Instawallet claim process

[Keimoasd]

Hi

I am one of the unfortunate Instawallet users. In fact I am a total newbie in the whole bitcoin scene.

About 3 weeks back I found out the bitcoin value was rising sky high and I remembered having around 20 Bitcoins on certain site.

I didn't make any specific research about bitcoin wallets (would have done.. I know) and ended up sending all of the funds to this Instawallet online wallet.

Yet again I kinda forgot about the coins until last weekend.  I was cheerful when I noticed the value was risen up to almost $200 (almost $220 atm.) untill I tried to entry my wallet and found out about this whole mess.

This is really frustrating especially 'cause I am not the richest fellow and I could have used this money now.

I am sure my losses were not the biggest ones but as the value of bitcoin is rising as I speak the losses are growing all the time.

And even if I will get my funds back the value could have crashed to the ground untill then.

Isn't there any way to speed things up? I am willing to give my private information etc. or anything to get my coins back asap.

[1714542942]

1714542942

[1714542942]

1714542942

[Boussac]

UPDATE

We are currently developing and preparing the online claim form. 
We appreciate your patience as we work with limited resources. 
We regret not being able to do more as Instawallet was a free service (zero fees) and could not pay for additional resources. 
However, we would like to reassure you that we will have the claims processed in due time, by the end of the initial 90-day period. 
The claim form is schedule for delivery by Friday, April 12th.

Any particular reason you will not handle claims on an ongoing basis. Did you at all read my post ?

There are absolutely no excuses at this point, your reputation is at stake. Personally, at this point, I will not use or recommend any services that you're involved in.

Watching.

Didi you care to read my point about resources ?
We ran this services at our own expenses and pledged to refund everybody (at least those under 50 BTC: the very few people who stored more will be handled on a case by case basis): what more can we do ?

[steelboy]

UPDATE

We are currently developing and preparing the online claim form. 
We appreciate your patience as we work with limited resources. 
We regret not being able to do more as Instawallet was a free service (zero fees) and could not pay for additional resources. 
However, we would like to reassure you that we will have the claims processed in due time, by the end of the initial 90-day period. 
The claim form is schedule for delivery by Friday, April 12th.

Any particular reason you will not handle claims on an ongoing basis. Did you at all read my post ?

There are absolutely no excuses at this point, your reputation is at stake. Personally, at this point, I will not use or recommend any services that you're involved in.

Watching.

Didi you care to read my point about resources ?
We ran this services at our own expenses and pledged to refund everybody (at least those under 50 BTC: the very few people who stored more will be handled on a case by case basis): what more can we do ?

You can respond to a few of the most basic questions.

How long will it take to answer them. 1 hour of your time. 3 at max. I will pay 3 hours of your wages to answer our questions.

[Herodes]

UPDATE

We are currently developing and preparing the online claim form. 
We appreciate your patience as we work with limited resources. 
We regret not being able to do more as Instawallet was a free service (zero fees) and could not pay for additional resources. 
However, we would like to reassure you that we will have the claims processed in due time, by the end of the initial 90-day period. 
The claim form is schedule for delivery by Friday, April 12th.

Any particular reason you will not handle claims on an ongoing basis. Did you at all read my post ?

There are absolutely no excuses at this point, your reputation is at stake. Personally, at this point, I will not use or recommend any services that you're involved in.

Watching.

Didi you care to read my point about resources ?
We ran this services at our own expenses and pledged to refund everybody (at least those under 50 BTC: the very few people who stored more will be handled on a case by case basis): what more can we do ?

Answer the questions posted in this thread. I will repeat them here:

Questions from pyedpyper:

1. Please state your full real name and your current position with Paymium (and whether you are a shareholder, director or employee).

2. Please confirm that you have formal authorisation from the board of Paymium to be communicating on behalf of the company on this forum.

3. Please provide the case number and filing date of the report you state Paymium has filed with the police.

4. Please provide Paymium’s formal contact details: office address and telephone number.

5. Please state whether the alleged hack resulted in the loss of coins under Paymium’s control. A simple YES or NO is adequate at this point. If you wish to elaborate you may, but I am not requesting that.

6. If coins were lost please state if these happened by (A) the hacker accessing Instawallet accounts directly via their URLs, or (B) by accessing other “internal” wallets controlled by Paymium, or (C) by some other method.

