to resolving your challenge.
I wish I could do more than ping better men than I, but this is honestly the best assistance I can provide off the top of my head.
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Thank you for tagging the other ones and giving me your support. This damn laptop is in its last breath and I have difficulties to even type, since the the letter-buttons are loose and can no longer be operated properly.
I am going to read the other comments and see, if I can follow the support. I very much hope, I will be able again to log in. I appreciate your kind words. I hope to talk to you later.
You may be able to connect an external keyboard to the laptop, through USB, or some older laptops have connectors for the old round style of keyboard connections. You might also be able to replace the keyboard on the laptop itself. I sure hope you find a way to get your login credentials though!
Edit: this may be silly, but I hope it doesn't rub you the wrong way. Here it is Mother's Day today, and I hope the far more important family that is dear to you brings you joy today. Happy Mother's Day!
Thank you for the Mother's Day wish, no offense at all. I did not receive any but also did not hand them out to the moms I know. We do not maintain this tradition in my family and further relative circle. My mom never payed attention herself, and So I did not grow up with it. But nevertheless it made me smile that you remembered that I have a child and congratulated me on that fact.
My laptop has not only keyboard- but also other issues. It certainly reached the end of its life. Yeah, and I was hesitant to log out, since when I do that on this device I may have lost all possibilities to repair what was going wrong. So far, I hold on to this laptop. When nothing goes, I may open up a new account but am very reluctant and demotivated doing so.
Is there any chance, in case I say good bye to everything to keep in touch with you?
If you have to log out, you may be able to log in on your new device. The platform may prevent multiple simultaneous logins to the same account. I don't know, so that's why I strongly recommend first confirming that with a professional Hive developer.
Sure can! I keep a PO Box for various professional purposes. I believe Germany has an anonymous service you can use to prevent being linked personally to physical mail you send (there's someone that uses it to provide me Christmas cards every year). Just don't send anything that can explode.
Valued Customer
POB 713
Pacific City, OR 97135
Which platform are you using? Try your keys on alternative platforms: Peakd.com, Ecency.com, hive blog etc. Remember not to use the public keys; you need the private keys. I’m sure that one of the developers could help ask @yaziris
Hope you work this out😢
Thank you. Appreciate that you care.
I tried all other front-ends but nothing worked. I hope edicted can help me, with whom I comment right now.
It looks like your recovery account is @steem.
I’m not sure if that account is still active. Maybe @arcange can provide some guidance?
Thank you. I do not even know, that I have a recovery account. I was asked here, which one it is and had no idea what was meant.
A recovery account is a separate account that can be used to reset your private keys if you lose them or if your account is hacked.
When I looked up your account on hiveblocks, it showed @steem as your recovery account.
Whomever controls that account could conceivably help you reset your keys.
My understanding is that Sun Yuchen controls the @steem account on Steem, and presumably on Hive as well, since they were just copied over. He bought a banana for $6M. He may be willing to assist someone for the PR. He may not, however. Also, I could be wrong about who controls that account.
I would not know whom to ask. It was easier here on my blog, since I was able to publish.
If his account recovery is @steem, then unfortunately he is quite fucked 😕
I was afraid that might be the case.
How were you logged in continuously for years?
For example if you are using Hive Keychain the keys are right there in your browser extension and you can easily extract them. Of course Keychain does not store the owner key which is pretty important for "owning" your account, but all you need is the "active" key to powerdown and move that value to a safer place, which keychain might have... assuming you use it.
The master key can't unlock anything on Hive.
It can only be used to generate your other 4 keys.
If you have the master key you need to use it to generate the other 4 keys.
https://hivetasks.com/key-generator
If you have a master key go to this website and type in your username (@erh.germany I presume) and below that the master key. This will generate from scratch 4 other keys that might work if the master key is correct. These keys change based on the username so make sure both are correct.
https://hiveblocks.com/@erh.germany/~owners
This website shows that your owner key has not changed (at least since 2020).
The chance that you have been hacked is very low.
Owner key
If you have a valid owner key it can be used to change both the active and posting keys.
I think technically the owner key can be used to sign all operations but some frontends can have trouble with it so it's better to check if you can change the keys. Of course it would be unlikely that, given 5 keys, the master or owner would be correct but the active/posting/memo would be incorrect. Still worth a try though.
That's about all the advice I can think of at the moment.
If you're close to giving up you might consider direct messaging me your private keys on Discord so I can personally take a look at them.
Thank you for replying and giving me assistance. I am right now trying to generate keys and will respond how that worked out.
You have yet to mention how you were logged in for years at a time.
As that means you gave your keys to a third party app that might be able to give them back.
I entered through the hive.blog website log in function - that was before the Keychain-tool was alive. When the other day I tried to log in through hive, none of my passwords worked, since so many things changed meanwhile - I guess, that was the reason (but not sure).
