Missing Posting Authority on Steemit : Why It's happened and What to Do? (My True Story)

I am so glad that I @alzamna can say hello again with Steemians in #steemit #Aceh #Indonesia and all over the world after I could not login into my account for days. This article is not a guidance or tutorial. I write this article based on my story that I would like to share to Steemians about my experience having troubleshoot leaving a comment on my own Steemit account and could not re-login after logged out while I am online. Hereby the full story.

Monday, March 5, 2018 I was online on my Steemit account @alzamna replying comments on my post regarding "bathing the corpse of HIV-AIDS in Aceh". When I sent my replying.. suddenly, the system said "MISSING POSTING AUTHORITY ALZAMNA". I tried to re-type my comment then sent it again but rejected with the same alert. I wondered what was happened I repeated commenting 5 times but failed. Hence.. I logged out my account and re-login. But I was agashted that I could not re-login, it said "INCORRECT PASSWORD".

At that moment I was panicked. What was happening? Did I mis-type my password? Was the system error?
Did someone hacked my account? Eventhough I checked I typed a correct password, but still rejected. I tried to re-login several times but failed. Since then, I couldn't access into my account at all.

Frustrated, I contacted @emilnashar for help. He then asked another senior Aceh Steemian @jamhuery, meanwhile I was googling and seeking help from minnowsupport Discord Chat regarding my troubleshoot. Actually, I don't really care losing my Steemit account as well as my wallet since I am new. Nothing to loose. But What I do care is that I already get a long with friends and steemit community. If I lost my current account and make a new one, I have to re-start building my community.

Based on information from @jamhuery and Steemians on Discord chat, it came to conclusion that likely my account had been hacked or the password had been stolen. I am Wondering, why would someone hacked/steal a newbie's password like me? Is my account worth enough to be hacked ?? Absolutely not ! What would they expect..., my wallet? Well, let's have a look my wallet :

See..., almost no SBD or tokens in my wallet. Only a foolish would hack such an account.

So, what was literally happened? My presumption is that I put a wrong password to a wrong feature. Let's discuss profoundly concerning Steemit passwords. According to @mooncryption(english) and @abunagaya(Indonesian) in their article titled steem keys and passwords, there 4 keys on steemit :

Posting Key - The first and most used key type, used for posting, voting, and commenting.

Active Key - The second key type, used for money/currency transfers.

Owner Key - The third and most powerful key type, with the ability to change literally anything on your account.

Memo Key - Used to read/create memos, this key is, for now, pretty useless and can be ignored.

After deeper investigation and reading some references, I analysed that the problem was that I might have used the wrong key on transferring transactions. As I recalled, I was transferring some SBD to two accounts before losing my authority. In the transfering proccess, instead of using the active key, I entered the master key to approved the transactions which was wrong key for doing transactions, which was clearly wrong key. On the first transaction nothing was happened I could access my account as usual. But after the second transaction..soon I lost my posting authority and could not re-login. I assume that Steemit system detected the mis-matched password then blocked my account.

After seeking some advices from @jamhuery and members of minnowsupport Discord Chat, I considered to use the "stolen account recovery" feature.

Next step, email was required. To accelerate the recovery procces, it is recommended to enter email that used when first registered on steemit. After submitting the email, Steemit will consider the account recovery process. The procces takes few days until the the recovery approvement. In my case, it took 3 days.

Three days later, steemit emailed me the link for the account recovery confirmation. Then the new password is generated and my account was succesfully recovered, as seen on the pictures below :

from this real event of mine, I hope this could be a good lesson and useful me as well as for other Steemians and I would be very happy if this experience could be as an instruction for Steemians who might have similar troobleshoot as I had.

CONCLUSION

Understanding the basic consepts of Steemit Platform is significant for Newbie Steemians to avoid mis-procedure including how to secure password, how to do transactions, how to write a good article, building reputation, etc. Therefore, in order to be a good Steemians, we as Steemians are responsible to search and read as much as possible refrrences regarding Steemit platform to fully comprehend our platform.

Thank you for layover to my Blog, and thank you for upvoting and following me @alzamna.

References :
https://steemit.com/steem/@mooncryption/steem-keys-and-passwords-full-guide

https://steemit.com/indonesia/@abunagaya/steemit-memiliki-4-key-password-yang-berbeda-fungsi-baca-penjelasannya-apa-itu-posting-key-active-key-owner-key-memo-key

https://steemkr.com/steemit/@furion/how-i-got-hacked-recovered-my-accounts-and-improved-the-steemit-account-security