Topic: Why do I have to beg to get my account back? (Read 792 times)

I have also PM'ed @hillariousandco as well as @hilariousetc with the proper signed message asking for ban my hacked account but didn't hear anything back.

The spammer who bought my hacked account has been posting crap consistently for months, no one took action to stop this after all my attempts. It is not cool at all..

Please let me hear your suggestions / ideas. A lot of folks are suffering the same misery fate. If you're unable to ban then return it to me please, as I already requested here: Recovering my hacked account [signed message]

UPDATE APRIL 6, 2019:
I was able to reclaim my account successfully today! Thank you!



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After your reply I also sent a signed message to hillariousandco two weeks ago on August 19th, but didn't hear anything back. I also tried posting publicly for everyone https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.44391814. I'm sure the message was buried in your inbox or you had more important things to do. It's fine. I appreciate the gesture. It appears this is a losing battle I'm fighting, but when you get your account stolen and someone creates a telegram account with the sole purpose of impersonating it really strikes a nerve.

Update: It has been over two weeks now and I unfortunately did not receive a response from Cyrus. I will try and message Theymos now with a signed message.

~~~~~-~~~~~~-~~~~~~-~~~~~-~~~~~~~~-~~~~~~~~-~~~~~~~~-~~~~~~~~~~~-

Help!

My bitcointalk account kworrom was stolen from me!

      Help!

I have messaged admins Cyrus and Theymos with a signed bitcoin message, but no reply!

            Help!

I have messaged Hilariousandco and mprep about suspending the person who stole my account, but no action taken!

                  Help!

I've posted a public signed BTC message and link to and unedited message where I posted address as kworrom: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.44391814

                        MY ACCOUNT KWORROM WAS STOLEN! PLEASE HELP!

-----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-------------------------------------------------------------------
This is morningcoffee. My account kworrom was stolen. Please help! This message was created on 9/20/18.
-----BEGIN SIGNATURE----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
189EGkRQHkzPwqrzvaabgAVj696eL6uQeB
HGs4ofERMfkg+yo8E2+HxRsfYxdr8xmfRuGdIB0CMJL4eAIZzicdvnMlJ6WzxvXr9q2hrXblDcLIBN5iLBWSGTM=
-----END BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE----------------------------------------------------------------------

AN UNEDITED POST WHERE I USED ADDRESS: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2633111

Kinda stretching the topic here a bit but God forbid if something happens to both admins. Is there a backup system in place which will choose/select a new admin or will it be the end of bitcointalk as we know it? I know a scenario like this is very unlikely to rise but has this been discussed upon?

Quite a predicament, indeed.

Just understand it can take a bit of time. The mods or admins are likely very busy both inside and outside this forum and probably receive hundreds of notifications a day so it may take some time. They also have to look at each circumstance with fresh eyes to make sure you are 100% the original owner.

Make your case as detailed as possible with evidence and above all be patient and kind.

Good luck!

UPDATE APRIL 6, 2019:
I was able to reclaim my account successfully today! Thank you!



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I've messaged Cyrus and hilariousandco privately. For the public record I will post here as well:

Here is the link to my stolen account:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/kworrom-80785

I look forward to seeing action towards this in a reasonable amount of time. I will also message Theymos in 2 weeks if I don't hear from Cyrus. I understand everyone is busy, and it's a horrible waste of time to deal with account requests, but I don't know what else to do at this point.

UPDATE APRIL 6, 2019:
I was able to reclaim my account successfully today! Thank you!



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I could not agree more, but what's worse is these campaigns are also now not only rewarding those spamming bitcointalk but also external websites. This causes people to create fake social media accounts or use stolen accounts it appears. I can't believe the people managing ICOs don't realize this... as long as their advertising is spread they are happy even if it is through illegitimate means. Their bounty programs are essentially paying for spam on bitcointalk and externally... this only makes me more skeptical of whatever they are promoting.

