As we entered into 2020, there has been a sizeable up-tick in reports of channels that have been hacked, taken over by undesirables, wreaking havoc over someone’s pride and joy. YouTube has been hard pressed to help these creators due to the volume of cases and being under resourced.

There have been reports that it has taken YouTube many weeks to regain control of these channels and in many cases are unable to fully restore the channels to their former glory.

How do these undesirables gain access? The main method has been phishing emails. Creators are sent and email proporting to be YouTube. These emails often appear very similar to YouTube correspondence on a cursory glance, however we find that the nature of the correspondence in nothing like what YouTube would actually send.

These emails often take the low road of threatening a community guideline or copyright strike, or even termination. All this to entice the receiver to click a fake link and enter their Google credentials to “log-in”. Once these hackers have your password, you have lost.

You might ask, how do they know who to target in the first place? Very good question! They primarily go to a channel’s About page and get the business contact email and send the fraudulent email in that direction.

The #1 thing you should as a YouTube channel owner is to make sure you’re business contact email on your About page is NOT your Google log-in for your YouTube channels. That way, if they email you, you clearly know its not from YouTube because it’s going to your business email, not your log-in email.

The video below walks you through the steps on how to easily update your business email accordingly!