On Tuesday, the famous Entrepreneur Elon Musk said that YouTube is not tackling ‘’Scam ads’’. He add saying the video streaming site should removes channels that are reported. The criticism on YouTube is for failing to block a network of cybercriminals. The cyber criminals are streaming fake Elon Musk videos to attract an audience. According to the BBC, dozens of these streams get views from thousands of people in a few months.
Fooling thousands of people into sending Cryptocurrency
Criminals have been fooling people into sending cryptocurrency to them, thinking they will get a reward from Elon Musk. BBC reports share the most common link https://elon-x2.live/. This channel encourages people to share Bitcoin or Ethereum to a digital wallet.
Meanwhile, the transaction history shows the criminals made $243,000 (£194,000) in a week. It includes almost 23 transfers of Bitcoin worth $234,000 and 18 transfers of Ethereum worth $9,000. According to Analysts at Whale alert, scammer wallets show profits of $98m in 2021, and almost $30m this year.
Look like the official Tesla Channel
The scammers know how to fool innocent people by changing the picture and names of dozens of YouTube Channels. Furthermore, the channels look like Tesla’s official channels, the electric car manufacturing firm. They buy password pairs and emails from previous data breaches online. Or thought to have simply common passwords with known email addresses.
Meanwhile, Chilean urban-music artist Aisack’s YouTube channel hacking made a news, and hijacked two weeks ago. He said, “My followers on other social networks asking me what is going on with the name of my channel and were very confuse about why I was streaming Tesla content,”
He further added, “It is very frustrating that your YouTube channel is hacked after dedicating so many years of work to it. I feel completely violated and insecure.”
“The hacking of my channel has hurt me a lot since I am a few days away from releasing a new music video and now I am creating a second channel as a backup and re-uploading more than 10 years of work on YouTube. “YouTube is not doing enough on security issues to prevent hacker attacks, since many users are in the same situation as me.”
However, YouTube said it had removed one of the Channels BBC News had notified about. Adding: “We have strict Community Guidelines prohibiting scams, including Impersonation and hacking.”