7. Your comments thus far suggest that the alleged hacker has acquired some or all of the URLs for accessing Instawallet user wallets. Please confirm whether this is the case or not.

8. If the answer to (7) is YES, then please state if these URLs were stored in encrypted form or not.

9. If the answer to (7) is NO, then please state why there needs to be a claims process at all.

10. Your stated claims process on the Instawallets site states: “If several claims have been filed for the same url, we will process those claims on a case by case basis, under the presumption that the claim we received first belongs to the legitimate balance holder.”. Please will you describe the logic of that? If a hacker has the URLs then surely he can file a claim as quickly as any legitimate account holder? And if you’re assuming that the first claim is likely to be the more “legitimate” one then why wait 90 days? Your logical methodology makes little sense and I would appreciate clarification.

11. You also state that “Claims for wallets that hold a balance greater than 50 BTC will be processed on a case by case and best efforts basis.” Please clarify why the “arbitrary” figure of 50 BTC has been chosen. This comment suggests that you have lost a certain number of coins and need to limit your total payout to what you have left. Please confirm if this is how it is, or if there is another reason for this figure?

12. From your communications it is clear that Paymium’s servers were hacked and this affected all your services – Instawallet, Paytunia and Bitcoin Central. It also seems evident that you suffered financial loss of some kind. Please explain how that loss directly affects Instawallet clients and not Paytunia and Bitcoin Central clients.

At the moment, to restore your reputation - you should handle cases more swiftly - a 90 day window is far too much. Would you personally be happy if your own funds was tied up that long, with a complete uncertainty as to how much you'd get back ?

Also, you could have people help you with these issues if you have lack of resources.

[Boussac]

UPDATE

We are currently developing and preparing the online claim form. 
We appreciate your patience as we work with limited resources. 
We regret not being able to do more as Instawallet was a free service (zero fees) and could not pay for additional resources. 
However, we would like to reassure you that we will have the claims processed in due time, by the end of the initial 90-day period. 
The claim form is schedule for delivery by Friday, April 12th.

Given that you have a pool of 42,000 of our BTC how about you put a little more effort in and try and calm some of your customers fears.   

Have you, (or your lawyers), even looked at our questions?

GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS SOME RESPECT.

Instawallet users benefited from our free service (therefore are not our "customers" strictly speaking, especially if they wanted to stay anonymous) and will be paid back in full.
They trusted us with their bitcoins and their bitcoins are safe.
To hand out those bitcoins to the hacker now would be foolish hence the claim process I described.
I fail to see how we could have lacked respect towards instawallet users.
Any minute we spend responding to infuriated, threatening , sometimes defamatory posts (not yours) or PM on this forum is one less minute we have to clean up after the hack attempt.
Our determination to support bitcoin as a community-run monetary system is stronger than ever in spite of the attacks.

[tvbcof]

Didi you care to read my point about resources ?
We ran this services at our own expenses and pledged to refund everybody (at least those under 50 BTC: the very few people who stored more will be handled on a case by case basis): what more can we do ?

You can provide the information necessary so that we may verify that this attack and theft is being investigated by the relevant authorities.  This was a crime, and I desire to see it treated as such.

It is worth a lot more to me than the BTC I potentially lost to see that a counter-attack occurs on every legitimate front.

I do not believe that you studies this thread so poorly as to have missed the discussion of this point.  I find it almost certain now that you are being evasive.

[steelboy]

UPDATE

We are currently developing and preparing the online claim form. 
We appreciate your patience as we work with limited resources. 
We regret not being able to do more as Instawallet was a free service (zero fees) and could not pay for additional resources. 
However, we would like to reassure you that we will have the claims processed in due time, by the end of the initial 90-day period. 
The claim form is schedule for delivery by Friday, April 12th.

Given that you have a pool of 42,000 of our BTC how about you put a little more effort in and try and calm some of your customers fears.   

Have you, (or your lawyers), even looked at our questions?

GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS SOME RESPECT.

Instawallet users benefited from our free service (therefore are not our "customers" strictly speaking, especially if they wanted to stay anonymous) and will be paid back in full.
They trusted us with their bitcoins and their bitcoins are safe.
To hand out those bitcoins to the hacker now would be foolish hence the claim process I described.
I fail to see how we could have lacked respect towards instawallet users.
Any minute we spend responding to infuriated, threatening , sometimes defamatory posts (not yours) or PM on this forum is one less minute we have to clean up after the hack attempt.
Our determination to support bitcoin as a community-run monetary system is stronger than ever in spite of the attacks.

