Hacked on Vocal!

So... I guess I don't really know where to start. The beginning would be a good place I suppose, but which beginning? The moment I created my previous account back in October of 2019? The joy I felt when I noticed I was a top creator in the Poets Community? The excitement when one of my stories (a love poem I wrote shortly after I realized my now husband was "the one") reached over 100 views? My first withdrawal? Or maybe when I logged on to find my account had been depleted off all my work? Yeah, lets start there.

About a month ago (April 2023) I opened my laptop to log on to Vocal and publish a new poem I had been working on for the past week; a strong piece detailing the changes of my life from merely a year ago. I felt good about it, wanted to share it. Well, I felt good until I noticed the blank profile. The name change. The email change. My reads and earnings having grinded to a halt.

All of my work simply gone.

So, naturally, I panic. I had spent years building what was my previous profile and was naturally proud of it. No, it wasn't a viral page, no I hadn't won any challenges yet, yes my highest read story was at a mere 104 reads and thankfully my wallet was less than $2.00. But nonetheless I was proud of my work, no matter how little attention it got. I scrolled through my page, my stories (all were faded out and marked "unpublished"), rapidly hit the refresh button hoping this was some computer error, scrolled frantically through the Poets and Fiction Communities (where I published most of my work) hoping to find my works there. Then, in one last desperate hope I opened the Challenges page to the open and closed challenges I had submitted to (Tautogram, Passing Ships, and Epistolary at the time). I didn't find my works there either. I lost any hope I'd find my stories, my works, the things I spent so much time and effort on within Vocal.

So, I shifted gears. Instead of searching in a desperate cling to hope like I had been for the past hour I went into Vocal Support and submitted several appeals to them:

My account had been hacked and I didn't know what to do.

All my work was gone.

My email had been changed without my knowlage or consent. (I managed to somehow change it back - don't ask me how, I'm not even sure).

Then I waited. Waited days. Only to get an email stating that my account was hacked and had been since disabled due to the hacking. All this I already knew. I emailed back asking for more information on how it was hacked and by who and why Vocal disabled it instead of helping one of their creators regain their work. All I got back was the same message:

We detected your account was hacked. It has been disabled. For for information or to make an appeal please visit the Vocal.Media Support page.

-Creatd

So, I tried again. And again. And again. I made the same appeals over and over until I broke down and came to the conclusion that making appeals wouldn't help anything. That trying to reach Vocal Support wasn't going to change the status of my now disabled account.

So I requested to delete the account. A week later, it was gone. And that brings me to now. My new account, similar to my old, no where near all my old works have been republished yet (thankfully I made copies to my Google Drive), and at a loss of my subscribers and tips and earnings. Starting fresh but wishing there was a way to transfer my previous (however small) success to this new account. That I could transfer the mention I got on Raise Your Voice by Vocal in their 📢 Raise Your Voice Thread: 4/6/23 story illustrating my poem Showered Memories (now republished) that generated many new subscribers and likes and reads to my previous account.

But I can't. That success is gone, along with the account.

I guess I mostly wrote this to vent, to warn other creators of the possibility they could get their account hacked and disabled, and to apologize to my previous subscribes and anyone who read and enjoyed my content now that it's now gone. That, unfortunately I had to delete my previous account and start fresh. I am now in the process of republishing my stories and poems. I'm just hoping I gain back at least a fraction of the traffic I got before, a small piece of the work I had done.

So to my fellow creators I ask you to be careful, monitor your account carefully, change your password to something super-duper secure and please, please continue creating.