Those of you who did not specifically request me to keep the donations sent (in the moment I appeared to have lost around 3000 STEEM to a scammer) have now had your STEEM & SBD returned to you. As you can see below. Thank you so much for your generosity ππ»
And an even bigger thank you goes to...
the four awesome people who did specifically request that I keep their donations, despite getting my account back.
No problemo.
I have a French partner who never says no to a croissant or two!
I included the image of me kissing my baby boy at the top of this post because I feel like giving all of you a big kiss right now and this whole experience has really opened my eyes not only to the beauty of Steemit, but also to a vast number of other things... security being top of the list!
How have I improved my security?
Now I only log in with my posting key. The master key is NEVER entered online.
This way, if I am ever scammed into entering my key into a fake steemit website again, the worst they can do is post from my account and make comments.
When i want to transfer funds (which is rare) I log in with my active key.
Without the master key they can't change any passwords, so if the account were ever to be compromised again, I would be able to quickly retrieve it and change all the passwords/keys myself.
In addition to this I make sure not to keep STEEM or SBD sitting idle in my wallet. As SP it cannot be transferred out immediately.
There is also a savings feature in the wallet which would buy you 3 days to regain control of your account before they could take anything. Ample time, assuming you have the email address with which you used to confirm your account!
THANK YOU again to all you beautiful people ππ»
Many valuable lessons have been learned... by many!
To learn the specifics of how I lost my account for 5 days click HERE
If I have forgotten anyone please let me know in the comments below.