The crime reference number as proof of an investigation is an absolute minimum. By not revealing this you are basically leading us all to think the worst

[steelboy]

UPDATE

We are currently developing and preparing the online claim form. 
We appreciate your patience as we work with limited resources. 
We regret not being able to do more as Instawallet was a free service (zero fees) and could not pay for additional resources. 
However, we would like to reassure you that we will have the claims processed in due time, by the end of the initial 90-day period. 
The claim form is schedule for delivery by Friday, April 12th.

Given that you have a pool of 42,000 of our BTC how about you put a little more effort in and try and calm some of your customers fears.   

Have you, (or your lawyers), even looked at our questions?

GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS SOME RESPECT.

Instawallet users benefited from our free service (therefore are not our "customers" strictly speaking, especially if they wanted to stay anonymous) and will be paid back in full.
They trusted us with their bitcoins and their bitcoins are safe.
To hand out those bitcoins to the hacker now would be foolish hence the claim process I described.
I fail to see how we could have lacked respect towards instawallet users.
Any minute we spend responding to infuriated, threatening , sometimes defamatory posts (not yours) or PM on this forum is one less minute we have to clean up after the hack attempt.
Our determination to support bitcoin as a community-run monetary system is stronger than ever in spite of the attacks.

And you say my coins are safe now?

It doesn't feel that way at the moment.

[Herodes]

UPDATE

We are currently developing and preparing the online claim form. 
We appreciate your patience as we work with limited resources. 
We regret not being able to do more as Instawallet was a free service (zero fees) and could not pay for additional resources. 
However, we would like to reassure you that we will have the claims processed in due time, by the end of the initial 90-day period. 
The claim form is schedule for delivery by Friday, April 12th.

Given that you have a pool of 42,000 of our BTC how about you put a little more effort in and try and calm some of your customers fears.   

Have you, (or your lawyers), even looked at our questions?

GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS SOME RESPECT.

Instawallet users benefited from our free service (therefore are not our "customers" strictly speaking, especially if they wanted to stay anonymous) and will be paid back in full.
They trusted us with their bitcoins and their bitcoins are safe.
To hand out those bitcoins to the hacker now would be foolish hence the claim process I described.
I fail to see how we could have lacked respect towards instawallet users.
Any minute we spend responding to infuriated, threatening , sometimes defamatory posts (not yours) or PM on this forum is one less minute we have to clean up after the hack attempt.
Our determination to support bitcoin as a community-run monetary system is stronger than ever in spite of the attacks.

Can you answer this: If we assume that the holdings of each user of Instawallet summed up to being 100% of the coins that you had in a hot+cold wallet, and we assume that the hacker already stole some coins (this is derived from your communication), most likely from the hot wallet, how much did you lose ? 10% ? 20% 30% ? more.. ? And why should deposit holders with more than 50 BTC take a haircut, while the smaller ones will not.

You may complain about negative feedback on this forum, but from the looks of it, you will very soon have official law enforcement knowing about your name.

[Boussac]

Also, you could have people help you with these issues if you have lack of resources.

We do not lack resources for the claim process that was outlined.

[Amitabh S]

Boussac, I think it will be prudent to provide a crime reference number to calm people in this thread. If you are unable to answer other questions, at least this information should be given.
I have been a regular user of b-c and would like to see this issue addressed fast. Even if instawallet was offering a free service, the fact that its associated with Paymium is a big deal and that trust needs to be retained.

[Herodes]

Boussac, I think it will be prudent to provide a crime reference number to calm people in this thread. If you are unable to answer other questions, at least this information should be given.
I have been a regular user of b-c and would like to see this issue addressed fast. Even if instawallet was offering a free service, the fact that its associated with Paymium is a big deal and that trust needs to be retained.

Yes, it is a very huge deal. At this point in time, I'm leaning towards them being criminal and incompetent. Questions are evaded, which is a very bad sign. They did not even say how much coins were lost.

