YouTube users are now targeted by hackers, by sending them emails claiming and warning users about their account to be suspended .Complaints have been posted on Instagram and Google Groups, users expressing doubt about the legitimacy of the messages, which purport to come via YouTube’s communication system.
A fake message containing links that redirects to unknown location containing survey, these kind of survey scams are now found a lots and lots in Facebook.
“We’d like to inform you that due to repeated or severe violations of our community guidelines and your YouTube account will be suspended 3 days from the time of this message. After careful review we determined that activity in your account violated our community guidelines, which prohibit spam, scams or commercially deceptive content. Please be aware that you are prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts,” informs the email to the users.
The link in the email which directs to a website says, “Please complete the survey in order to recovery your YouTube account from being suspended“.The reason behind the hackers is that to earn money, each completion of survey helps them earn more and more.
Before the completion of survey, it also asks for the users phone number, through which smishing can be done. Smishing is a kind of Phishing attack which is carried through SMS.
Christopher Boyd of Malwarebytes suggest the users that, “The best way to check the status of the YouTube account is to contact YouTube directly“.
“Scammers will often use similar tactics to send phishing links and malware, so in some ways recipients of this missive are getting the best of a bad deal – it’s ‘only’ surveys and forms to fill in, along with the occasional download,” says the researcher.