Thank you for the offer hilarious. I will message you with a signed message so you can see what my old account is doing. I can sign a message from the first bitcoin address I posted (which I posted multiple times). I also own the original email used to register the account, and still have emails and notifications from private messages that I can attach a screenshot of. I've also used my real first name and can verify who I am. If this is happening with my old account it's bound to be happening with others.

I'm not sure if individual bans versus profiling accounts and collecting data for a mass ban of fraudulent users would be more beneficial. There seems to be a conflict of interest possibly as well with doing this at all. Part of the value of this forum is created by the massive amount of these bounty/ad/affiliate programs. It is prime real estate for businesses to reach those who have/know about cryptocurrency. The people running these ad campaigns would not be happy if a large amount of their campaigners were banned. Again, they must realize a large amount of their campaigners are suspect, but as long as it benefits them they look the other way. This line of thought is completely ignoring whether the ICOs/services/products they advertise are even legitimate in the first place as well. To be completely honest I'm not sure that the problems created by advertising can be ever solved here... or elsewhere for that matter.

I agree, those paid signatures & avatars are the main problem. Severe punishments to the spammers (the users who adhere bounty campaigns ) + advertisers (PR managers and those intermediaries who pay) will scare them away. Adopting some system of warnings prior the ban would make the process automated as well as a smoothly transition towards purification / purge. This measure will also harm the underground market of re-selling hacked accounts.


Excellent initiative, I didn't know you were able to ban the hacked accounts. This way we prevent the spammers posting crap with our stolen accounts, much better solution than sitting waiting years. Here is mine hope this will do:

I know neither of them personally or very well at all. I don't know whether any staff members here are employed or unemployed and have wives and children or are all basement dwelling virgins who spend most of their time jacking off to camgirls and watching hentai. Most staff are completely anonymous to each other and I prefer it like that (though theymos' name is publicly known, but most other's aren't). All I know of them is from their posts here and a few other limited interactions via PM etc but we don't talk socially. Theymos is the defacto owner or operator of the board and he chose cyrus to be an admin to replace BadBear (who walked away). Workload should be distributed more between staff in numerous ways. We probably need at least one other full time admin and there are many sub boards with no dedicated staff member assigned at all. More staff probably need to be added to meet demand as the board grows as well, especially when a lot of staff members seem to leave or gradually become less and less active until they fade away. As I said before, there really probably isn't anyone better than theymos to ruin the ship for numerous reasons, but he is swamped and so is cyrus (and/or he just can't be bothered) and something needs to be done about that, or he finds a way to do admin duties full time (which I've suggested he do), but maybe he does have work/family/camgirl/hentai addition that takes up most of his time  .


If there are better options then surely they will surpass this one in popularity. Personally, I dislike Reddit in numerous ways and don't use it at all, but people should vote by using whatever they find superior. If everyone abandoned this ship for another then maybe that would be noted. I can't see that happening though.


It's not the ad slots that are the issue. It's paid sig spam, mostly from ICOs who couldn't care less about spam. In fact, more spam is better for them. More posts = more ad impressions. This needs to change and I've suggested numerous ways to combat it, most importantly badly run campaigns should be punished. They would soon clean up their act then.


Send me the signed message on my hilariousandco account or post it here and if it checks out I can ban the account. Only admins can restore access to you though so you'll still need to wait for that to happen.

The bottom line here is simple. Theymos and Cyrus are both a joke.  I bet they are now sitting and contemplating of how to further  "misuse" the forum funds.

UPDATE APRIL 6, 2019:
I was able to reclaim my account successfully today! Thank you!



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Mapuche, I am in the same situation. I just messaged Cyrus a signed bitcoin message from an address used in my account as described by Theymos in https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/recovering-hacked-accounts-or-accounts-with-lost-passwords-497545 and if in two weeks he doesn't respond I will message Theymos with a signed bitcoin message to reset my account.

