My Account Profile was stolen...please Help me!!!

in #blog7 years ago (edited)

Hey guys,

something very odd happend last night. When I was browsing thru the users that I am following, I recognized one user @bearbear613 who is having the same profile picture as I am.
I was really shocked to see that, and first I was thinking maybe this is just a display failure. But the picture did not disappear and mr @bearbear613 is really using my profile picture.

My_Image_bearbear613.jpgMy_Image_masterthematrix.jpg

That felt so strange for me, because I never made my picture public and I dont know how he was able to get it. Maybe this guy somehow managed to access my account which really would be the worst case, but how is that possible? I am on steemit now for two weeks and I really dont want anybody else walking around with my head on his shoulders.

stolen.jpg

So please all of you good steemians...please Help me to solve this Problem.
Does anybody know how he could get a hold of my profile picture?
Does anybody know how I can stop him from using it?

Please resteem this post so I get as much Feedback as possible...Thank you all so much!!!!

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Thank you for posting @masterthematrix.

One way to address the problem......would be to report it to @cheetah and or @steemcleaners.

Hope you find a solution.

First of all you probably don't have to worry about your account being hacked because all profile pictures are public on the blockchain and someone doesn't need access to your account to get it.
Second thing is that anybody can upload any profile picture they want and you can't stop that, your best chance is trying to contact that person maybe via comments on one of its post and trying to resolve the problem directly with him.

Haha, yeah that happens sometimes!

Well...........there goes peoples REAL pic on profiles. Never thought of that but Im changin mine also. Maybe to some animal with paranoid tendencies.

I'm actually a gentleman panda. Good day to you sir. #TipsHat

hahahahahahah

Great thank you for your responds. I am trying to get support from the community so that everybody knows that this person is doing something wrong. It is not ok to take a real life picture from somebody else and pretend that this is him. I want that the community is aware of @bearbear613 that he is promoting himself with a false profile Image. I don`t know why he is doing it and why choosed me as a victim... if my efforts with the community are not working I will try to solve the problem by contacting him!!!

It is good getting the community involve but I still believe you should try to contact him in parallel(without waiting) to resolve the issue sometime exposing people publicly(using comment on his post) and asking him why he did that and if he could stop could just be enough for him to change his profile picture. But then this is just my opinion do has you wish.

That sucks! I changed my profile pic because of the fact that the profile pics can be used this way. I dont think you got any real good answer here. That answer would just piss me off. Change your profile pic to something else. Good luck.

Yep you got it....it is really sad that, unfortunatly you have to take the risk, when you want to use your real life photo. I am glad that this post could help other people to avoid this kind of problem!!!

Looks like he or she took the pic down. I also wonder if he or she thought it would help his or her following numbers....and I think it would! he had commented before on his numbers as they were so important my take is he or she used your pic to up his followers numbers. Who knows its a bullshit thing to do or to be ABLE to do period.

You mean this one?

It sound stupid to make a fake account

Dude ... just your twin. but seriously why would someone do that?

This might be some kind of bug. What where you using to view his profile? Was it direct from steemit.com or some other app? I went through his entire history to find all updates to his account picture (he has used 4 different pics 2 of which were the same and a link to his website as a pic). The current pic doesn't even load for me in his profile so I'm wondering if there is a bug that is loading your own by default if there is an error.

690 people saw this post. Shame they probably missed your comment, and seem to believe the claim. But thank you for doing the investigative work. (I would have if I knew how.)

I had the same thing happen this morning. Each time I went to my blog, my photo was replaced with another account holders face...it happened a few times. I thought it was a glitch. Maybe @cheetah or @steemithelp or @steemcleaners can help out.

I saw it once too. It's clearly a bug. This user has most likely, innocently jumped to conclusions, and mistakenly ill spoken of someone, getting 690 views and 24$ in so doing...

RESTEEMED!

Hope you get to the bottom of this!

keep us UPDATED!

Great thank you so much for your support!!!

no prob bro!

Thanks for your donation what is it for?

DONATION!Opportunity Costs!I HAVE A NEW SPORTS EPISODE OUT called "SPORTS_chatSPOT",maybe you could START with this one,please!episode #1

https://steemit.com/sports/@kid4life/sportschatspot-ep-1--the-gangster-vs-the-axe-murderer--bellator-180

A LOT MORE IS OUT !

