As those of you following me know, I went through a recent case of dumbassery wherein I no longer was in possession of my owners key for my Steemit account. Being the rare gem that I am, it slowly dawned on me what had happened, and thankfully, when it happened. So in case someone else is ever wondering what to do if they find themselves in a similar position of such genius, I decided to write up this guide on how one recovers their account, resetting their keys. This only works however if you opened your account through Steemit directly.

Ok, so here is the story.

I had decided at these prices I had to be smart (or foolish) and put all of my eggs in one basket. So I cashed out the 1000 Cardano I had left on the exchange, trading it for Steem. And being the compulsive person that I am, I wanted all new passwords so I could be up to date with my securitah. And now we will see how a noob can still make mistakes from misunderstandings of crypto/password protection. Don't let this be you.

So I guess all this time that I have been here, I have been treating my owner key as my active key, not understanding the difference. Big mistake. And when I reset the password (which can only be done with the owner key, which I also did not know at the time) I then wanted to copy all 4 keys down on my flash drive. So when I went to check my wallet keys to write them all down, I saw that I couldn't open the owner key to put it on my flash drive. I was like

WTF

So panic began to set in as I went through all 4 of my flash drives throughout the day trying to figure a solution out. It slowly sinking in that whatever the master password had been, I no longer was in possession of it. Now this was not that funny at the time, being as I had just went all in on Steem, had literally just sent my entire meager crypto investment here where I no longer held this master key. Using every bit of my lifetimes worth of learned patience (this is code for you walked against the wind so long the amount of not giving a shit begins to grow and blossom into a beautiful indifference...erm, I mean acceptance) I quickly accepted the fact I would need to start over with a new account and power this one down. Slowly sending my stake over an agonizingly long 13 weeks to the new account. But hey, I could pick an awesome great new name, right?

I made my post to let those of you following me know that despite your high opinion of me, I am still capable of being more ignorant than your drunk uncle Earl. Pretending all the while I was calm as hell when in reality I was this guy right here.

source

Many of you that are part of my community were very kind in your responses. Offering suggestions as I was coming to terms that I would need to buy a second account and trust someone else with my new keys for the account. As time progressed, I kept going back through my flash drives (yes, I keep many of them, having backups to the backups) and I saw something that had eluded me until I saw it. You can tell just by looking and see the difference between the owners key and the others. Now, in my defense, I have never seen one person write about this difference. And, I had never done anything with crypto before Steemit, my only other need for these James Bond password protection tactics being the very few times since joining Steemit for the exchanges. I can hear you still chortling at my dilemma, so will pause here to let you finish laughing before I reveal the epiphany I had that allowed me to recover my account and not have to buy a second one.

You can quit laughing now, it isn't that damn funny.

Okay, are you ready to learn the epiphany, learn how one at just a glance can tell the owner key from the active and posting keys?

The owner key starts with a P and the other 3 keys start with a 5.

So I sent Steemit the two keys I had on my flash drives starting with P, beginning to feel a little better as I was now beginning to think I could recover my account. You will find the link to do so by clicking the three bars at the top right of the screen next to your profile, which will open up a menu. In the list of possible actions, you will see Stolen Accounts Recovery.

My only two worries now was that neither one was my last owners key (it has to have been in use during the last 30 days) and that I had to send two tickets when I found the other key, and got a message telling me to stop bothering them, they already know and I am being a pest. Ok, it didn't really say that, but I did picture whomever works there thinking it.

It did say they were already working on it. So now I am thinking that maybe they wouldn't get my second help request and would have to wait days or weeks for them to see the first one I sent wasn't it before sending it in with the other one. But nope, they are on top of this.

In less than one day, before the business day had started they had sent me the recovery link. My only recommendation in this process would be for them to add a notes section, perhaps even an open ticket area where someone like myself could add updates to the ticket as new information (like in my case) comes up.

A Huge Thank You To

@Krnel
@timcliff
@thedarkhorse
@edicted
@glenalbrethsen
@shepz1
@ihashblox
@squirrelbait
@sandalphon

The top two on this list are witnesses here on Steemit. I vote for Krnel and interact pretty much daily on Krnels blog. I have not voted for timcliff, but will be after I post this here as he took an interest and offered to follow up. Both of these witnesses went above and beyond in their seeking to make sure I found a solution.

The rest of you on this list either helped me find information or offered support, and I thank you. For those of you reading this at some point in the future are doing so because you need to recover your account, all of these accounts are worthy of your time and friendship and would encourage you to check them out if you haven't already.

So that is how I recovered my account, and how you can as well if you too need to prove you are not always the sharpest knife in the drawer.