How to Change Your Recovery Account Or Recover a Compromised Account

in GEMS4 years ago (edited)

Since the Steem hostile takeover, and especially after the recent wallet seizures of some accounts by Steem Witnesses, I have been suggesting many of you to change the default recovery account (which was set as @steem) to something better. You may have a different default recovery account depending upon what service you used to create your account, for example it could be blocktrades, anonsteem etc. But most people used the free account creation service by Steemit, have their default recovery account as @steem.

Most of you are aware that @steem a/c is in control of the rival blockchain supremo Mr Justin Sun. I don't think you can trust him with your wallet anymore. Therefore I would suggest you to change your recovery account to someone you can trust like your friend, relative or may be, to one of your alternative accounts. In case you you are setting your alternative account as your recovery account, do take care to store the keys for both of your accounts in different locations, so that you don't lose them together.

To set a new account as your recovery account is quite simple and that's why I didn't feel the need to explain this process earlier.

You can take the help of several available tools for this purpose.

  1. I guess, the simplest interface to make use of, for this operation should be peakd.com. Login to your account at peakd.com. On your profile / blog page, click "ACTIONS ..." just below "SETTINGS" button and then from the dropdown menu, click "Keys and Permissions". Now go to RECOVERY ACCOUNT tab. Here you will find two buttons viz. "CHANGE RECOVERY ACCOUNT" and "CHANGE WITH HIVESIGNER". Click one of these. From here, the process is quite intuitive. Provide the requisite key to authorise the operation (you will need your private owner key for it).

    image.png

  2. Secondly, you can also use Hivesigner to change your recovery account. Just modify the following link by inserting your new recovery account name (without @ sign) in place of "NEW_RECOVERY_ACCOUNT"in the following URL:

    https://hivesigner.com/sign/change_recovery_account?new_recovery_account=NEW_RECOVERY_ACCOUNT

  3. You can also use BeeMe tool. Login to your account on https://beeme.icu/. Now go to "General Data" in the left panel and click on "Change Recovery Account" button at far right of your Recovery Account.

image.png

There are many other tools which you can use to set a new recovery account for your wallet. These are what I could quickly figure out for the help of non-techie users like me.

You can check your recovery account at blockexplorer like https://hiveblocks.com/@youraccount by scrolling down to "Recovery Account" in left panel to see what's your current recovery account is.

Whenever your account password is compromised, hacked or stolen, you can make a request to your recovery account within the first 30 days of your keys being changed. But it only works when you have your old key with you that was working prior to the theft / hack. If the key is lost, consider your wallet as lost forever.

If you are setting your alt account as your recovery account, then you should also know how to recover your main account in the eventuality of its hack / theft.

Here I'm again pointing to the versatile BeeMe tool. After login to your alternative account at BeeMe.icu, scroll down towards the bottom. Under Tools, you will find "Account Recovery" in the left panel. Click on it and you will find an intuitive interface with all instructions (as shown in the screenshot below):

image.png

Hope this brief overview is helpful to some of you. Please note that it takes 30 days to process changes to recovery account for security purpose.

Please be careful to not to mess up with your account keys and exercise due caution to insert them only at appropriate places in as much secure way as possible.

Hive on!

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Great tutorial for changing the recovery account... And you are right, it is important to change them to something else, as STEEM is a big mess...

Thanks for sharing!



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Thanks for your attention and appreciation!
Yes, Steem is a big mess and all accounts with recovery account as @steem are at great risk. That should be changed at the earliest.

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