CHEERS :)

Outrageous and brazen. Hope I can help you my friend! Resteemed and promoted! Have a great day!

Damn, that is f#ck up. He probably did a PC screenshot and did some minimal editing to fit it in the fake profile pic. I believe many people will soon be victims of users/hackers who want to get extra Steem by spamming the creation of new profiles and much more

Probably a novice. Don't sweat it, the only thing this spammer did was help you get noticed and Re-stemmed... In this case is bring you more traffic to your profile and past posts. This kind of attack doesn't really affect you since they are no exposing data that could really harm you, just your face as far as I know. It only benefits you, immensely

I wonder whats going to happen when the big booty chicks and body builders celebrities of IG come here. OH BOY...

The identity thief's will be showering on Steem Power, upvotes and more after all the traffic pouring from the sexiest people on earth. Who is going to catch them or how will Steemit handle this problem? Its a reality!

Oh my god your are so right about this...I dont think in such a bad way, but honestly people try everything to bring more attention to them no matter what, gggrrrr!!!

kenapa teman,apa yang terjadi sebenarnya

Why friends, what happened actually

Well I just followed him because he was following me. We never really had contact...thats so weird!!!

Ya same as me ,,,,, I follow a lot of people but others do not follow me a lot ,,,,,,,,,, hahhahah ,,,,,,, but for me no problem

Ok, could you please write in english???

He probably was able to get your profile picture by right clicking on your profile image and finding the location in Steemit's source code.

Which appears to be: https://steemitimages.com/120x120/https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/18920400_668367393352551_3688540177037102664_n.jpg?oh=4621489e8bf230f0af5db3345d13221d&oe=59A113D5

Ah ok what else can you do with the source code?

Nothing that would allow someone to gain unauthorized access to your account, mostly just look at elements and see the markup that corresponds to them.

I tried that URL, and I found it myself in the page source, and the server will not allow it. But previous poster is correct, it can be a screenshot, then edited.
Funny thing is, the person you say stole your image, has 10x more posts and experience on Steemit than you; so if it's not a bot, then it makes no sense..

I think he just put an random picture...and I think nobody can accuse him what picture to put as long he respect the rules.Anyway he has more money the you!

I don't think your account was hacked

I think Steemit has a way it can help you in such a case so maybe shut down that account .................!

I don't think your account was hacked. Just @bearbear613 messing with you! Below I'm gonna show you how I can change my profile pic to be yours without hacking your account:

  1. Visit your profile
    Screen Shot 2017-06-19 at 17.17.55.png
  2. Right-click on your profile picture and click "Inspect"
    Screen Shot 2017-06-19 at 17.19.03.png
  3. In the image url it's showing me that the image came from steemitimages.com
    Screen Shot 2017-06-19 at 17.20.22.png
  4. To display your image to me, the browser had to download it somewhere. If I click on the "Sources" tab, I can see steemitimages.com as one of the sources and if I follow the whole path in the url, I see this
    Screen Shot 2017-06-19 at 17.29.34.png
  5. Aha! So I have your profile pic now! Now I'm going to copy it's url to set my profile pic to yours
    Screen Shot 2017-06-19 at 17.30.55.png
  6. This is what my profile page looks like. No picture at all.
    Screen Shot 2017-06-19 at 17.32.12.png
  7. Now I'm going to set my "Profile Picture Url" to your image's url and click "Update"
    Screen Shot 2017-06-19 at 17.33.34.png
  8. And now we have the same profile picture!

So as you can see, it was not as much hacking as it was mere shenanigans. :)

P.S. I changed my profile picture to yours just to show you how it can be done. I have changed it back to nothing. :)

Great thank you for that good explanation. I wasnt aware that it is so easy to copy and paste the profile image. I made this post for everyone who also didnt know about this issue...now we are all little bit smarter!!! I think to copy a personal picture is more like a moral issue...I still don`t know why he did it. It makes no sense.

hmm...... Do you have any post to verify this account is indeed yours? have you made an introduction post? with proper verification?

As far as i know and care. the other account has higher reputation, joined earlier, has more content, neither of you has made a legit introduction post.