I hope it is the master.
if I will be able to do that and it works, maybe I should switch to peakd. Since it seems that the hiveblog frontend is not used anyway and might not be administered in the same way ...?
I wonder about something that an experienced Hive developer might answer. If @erh.germany is logged in on one laptop, would that prevent them from logging in to the same account on another device?
Please don't just log out until someone with knowledge about the matter tells you to do that. However, if all else fails that may be the problem with logging in to Hive.blog: you are already logged in with another device.
I'm most likely wrong here, but to log in, don't you only need your user name (which is the public key) and your private key?
The username isn't the public key. The username is the account designation. The keys are generated in public/private pairs. For each private key you also have assigned a public key, which enables the platform to verify your private key when you login on that platform.
I thought the username use a lookup for the public key within the hive system, it's not then?
Cheers for the correction.
!help not me but @erh.germany can't log in.
https://hiveblocks.com/@erh.germany
Owner
STM7AcT5VjXrADgH9oLYi3geECaUKnNGAp1VqfTE9nVCTRqjkYYJm
Active
STM7HrdrdK528qLLSjWvLiu2eLa323jbJaaWWrtDU4gJNssNdTSsZ
Posting
STM8Sceuhq6xop1BnK7jwRtEhqwq5zqWHdgKdc59vRKyqTtRrxvzt
Memo
STM7UUbsp4watLMUbHbWnzfAgd8LwP32oupxronfo9idCid87v1ve
These are your public keys as they exist on the blockchain for everyone to see.
Your goal is to see if you can find matching private keys that can generate these public keys.
https://hivetasks.com/key-generator
You say you have a master key so copy/paste that at this website with your correct username erh.germany
If the keys your master key + username creates match the public keys listed above then you'll have all the correct keys. If not it's the wrong master-key/username combination.
I went to this website and typed in my key and username, but what do you mean with if they
what exactly must match? Sorry for my technical stupidity.
I have got a row of public and private keys with that password. What to do now?
Owner
STM7AcT5VjXrADgH9oLYi3geECaUKnNGAp1VqfTE9nVCTRqjkYYJm
Active
STM7HrdrdK528qLLSjWvLiu2eLa323jbJaaWWrtDU4gJNssNdTSsZ
Posting
STM8Sceuhq6xop1BnK7jwRtEhqwq5zqWHdgKdc59vRKyqTtRrxvzt
Memo
STM7UUbsp4watLMUbHbWnzfAgd8LwP32oupxronfo9idCid87v1ve
These are your public keys.
The public keys have to match these public keys for them to be valid.
To give the order:
The public keys from what I can see on my screen must match what you have copied here, correct?
yes if they match those are the correct keys
they don't :(
I will now do some other things and hope to speak to antisocialist tomorrow morning (if time zone allows it). Last question: Since I went to Hive Key generator and the keys shown there, I copied and saved, I can now close that website again and am save, right?
Are the private keys generated from that master key the same ones you have written down?
If not you may have done it incorrectly.
No, they are not. I will give it another try tomorrow.
In that case it's possible that master key belongs to another account.
Have you ever messed around with an alternate account?
No, I have not. My one and only account is the erh.germany one.
I saved two (master passwords, if that's what they are, since I did not give them a proper headline, unfortunately, for which I saved one as "old" and one as "new". I did not give a try with the old one, though. I will do that later this week. Can I come back to you, if I have further questions or infos?
Thank you so far for your willingness to help.
@antisocialist has a little more experience with this than me and correctly points out that sometimes when you copy a private key from a text file it will add an empty space " " at the end of the key that will automatically make the key invalid.
Luckily I just tested it and this doesn't seem to be an issue on the website you're currently using... but it could be the reason why other attempts have failed on sites like Hive.Blog
I was aware of that already, so that it can't be...
I will ask @antisocialist for help. Thank you, so far. What a nuisance that is...
Open a ticket in this server: https://discord.gg/uarrvmPZ.
IF you are copy/pasting keys, be sure that there isn't a space added to the end.
Be sure that any responses you get come from a infopoint and not a random.
lol the space at the end that always annoys me
I went do discord - my username there is erh.germany, same as here. But I cannot find you.
Would you like to help me one on one? Do you have time in the mornings my time (Germany)?
I sent you a dm on discord.
I asked @erh.germany above to inquire of a competent dev regarding the following matter: @erh.germany is currently logged into the @erh.germany account on the laptop that is failing. They are also trying to login into the same account with a different device. Could the reason they are unable to login on the new device be that they are already logged in with the old device?
I wouldn't think so, but it is possible.
She needs to look in her browser to see if she can extract the keys she has, but I can't help her with apple products, I don't have any.
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STOPI got tagged here somehow so if you still need help find me on hive discord.
Thank you. I am not making progress. I most likely will contact you on discord, maybe this week or at the weekend, if you allow. In which time zone do you live?
I'm pretty much online all the time at Europe timezone
I thought the number #1 witness was able to recover any account?