Sudden account deletion - Any help?

Hello,

I created an account on this website about 8 years ago. When I tried logging in on this website last month, I got the following message

Your username/password combination is not correct

I was really sure I didn't make any typos. Then I tried to visit my profile, to check if my account still exists:

https://wallhaven.cc/user/dingaffe

User not found. The user you are looking for does not exist.

After that I checked my nickname was changed by checking a tag I created a few years ago.

https://wallhaven.cc/tag/118957

deleted

So yeah, my account was deleted out of nowhere and I honestly don't know why. I don’t recall breaking any rules on this website, nor do I believe my password was weak enough for someone else to access the account easily. I’ve already contacted the staff and I appreciate the help and information I’ve got so far.

However, I still don’t know why my account was deleted in the first place and if there is any way to restore it. I’m still saddened and confused about suddenly losing my account, including my collections and subscriptions without any explanation as to why this happened.

Did anyone here have the same problem? I’d really appreciate any help or information regarding this.

Hello,

It's now been two months since I first brought up the issue of my old account suddenly being deleted without any explanation. A month before that, I contacted a member from the moderation about it, and I'm still grateful for the time and effort he put into trying to help me.

Unfortunately, I still don't know why my account was deleted at all. Despite several attempts to get in touch, I've never received a response from the site's administrators.

In this thread, I also noticed that I'm apparently not the only one this has happened to. That gives me the impression that anyone here could potentially lose their account without warning or explanation. At least, that's the impression the lack of communication leaves me with.

I would be happy to be proven wrong, so I would like to ask one final time:

AksumkA Gandalf (hope it's okay to also tag the devs)

1) Why was my old account deleted? 2) Why was I never given a reason for its deletion? 3) Are there any ways to restore my old account?

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to start drama or suggest that my case should be treated as some kind of emergency. We all have lives outside this website after all (I hope...).

What really bothers me is the lack of transparency. Having the feeling that your account can simply disappear without any explanation is incredibly frustrating, to say the least.

While I don't upload images myself, I do try to contribute to the community by adding or improving tags whenever I can. So I hope you can understand where I'm coming from, and I'd genuinely appreciate a response.

I have no idea why it was deleted – I don't think there is a way to see who did it.

Generally I'd assume it was an accident but I haven't been particularly involved in moderation here for some time..

Hi Gandalf,

thank you for reaching out and for your transparency!

The strange thing is that, as already pointed out, I am not the only one whose account was deleted out of nowhere. At least from my perspective, I don't see how I could have accidentally deleted my old account.

So, as I see it, there are two possible explanations:

1) Someone deliberately deleted my account without our knowledge 2) Some kind of internal bug caused both my account and the account of Viltvalt2 to be deleted

Are there any automatic processes in place that clean up abandoned or otherwise "delete-worthy" accounts? It might be worth looking into that possibility as well.

If it turns out that the deletion was caused by an accident or a technical issue, it would still suck of course, but I would at least appreciate the honesty and transparency about what happened.

Most likely that account got caught up in a spam acct wave of deletetions. We get a ton of spam accounts using the same IPs, and if your IP was used by spammers, then your account would have been flagged as well.

Account has been undeleted as much as we can, some things might be missing.

Thank you so much for restoring my old account! It means a lot to me, and I really appreciate your help!

Yeah, sometimes I use my Tor Browser when visiting this website. Maybe that's why my IP matched some of the IPs used by spammers. Sadly, I can't guarantee that I will never use Tor Browser while accessing this site. If possible, I would appreciate it if the deletion process could also take the user's activity into account (registration date, number of added tags, the created tag's subscriptions, etc.) to better determine whether an account is actually malicious or not. Of course, I understand that distinguishing normal users from spammers is not an easy task, but maybe this could be a step in the right direction.

Speaking of steps in the right direction: I noticed that, initially, I wasn't able to open my favourites page (https://wallhaven.cc/favorites). If I remember correctly, the error message was something like: "Oops, something went wrong... that's embarrassing... if this error still occurs, please contact us." I should have taken a screenshot of the error message, I know.

I "fixed" the problem by creating a new collection. Before my ban, I only had one private collection and nothing else. Maybe that somehow caused the error?

And just to be clear: Is there any way to restore my old collection? If not, it's not the end of the world, so don't worry! Everything else, including the subscriptions, seems to be restored.

Thank you again AksumkA and everyone else!