Currently my account is being used by someone abusing bounty programs, and English is not their first language. I'm still in possession of the original email address I registered my account with, and private keys of bitcoin addresses I posted with so I can sign messages. Weirdly the person who hacked my account didn't delete or modify my posts... they are all still there. It's frustrating as it is funny... you can tell they started using my account when it started suddenly linking Russian Twitter and Facebook accounts for reward programs, and speaking Russian. In my case they are also spamming youtube with my bitcointalk profile they hacked, and then they went and made a freaking telegram account with my bitcointalk username likely to scam people. It makes me literally mad. I don't want to post the link in case they will be notified and delete/modify my old forum posts. I wish I could do something, but I am powerless. I know how you feel.

I will update you if Cyrus in 2 weeks or Theymos responds. I am optimistic that they will help us all out if you can sign messages, but they probably are taking on many (too many?) responsibilities at the time. Really this just makes me think poorly of bounty and airdrop programs that are magnets for unsavory people looking to exploit them. It is unreasonable to expect Cyrus/Theymos to dedicate all of their time to resetting peoples accounts, and it seems like something that could be automated to some degree. Imagine what their message inbox looks like... how many messages do you think Cyrus/Theymos receive a day? Thousands? Tens of thousands? There is no way to read all of them and do other productive things. Many productive people avoid email and communication like this because to be frank it is a huge waste of time for little reward. I feel as pissed as you that someone hacked my account, but at the same time expecting Cyrus/Theymos (who are providing their own time for account recovery) to put my account recovery as a priority over other things is unreasonable. There should be an automated system implemented as Theymos suggested he was working on, or there should be a separate moderator who deals with these issues, but there isn't. As painful as it is to watch someone take your personal username and account and abuse it, we have to wait. I have faith that Cyrus/Theymos will help us in the end.

You speak so confident about Cyrus and Theymos that gives me the sense you know them well. You said they are smarter than you and you trust them, I believe you but they are human beings I assume they have a job, a spouse, kids, a personal life & issues to handle that are a much higher priority to them than the management of this site that started as a hobby in their spare time. I don't know who put them in their position but they are not suitable for this job anymore [unless they prove me wrong then I retract]. Better to assign the steering wheel on some fresh hands of some well-known trusted users willing to commit to this project.
By the way, may I ask you how do we know if they are still alive / mentally healthy? which are the proofs of life, sanity, and competence they provide to us? if they are not, then how do you trust them? do you see them in person regularly? because most of us including I, don't.  


Personally I like the format of Reddit much more, Steemit & Medium are another great alternatives. Also I'm not here for making a profit out of posts / bounty campaigns (for me this why all went corrupted). I remember when I first heard about Bitcoin back in 2010 was in another forum / community regarding alternative economies, they were making reference of the high quality of discussions held here, the kind of posts was too technical for me back in those days so I never got involved.. still can remember enjoying reading until late at night, getting inspired & later researching about those subjects that I learned here. Those days are gone forever, and now: spamming bots, accounts being hacked, unresponsive admins, and so on...
I have witnessed the evolution of this forum throughout the years, the same as you. I can sense it decadence, so many things are rotten because of those people looking for getting rich quick. It is fixable? yes, but it comes at a cost which involves a clash of interests not many users will like it.


yes I know, I won't go that way either.. I was being pushy intentionally to raise some attention. Sometimes it is necessary articulating some words in order to touch some buttons, however the end never justifies the means.


Nay, stop the ads slots that's the main problem of low quality posts + spam. Donator ranks sure but first donators must perceive some added value / high quality staff.. a good service = improved UI/UX. ICOs and other startups could purchase spaces as long as there are any valuable users / customers / investors remaining here, at the end it is a matter of ROI measurable according to the Conversion Rate of the money BTCtalk users are spending. If spam bots / scammers / hackers / merit abusers / Legendary purchased accounts / crappy posts / etc. are displacing valuable users / mods to other hubs then who is going to remain affording it cost?. But this is a matter of discussion in another board.

