Are anchors created chronologically? Hope of recovering lost anchor id?

internet-identity
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I have all my ICP locked in NNS. Ran ccleaner and now it asks for my anchor. I dont have this. I tried a random anchor and got the verification on my phone, so its still connected.

I know when it was created from Chrome history. December 1st 2022 at 10:33 UTC+1. I visited the ICP site several times that day, but that was the time I visited identity.ic0.app.

  1. Are anchors created chronologically? Are there any ways to find out what anchors were created at that timestamp? Or could anyone share anchors, or the first few numbers of anchors created around november/december/january 2022?

  2. Do I have unlimited amount of attempts at anchors? Or will I get locked out after a while?

Thanks for any help. (I am desperate)

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Hi @monument

  1. Yes, anchors are created chronologically. So given the time you mentioned, your anchor number should be somewhere in the range of 2075409 to 2076762.
  2. Yes, you have unlimited amounts. There is no point in locking an anchor as trying to brute force the private key is not feasible.

By the way, the anchor number is the first part of the recovery phrase, so if you created one, it is also contained in there. If you don’t have one, you should definitely create one after you have found your anchor number.

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Ok, thanks a lot. I might be off by a few minutes as that time was just the first time I visited the site according to chrome history. Not sure how long it took me to create the anchor. The anchor range you gave, is that what was created that hour? Lets say I’m off by five minutes, will that make it several thousand more combinations I have to try?

And I can’t find any recovery phrase nor seed phrase. I only have the address and my phone which is linked. If I find the anchor ID, all I have to do is confirm on my phone and I’m in, right? In other words: I wont need seed phrase if my phone is registered with the anchor ID?

Thanks again.

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@monument: The range I gave covers all anchors created on that day. Unfortunately, we do not have finer grained data to restrict the range further.

If I find the anchor ID, all I have to do is confirm on my phone and I’m in, right? In other words: I wont need seed phrase if my phone is registered with the anchor ID?

Yes, this is correct. However, we strongly recommend to add multiple devices / authentication methods to an Internet Identity anchor in case you lose access to a key for some reason.

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Thanks! I think I’ll be able to figure it out then. I had almost completely given up just a few hours ago. Automating this with autohotkey and clicking manually on my phone will only take 8 hours. Not bad at all :wink:

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2023-04-19 14_37_51-Home - IC Dashboard
2023-04-19 14_37_51-Home - IC Dashboard1089×738 39.9 KB

On this dashboard you can read even finer, but is it just estimated? Or the actual time of the anchor creation? Also: Any idea what timezone these dates/hours are in? My date is in UTC+1 so it has a lot to say. Thanks again.

Link: https://dashboard.internetcomputer.org/

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It seems to be in my local timezone as the previous anchor created matches my time. Very exciting to see if this works.

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FOUND IT! Took me hundreds of attempts before I began researching again and found out that the anchors started at 10000! So you have too add 10000 to the amount of anchors! Also, if anyone has this problem in the future read this post on using the API to narrow it down: Which internet identities were created on this date?

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