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justMANGO

your favorite fruit
8 Watchers1 Deviation
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Hi everyone, you may have noticed that my account has been deactivated few months between roughly April to July 2017.  Long story short, my account was compromised on April 22, 2017 by someone who subsequently used my credit card information saved on the account to make point purchases of over $600 USD. The hacker then changed my account email and deactivated my account. As a result, I lost a whole bunch of money and access to my account.

On the same day of the incident, I began the long and arduous negotiation with deviantART support staff to 1) reverse the transactions, and 2) regain access. At the same time, I cancelled my credit card and filed a fraud claim with my bank.

It took the deviantART about a month to respond to my three help desk tickets (I even left them a voice mail at the main office phone line). At which point I was given a partial refund of roughly $400 USD but no answer on the reactivation of my account. I pursued further, but deviantART told me that their record shows that the full amount was refunded and closed the ticket. My bank records showed otherwise. By this time, it was mid July.

Thankfully, my bank informed me shortly after that they had processed the fraud claim and reversed the balance of the disputed charges, including the conversion rate from CAD to USD (which deviantART did not cover in their partial refund). So at least that settled the credit card charges.

I reopened the closed ticket with deviantART, inquiring into the status of my account. The support staff reset my email and allowed me to reset my password, but as a result of the account being deactivated for more than 30 days, all data has been lost and irrecoverable. There was very little I could do about this, especially in light of the fact that I immediately opened a ticket after the compromise, but it took deviantART a month to reply.

As a result, everything I've accumulated here over the past 10 years is lost. I will not resubmit everything that was previously here unless there is a specific reason for a particular deviation. I don't intend to rebuild my gallery, as I am extremely busy with work and other things, but in the off chance that I do make something, I will post it.

Thank you all for being supportive all these years, I really appreciate it.

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What happened to your gallery, Mango? by justMANGO, journal