They stole all my telegram channels for 50k+ subscribers. Returned a month later. Action plan
Hello champion!
We will assume that the reader of this article is faced with the theft of their access to the telegram channel. I will briefly tell my story of the theft of the channel and give a step-by-step plan of action on how to return the stolen access and what to do so that this does not happen again.
⚠️ Do not download and open sent archives!
On the evening of January 8th to me a message arrives from an advertising manager from Yandex to request the purchase of advertising (placement of a post). The conditions are strange. The post itself must be found in the sent archive. Reading dialogue on phone. Of course this is a scam I thought, and closed the dialogue, asking to send the post in text.
🔫 Auto-download files in telegram.
The next day. I sit down on the morning of January 9 to work on a laptop. Suddenly I notice that yesterday’s dialogue immediately woke up. Still asks to see what black box in the archive? I open the dialog already on the laptop. The sent file is automatically downloaded and opened due to the telegram settings. (Without giving it any importance, I will lose all access in an hour). I noticed that the password in the telegram cloud is tied to someone else’s mail. Realizing that something was wrong, I reset all active sessions. Among them, by the way, was one unfamiliar.
The above response didn’t help. Very soon I lose all access to blogs and channels. And I can’t even log into telegram anymore. Having restored access by number, I get a clean profile with a deleted history of correspondence. Completely clean profile. All my blogs have comments disabled. I am completely isolated. And most importantly, my private block about Data Science is no longer mine.
💎 So this is a trendy divorce!
After a while, I find out that this is one of the very popular divorces. Moreover, very high quality, even if big techno bloggers are going for it. Where was their two factor authorization?
👩💻 Let’s say you still burst. What to do?
Here is a list of what I did, and I think it turned out to be the most useful.
Do not panic. All accesses are really returnbut we must act quickly.
We write to support and explain in detail what happened. An example letter and mail is below. Don’t forget to include the channel name and owner number. You can write in English and Russian. For telegram support is scattered all over the world.
hello my nick_name account (number phone_number) was stolen from me, which had the right to own the @datafeeling channel. It happened on January 9th (2023)
I got phishing. The archive was sent to me in private messages. After opening the archive, after a few hours, I lost access to my account and channels. I am ready to provide any evidence, screenshots and confirm ownership of the account. Please return access to my account to the number phone_number. thanks!
Creating a new channel, where we write a post explaining what happened. Ideally with proof that you are the real one. We notify our audience by any meansthat you have been hacked. (Through your friends, followers and other sources). I was helped by friends bloggers from my subject.
We ask friends duplicate information about your complaint in support. I don’t know if there is a prioritization depending on the premium subscription, but the final answer came to a friend without a premium subscription.
We start asking friends to throw strikes (complaints) on the stolen channel and indicate the reason – fraud. If some kind of scam is advertised through your channel, then consider yourself lucky. Get your access back faster. If not, then the response of Telegram support will be slower.
🥁 Quickly returned? Waited a month.
Some get it back in a matter of hours. Some in a couple of weeks. It took me a month. I was very lucky that all this month I had a fire on work and projects, so there was not much time to think about the main blog.
I wrote all my thoughts and news in the second mini blog, which a week later made up 10% of the main one. Thank you friends.
🎯 Tough times call for tough decisions. What helped?
After almost a month, I realized that I needed to make a new breakthrough and return the accesses already. At this point, I have sent 40 emails to support. Thrown on the old channel ~ 150 strikes, held two dates with employees of the cartbut still no response from support. Well, let’s make a contest with a prize!
🧠 Prevention. Risks. Lifehacks.
And now I will make it so damn hard to hack you.
Activate two-factor authentication. This is a matter of one minute that does not affect the usability of telegrams in any way. But you will be extremely difficult to hack. A very profitable investment.
Did you feel that something was wrong? Reset all active sessions. In my case, this prevented my channel from being used for further fraud.
Don’t show the owner’s account anywhere blog or chat. To communicate with the community or advertisers, create another account. Such an account in case of hacking will lead to fewer problems. Set up two-factor on it too!
If you have a grid of several chats, then give the admin area to reliable friends, relatives or employees. So in case of hacking, you will have the opportunity to influence the situation. Personally, this approach helped me to continue accepting applications for advertising on other blogs for the whole month, where my owner account was deleted.
Collaborate with bloggers in your field. Do not be afraid to tell the audience about colleagues “in the shop.” So you can notify your audience through other bloggers in case of a problem. I don’t know what I would do without this item.
Do not download and certainly do not open the sent files of dubious origin!