Not really. I think it's more that he doesn't have time, which he has stated as such a couple of times. Cyrus also either doesn't have time or just can't be bothered. I honestly don't think there's a better person to run the board than theymos. He's far smarter than I am and I trust his judgement, but you can't run a ship from the shore with your head buried in the sand and the longer you don't act on things the worse they become. I really don't understand why some things are just ignored, especially when they take away the workload from him and people annoying him about things incessantly. I've been saying for years workload needs to be distributed better. Adding mods to certain sub boards should be a no-brainer and would likely take a few minutes and a couple of clicks for him to do. We even lose more staff then we gain and the forum continues to grow day by day so things get much worse. Punishing signature campaigns would cut down on the spam drastically. Requiring merit to move to Junior would also stop bots from ranking up. All simple things.


There isn't anything better, nor as profitable as here so it's still the best place. There are several other boards you could use but they're pretty dead. Things need to change though before the only people posting here are bots and barely legible spammers churning out their generic one liners re-worded slightly over their 12 accounts each just to claim enough bounties for their 'daily needs'.


This is silly. I merited your post before I read the last bit. I understand your frustrations but this isn't the way to go.


I don't use IRC. The last time I did nothing much was getting discussed in there either so I don't bother with it. Using the Staff board is far more efficient. I don't see why the cost of paying more mods would be an issue. Theymos has said a couple of times the forum has enough in reserves. We've also lost several mods over the past year or so. There are also numerous ways this forum could likely bring in hundreds of thousands in revenue: more ad slots, offer more donator ranks, charge ICOs to list here to name a few.



Already have. krishnapramod is the highest reporter in Bitcoin Discussion so I think he would make a good board mod for there and a patroller. Seeing how he's apparently Indian I think it would be wise to assign him to the local board as well if he was chosen.

That's surprising! I thought Global Mods would be interacting with the admins very frequently on that IRC channel. Also, do you think the cost would be the problem with adding a new mod? I mean we won't certainly consider finances but maybe theymos does?

P.S : If you get a chance to talk to him again, tell him Indian Board desperately waits for a mod too.

As if it is up to me to give his account back. I was just being more realistic with him.

Instead of typing all this. You could have just said "FUCK YOU!!! You are not getting your account back!". It's basically the same thing you said in those 4 lines. Being in OP shoes, I got my account after 3 months if I remember correctly. Also, I went above and beyond than just signing a message. I provided chat logs with the user who had access to my account for a while and so on. In the meantime, I had to work from an Alt Account. I was lucky back then as there was less of a competition in the services section and I got a few orders. I remember spamming hilarious on many occasions but he was always calm and responded to me reassuring that I will get the account back.


Wow! Have you ever felt theymos has this inability to make a decision? From the looks of your statement, the signs are there.


Bad idea!

I agree, but the reality is that most of us didn't lost any key!. Our houses were occupied then the intruders changed the locks so the keys that we always used to open the door do not match, neither work the regular recovery attempts. What is unacceptable is that the landlord doesn't realize it, ignores our complaints, claims and proposals! to him everything seems to be "ok".. His passive attitude make us believe that he is plotting against us / being at the side of the hijackers.
 

I can speak about my case stating that I never was hacked/lose access to any service ever before, my Bitcointalk account hack is unacceptable do to the fact that I'm not the regular kind of victim. Saying that, I can tell you that the fault was and still is the user forum database that the hacker is exploiting. Why I am so sure? Because I always follow some habits / countermeasures against any dodgy links / phishing attempts / social engineering, etc. tactics. Some examples: I always use bookmarks, generate 23 characters random passwords with symbols using LastPass to LogIn + 2FA (when it is available), I run anti-ads scripts on all of my web browsers as well as other useful add-ons such as PrivacyBadger, Disconnect, GreaseMonkey, EtherAddressLookup, also I run several proxy scritps on the web-browsers + on top of that another layer of security via a VPN on a LAN wired connection (not wifi), I always use the same PC to LogIn from the same secure connection / setup that I carefully clean and take care of it. I even run a pfsense logging and filtering all the ports. I also changed my password back in 2015 and I regularly update/change the passwords of most of my accounts every 1-2 years.
