Prevent your YouTube channel from being impersonated to sell cryptocurrency

What is hijacking?

The term hijacking can be accompanied by different surnames, for example, DNS Hijacking or Social Media Hijacking, but the way of acting is similar, since it is a hijacking or impersonation of a system, social network or in the case of YouTube , of a content channel.

This situation can be caused by several factors, but according to the Google company there are four forms of social engineering that are most common: when hijackers impersonate a person or organization to gain the trust of a user, through a hacker attack phishing or through a pharming attack, that is, when hijackers create a website that looks like a trustworthy service for users to enter their login details.

Elisa Rodríguez, partner operation manager for YouTube Mexico, points out that this practice has become increasingly common and the purpose of hijacking a channel is to use it for commercial purposes or potential fraud.

“Although we have seen that much of the use of this type of vulnerability is to sell cryptocurrencies, it does not only come down to this, it can also have other purposes. In addition, it is not only focused on large channels, media or organizations, it also affects users who have a channel with fewer subscribers”, emphasized Rodríguez.

How to avoid being hijacked on YouTube?

One of the main recommendations that the company makes is that you use different email addresses to operate and to receive comments from your audience, this is because one of the actions that they have identified that makes channels more vulnerable is that they publish the email address. -mail linked to her channel to receive comments, something that makes her vulnerable.

Another of the recommendations made by the platform is that you never share your channel username and password and, above all, if more people need to operate within it, give them the correct access for their function. For this, the company remembers the options it has to assign permissions and limitations.

An extra layer of security that is very useful is adding two-step verification, which will help you have an alert in case someone else is trying to enter your account without your consent.

“When you are an administrator of several channels and they have access to your account, it is very possible that you also lose control of the other channels and even of other social networks, since many people use the same email to log in on various platforms,” Rodriguez indicated.

What do I do if my YouTube account was hijacked?

If despite having all these forecasts, you lose control of your YouTube channel, what the company recommends is that you get in touch through the company’s Twitter account, there they will ask you for some information such as what were the last videos that you posted, a secure email account and that you complete a form. After an investigation, the platform will give you a solution.

If you want to have more information about the recovery, you can go to the support channel of Youtube.