Recently, popular YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming announced on Twitter that it lost access to its account. Notably, XRP hackers hijacked the channel to promote their scam. The administrators asked for assistance to reclaim ownership of the gaming channel.
But this is not the first time such incidents have occurred on YouTube. Recall that Ripple sued YouTube in 2020 for not taking the right measures to combat such scams.
DidYouKnowGaming Hijacked To Promote XRP Scam
The channel shared the latest incident on its Twitter page, stating that the team lost access to its YouTube account. However, the team assured followers it is working to get the channel back but also requested help from experts on such matters.
According to users’ reports, the bad actors accessed the channel’s Google account and changed its name from DidYouKnowGaming to Ripple. The hackers also used Ripple’s logo to deceive unsuspecting viewers into falling for their antics.
The gaming channel had up to 2.4 million subscribers, and this large audience represented a viable ground for scammers. Fortunately, the viewers alerted the team when unfamiliar content flooded their subscription feeds.
According to some viewers of the channel, the hackers didn’t delete or delist the original videos on the channel. As such, there’s still hope for the creators to recover the videos after regaining their access.
However, a user called out YouTube to restore the channel, while another user condemned the crypto hackers for exploiting channels for scam schemes.
Bad Actors Use YouTube Videos To Launch Crypto Scams
The latest incident targeted YouTube users interested in amassing XRP tokens. The idea was to deceive their target into investing or sending them digital assets in the name of huge returns.
This sort of incident is recurring in the crypto space. In 2020, scammers also impersonated Ripple executives to promote XRP giveaway scams leading to a lawsuit between Ripple and YouTube.
But apart from XRP, bad actors have successfully deceived YouTube users with fraudulent apps posing as USDT investment schemes. A February report by WithSecure disclosed that 30 scammers had stolen over $100,000 from at least 900 victims.
The report noted that the videos were hosted on YouTube and promised the victims huge investment returns. Some of the channels selling the scam had a good number of subscribers and views, and some were YouTube-verified accounts.
Further, the researchers mentioned discovering 700 URLs linked to the scammer’s apps using analysis techniques and data capture. The #usdtmining hashtag on YouTube also had more than 3900 misleading videos.
Featured image from Pixabay and chart from TradingView
