This is how I lost access to my account my mistakes my learnings on Hive

By @animek3/15/2026experience

👋👋Hey there, I’m @animk — the guy who recently lost his account. But before you start worrying, let me tell you the whole story. They say we learn from mistakes, and wow… I definitely learned a lot from this incident.

🔑When I first tried to join Hive, things didn’t go smoothly. I tried creating my account with InLeo after watching a YouTube video, but it didn’t work, so I gave up. Later, I tried again and this time I used InLeo’s keystore. I thought everything was fine and started using the network like anyone else.

🔑Since I didn’t know much, I assumed saving the keystore with the passphrase was enough to protect my account. I also saved some files with my keys separately on my phone. For some reason, I never saved the seed phrase in my email — only the keystore 🙁

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I tried creating a new account because without the seed phrase it’s impossible to recover. I could log in with InLeo, but everything was limited. Every time I tried something, the system crashed or gave me errors. Once it told me to wait 2 minutes, but I ended up waiting over 30 minutes playing the dinosaur game.

🦖When I downloaded the keys for the new account, a message popped up asking if I had downloaded them by clicking the green button. But it never worked. I thought maybe it was my browser, so I tried three different ones, but I could never move forward.

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I thought that would be enough to get back into my account, but without the keys or seed phrase it’s impossible. I learned this the hard way after my phone was stolen, where I had those files saved. As a newbie, I had no choice but to start over from scratch.

On InLeo, every time I tried to download the keys with my X account, the green button wouldn’t work. Same with the keystore. I almost gave up again, but this time I managed to create a new account quickly with Ecency.

🚀This time I tested the keys right away and made sure I had everything I needed to recover my account if something happens. I even tried logging in from my cousin’s house, a cybercafé, and back home after deleting data twice — it worked every time. Now I know I must back up the seed phrases and keys, not just the keystore. I had no idea before. I just want to thank @bozz, @bhattg, and @katerinaramm for guiding me through these first steps.

This was my experience. I hope new users don’t make the same mistakes, because you could end up locked out of your account forever.

Follow me so you don’t miss the next adventure! ---

Translated with the power of Google Gemini AI to English! KAPOW! 🏆

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