[Jackbauer]

IMHO you guys are lucky he is putting as much effort into this as he is. I am by no means a bitcoin expert, but I specifically remember that every time I read about instawallet I was warned immediately after to not keep much of anything there. Even when bitcoins were worth only $5 people were saying to only keep your first bitcoin or two there if you must, but find an alternative as soon as possible.

Didn't any one else think that just a simple link isn't really secure enough for, in the case of one of the people posting here, $22,000?

I'm sorry, but I think Boussac is doing an awesome job at managing the situtation.

Oh, and I do have money in an IW, however its something like .013252334 as I only kept my first bitcents their and spent it on something else (I don't even remember what).

[tvbcof]

...
I'm sorry, but I think Boussac is doing an awesome job at managing the situation.
...

Thanks for your thoughts.  I'm actually a lot more interested to know what the French investigators think though.  And have every intention of ensuring that they at least have the opportunity to explore the situation if they find it compelling enough to do so.

I'm not about to wait 90 days to ensure that the ball starts rolling.  Show of hands about who feels at this point that Paymium is being sufficiently evasive that we should solicit cost estimates from a French attorney or para-legal to assist in filing police reports?

Actually it is very possible that Paymium will prejudice people who are willing to file police reports when it comes to pay-outs, and ~davout is still staff here who I presume can evaluate PM's posted under this forum.  So, don't show hands or use PM's just yet perhaps.  I may be inclined to produce a personal e-mail addy or some other method since my identity is shot anyway if I end up playing an organizational role in this effort.  And I suck at such things

If one is a high-lost-value user who Paymium has offered to make whole in exchange for dropping it, I would suggest jumping on the deal.  You could always choose to 'do the right thing' later, particularly if you are careful to keep any evidence of the deal.  Myself having modest losses it is not about the money to me.  It's about trying to make sure that the crooks (or incompetents) in the ecosystem have to worry at least a little bit about their malfeasance (or incompetence.)

[steelboy]

...
I'm sorry, but I think Boussac is doing an awesome job at managing the situation.
...

Thanks for your thoughts.  I'm actually a lot more interested to know what the French investigators think though.  And have every intention of ensuring that they at least have the opportunity to explore the situation if they find it compelling enough to do so.

I'm not about to wait 90 days to ensure that the ball starts rolling.  Show of hands about who feels at this point that Paymium is being sufficiently evasive that we should solicit cost estimates from a French attorney or para-legal to assist in filing police reports?

Actually it is very possible that Paymium will prejudice people who are willing to file police reports when it comes to pay-outs, and ~davout is still staff here who I presume can evaluate PM's posted under this forum.  So, don't show hands or use PM's just yet perhaps.  I may be inclined to produce a personal e-mail addy or some other method since my identity is shot anyway if I end up playing an organizational role in this effort.  And I suck at such things

If one is a high-lost-value user who Paymium has offered to make whole in exchange for dropping it, I would suggest jumping on the deal.  You could always choose to 'do the right thing' later, particularly if you are careful to keep any evidence of the deal.  Myself having modest losses it is not about the money to me.  It's about trying to make sure that the crooks (or incompetents) in the ecosystem have to worry at least a little bit about their malfeasance (or incompetence.)

Davout is staff here? I thought he was instawallet?

[Tronlet]

Davout is staff here? I thought he was instawallet?

Both.

[steelboy]

Could you elaborate on this.

What came first?

How many people on here know him?

Has anybody heard anything from him since the hack?

[Herodes]

Could you elaborate on this.

What came first?

How many people on here know him?

Has anybody heard anything from him since the hack?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1929

Last Active:    April 02, 2013, 03:16:50 PM

https://github.com/davout?tab=activity

Last Active: 18 days ago.

[Tronlet]

Could you elaborate on this.

What came first?

How many people on here know him?

Has anybody heard anything from him since the hack?

I'm the wrong person to ask. I would assume, however, that he was a staff member first, and that plenty of people know him. He has been heard from since the hack, however, that much I do know.

So far, there isn't really much to be concerned about. I know that's cold comfort, I understand how anxious you must be getting to be waiting like this, and I find it rather unprofessional to be taking so long to set up a rather simple claims process, but so far they seem to be doing everything by the book, if a little slow. They may want to take extra careful precautions with security this time around.

[apetersson]

i have to admit i have given loaded instawallets (with trivial amounts back then) to friends as gifts. now i have to contact them and lead them though the recovery.
looking forward to the start of the claims process.