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Several YouTubers took to social media recently talking about their accounts getting hacked. As reported by ZDNet, majority of the YouTube channels deal with auto-tuning and car review. The list also includes some high-profile YouTube accounts including Built, Troy Sowers, MaxChekVids and Musafir. All these accounts are still not available on YouTube. Some of them also have had their Instagram accounts hacked.

It has been revealed that these hacks took place because of a coordinated campaign that reportedly included links to phishing sites. From there the hackers could extract their account credentials. As mentioned by one of the YouTubers who managed to get his account back with some feedback from the YouTube staff, hackers may have used phishing mails to attract victims to fake Google login pages. The hackers may have logged in to the victim’s Google account and then re-assign the channels to new owners. They may have also changed the vanity URL, giving an impression to the real owner and the followers that the account is deleted.

“Hacker transfer my channel ownership to his account.I have access to my email but my channel access has been changed . Please help me to recover my youtube channel,” said one of the members on the YouTube forum. As mentioned by some others, their accounts were hacked four-five days ago.

Another one mentioned “Hello YouTube Team. My Channel has been hijacked on September 20 2019 and I am not able to access my brand account. There was an email sent to me (not to my primary email) apparently from YouTube with a link (September 19), it was from this id youtube.controller.0@mail.ru (russian domain). They have also logged in to my google account as there was a computer logged in from Columbus Ohio on September 19. I signed out of that account and have also changed my password. The hijacker changed the following things on my channel and i cannot access my YouTube dashboard, cannot upload or access any channel analytics.”

One of the YouTubers named Ryan Scott, who is also the account holder of PURE Function channel has reportedly said that he used two-factor authentication security layer and still had his account ‘hacked’. Google has, however, not given an official statement on this matter.

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