As such i will hold my judgment for now. until a case can be made when either of you @masterthematrix and @bearbear613 made a verifiable introduction post.

Real simple as that.

Well like I mentioned in this post Im on steemit for two weeks now. I was busy understanding the plattform and getting involved with the community. I didnt made an Introduction post yet because I want to take some more time for it. So I just started with some little posts. The other user @bearbear613 is a whole month longer on steemit and therefore has higher reputation. But I`m not making this up, this is my real profile picture that is me!!! And thats why I am so upset!!!

Understandable. Identity theft is a serious thing. for now, take your time to familiarize with the community and culture of Steemit first. And when you finally made an introduction post with a verifiable image of you holding a timestamp and a steemit logo, We can make a better case.

You sure you didn't take his picture? lol

That's a pitty, but anyway it's only your pic - You should change it to someother which is safe on the photo platform you use and better yet watermarked and no change for oters to download or use it. I am sure like @walterjay that it does not affect your account as such.

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next time use steemit as a first category ! OR AT LEAST PUT IT IN NOW!

Yep I just updated the post to steemit

Welcome to steemit community.
I’m @jyoungking2 Start by following people and they will do the same.
Good Luck
3.png

Please don`t use this thread for your own commercial...I have a serious problem!!!

Dont know this could also happen

Yes I didn`t knew this as well. I think that is not funny when somebody is using your real life photo for himself.

Keep us updated i followed you

Looks like he caught wind and now he has no profile picture

Yes that was my attention, that he is not going to do that again to anybody!!!
If I had just write him and complaint about it, he probably would have taken somebody else picture.

I just right clicked your image on top of this page and inspected the html in google chrome. cut and pasted it below. No hack. More like right click and save as, more or less.

Not only is it public on the blockchain, but you can just "inspect element" in chrome and download the images.

Well maybe there are all kinds of tricks and gimmicks how you can copy someone else profile picture. But I am really not into this stuff...and there are many other users who didn`t know ether. So I think it was good to make a post so more people are aware of this.

Makes sense. Good idea. Even though it's something anyone can do...I don't know why anyone would want to steal someone else's picture!

I know thats weird...

I just checked out @bearbear613 and I can't see any picture?
Maybe he got your message?

Yep, mission accomplished!!!

Good job!

I also sent him a direct message but he didn`t respond...so that why I made this post. And to let people know that this could happen to anybody at anytime.

Try to contact him and tell him that he must eliminate the pic because is not his, it's yours. If he doesn't want, then change yours by any other picture.

He already changed it, but I also wanted to warn him that the community is not supporting this kind of behavior.
And I think it was good to make the post so all users now know that it is possible to copy and past your profile image. Not everybody was aware of this...me either!!!

Glad you got it resolved!

Poor you! That sucks ! keep us update.

Thanks for your support he already changed it.

This is why I am batman. Everyone can be batman and its not a problem.

Haha, save Gotham boy!!!

Hmm, that's really bad. How can someone use another's profile pic. Are they so ashamed of their own pic!

Maby you have a twin brother. this could be really good, like when you spot someone else wearing the same shirt as you...it could turn into an interesting conversation!

Maby it was some sort of accident, I think that it is neat to think that the two of you might become friends through this mix-up...but I do hope that everything is going well for you!

Oh that's sad!!!hope this won't happen to anyone who are a part of our steemit journey

dont wry bro....its simple u take a new selfie from ur smartphone and just update the profile pic :)

nice topic man, check my last post i think its useful for most of you and upvote it if u like https://steemit.com/steemit/@bardhylsllamniku/smart-way-to-gain-fame-in-steemit-2-rp

Its not a good news for the community...Steemit is really cool & nice community where nice people are gather share the innovative ideas .learn, earn and fun .
Such types of work is not affordable & not acceptable for the community .Whoever did this, my humble request is ,first apologize and second don't spoil the good community..Come & have a fun as family...Upvoted & resteeemed

Everyone who voted and gave this person money voted incorrectly. If you look at someone's profile it transfers over to you If you use the Esteem app; or it's a safari bug. You should remove this post before slandering someone. In fact I'll write an article just on this.

RESTEEMED!

UPDATE PLEASE.