The fault was not mine, neither all of the fellas that already lost access to their accounts. If it were better security measures adopted (just like a simple 2FA that everyone knows and use it daily) those hacks could be prevented, as simple as that.
 

Maybe it is time to move on, abandon this titanic. Migrate to other existing platform or create a new one. The captain is blind and deaf, we could leave him sink or maybe kick him / replace / putsch.. Perhaps hiring a hacker to hack his account too... I don't know something different than sitting here doing nothing.
I'm upset and tired of this bullshit. Rising Admins attention should be easy not a nightmare.

And this shouldn't be acceptable or the way it is expected to be. If someone lost the key to their house and their landlord said "forget about it, you shouldn't have lost it, go be homeless", do you think that would be acceptable? Absolutely not. Maybe they might have to wait a day or two at most to get a copy of their key cut but not weeks/months/years and it should be a priority. If their landlord doesn't have time to get keys cut and deal with these things then employ someone who can do it for you.


I've almost clicked on phishing and dodgy links before when deleting posts. Anyone can fall victim to them in numerous ways and that shouldn't mean the end of your account here. If there was better security measures in place here most people wouldn't lose their accounts or they could be prevented from being lost.


Is he? He barely responds to me at all. I don't want him to get annoyed at me for constantly messaging him either. I managed to get a list of the top reporters for Bitcoin Discussion from him last week so we can give that board a dedicated mod, but no response after that. How long does it take to implement a mod? A few clicks probably. I've been suggesting there needs to be at least one there for years and still nothing. Simple things just don't get done and the forum becomes exponentially more spammy and less usable/readable as time goes on.

I get your point but even you know/are aware of the fact he probably will never get his account back just like everybody else who have been waiting for months. I suggested starting out with a fresh account since account sales are not encouraged on the forum and he may lose his account and money if ever found out.

Forum hack - Understood
Losing it if not being careful enough - User's irresponsibility. They have all the rights to get their accounts back but considering the way administration works here, he has zero chances. To be honest, if I'm aware that my account may never get recovered if hacked, I will be extra secure while accessing it.

Agree with you here. Theymos is more responsive to you than us so I guess you gotta convince him to bring about the change.

1) Why do you need one? Something tells me you just wouldn't give up on this account if it was lost somehow. Put your self in his and everyone else's shoes when they're seemingly never going to get their account back. In fact, why don't you abandon this account now and start over from a new one if it's not a big issue? I mean, you don't need a high ranked account, right?

2) Who's fault was it that the forum got hacked? That's how most of these accounts are getting hacked. Anyone can have their account hacked or stolen regardless of how security conscious you are, but that doesn't mean they don't have a right to get their account back at all.

3) I don't think he's saying he should be given priority, but there are hundreds of accounts that aren't getting restored at all and this is just another one added to the pile whilst users are left without even a response from admins. Simply not restoring them at all isn't acceptable and looks terrible on the forum.


Google's system is probably all automatic, unless you contacted customer support and got help from them but they will have hundreds if not thousands of employees restoring accounts. Bitcointalk has two, neither of which seem to be restoring accounts at all.

I got my gmail account back in 24 hrs with Google. Of course, it is a multi-billion dollars company and blablabla. But this is also not a hometown housewives forum but one with the auditory of millions. It's time to implement a working system to return accounts to the owners. Existent one is indeed cumbersome and time (months(!)) consuming. 

- Why do you need a high ranked account? If I was in your place, I would start afresh with a newly created account.
- Getting your account hacked honestly is your own fault, you can't go around whining how unmanaged the staff is.
- There are 100's of accounts waiting to get recovered, why you should be treated any differently?
- I understand it's frustrating but can't help it. Just go with the flow.