Protecting Yourself From YouTube Scams

Let's talk about scams! Ok, so maybe this isn't the most fun or cheery way to start a post but things have gotten totally ridiculous lately with YouTube accounts being hacked, spammed, and even deleted, so I think there are a few important things to keep in mind for viewers and creators alike:

First, the comment spam. There are a lot of scammy bot accounts out there replying to comments saying that you've won something. I, along with most other creators, will NEVER ask you to contact me on Telegram or WhatsApp. In the super rare instances when I do a giveaway of some kind, I'll never announce the winner in the comments section.

It's usually easy to spot these fake accounts because their names have a phone number in them and/or weird emojis. My actual account is just my name. Two syllables. That's it. There’s also the verified checkmark too, which believe it or not, verifies that it’s actually me.

Unfortunately, these scam accounts get created faster than they can be deleted sometimes, even with aggressive filters and moderation in place.

If you're ever unsure about a comment that looks like it's from me, click on the profile to make sure it takes you back to my actual channel and not a weird dollar store version. If you see these types of comments on any channel, you can also click a button next to the comment to report it as spam, which I think helps the accounts to be identified as false.

For creators, this is probably a good time to change your password and double check who/what has access to your YouTube account. I'm no cyber securty expert, but it's good "hygiene" to change your password at least several times a year. Make it as long and impossible to figure out as possible.

I don't 100% know how it works, but lots of scammers get access to a Google account associated with an established channel and then delete all of the videos, change the channel name, and start running bitcoin scam livestreams until it's shut down. Usually the streams are made to look like some kind of announcement from Tesla or Apple or some other popular company. I just saw this happen today to a drumming channel I follow with just over 1 million subscribers and it absolutely broke my heart.

It also happens through fake brand emails. Someone may reach out to you claiming to represent a brand that wants to sponsor a video or send you something. They’ll ask you to download a file, maybe claiming it’s an NDA to sign or something like that, and once you download it they then have access to the email it was sent to. For a lot of people this is the email associated with their channel, so then the scammers get access to the channel.

If a brand ever reaches out to you, it’s always a good idea to verify that their email is officially associated with that brand’s URL. You can even take it one step further by Googling the person’s name to see if they show up in a company directory or on a site like LinkedIn. Never reply to an email or open anything from anyone unless you’re 100% sure you trust it.

Unfortunately, once a channel is taken over and starts streaming scams it gets deleted. The scammers move on to their next target, but the person who own the channel is completely left out in the cold. It typically takes a lot of time and stress before YouTube can restore things (and even then I've heard some channels have a hard time recovering since they've been flagged as spam or shadowbanned for violating TOS– even though the actual creator had nothing to do with it.). An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so...

I personally reocmmend never using the email address associated with your YouTube channel for anything other than official YouTube communciations. This is the most important tip I can share! Don't list that email publicly, and never use it for any kind of communication. If you have multiple YouTube channels, use a separate email address for all of them.

I have a podcast episode that dives into this in a bit more detail and explains how to hide your email from being public:

We put so much of ourselves into the things we create, that to think it could all be taken away in an instant because of some get rich quick scam is pretty devastating. Hopefully we can help each other stay alert and protected!