Imagine a hacker stealing your videos, impersonating your channel, or holding you hostage because you downloaded some ransomware.
Wait, is this really a problem that I might have to deal with?
There are more than 23,000 ransomware incidents in the US last year. 7,000 involved home users, and 16,000 involved private sector companies and public organizations.
For example, the Colonial Oil Pipeline recently paid $5 million to a group of hackers that shut down the pipeline. As a result, long lines of cars were hoarding gas at gas stations because 80% of the gas stations were closed down. The pipeline carries 45% of the nation’s oil on the East Coast of the United States.
Will private citizens be next?
In the video below, you’ll learn how to protect your YouTube channel from hackers, so you won’t lose your channel, subscribers, and revenue.
Click here to get The One Blueprint That Gives You Step-By-Step Instructions
On How To Grow A Profitable YouTube Channel
How do hackers fool you?
Phishing is when someone disguises themselves as a trustworthy person and takes your personal information. This could be a financial data, social security number, or credit card numbers. The hacker may pretend to be institutions, family members, colleagues, by using emails, text messages, or web pages. Keep in mind that YouTube will never ask for your password, email address or other account information.
Don’t be fooled if someone contacts you pretending to be from YouTube.
Here’s how to protect yourself from suspicious messages and content.
- Don’t reply to suspicious emails, texts, instant messages, web pages, phone calls that ask for personal information. Avoid clicking on the links that appear in emails, messages, web pages that come from untrustworthy website. YouTube emails only come from @youtube.com or @google.com addresses.
- Avoid suspicious web pages.
Google Chrome and Google Search show this warning sign on suspicious web pages, “Deceptive site ahead“. Attackers on example.com may trick you into doing something dangerous, like installing software or revealing your personal information.” - Report spam or phishing attempts.
To protect yourself against phishing or ransomware attacks, never enter your password on any page except myaccounts.google.com. If you find any videos on YouTube that might be spam or phishing, flag them for review by the YouTube team.
Here are some things you can do to secure your YouTube account.
- Use a unique password for your YouTube account, and don’t use the same password for any other sites that you log into.
- Avoid using personal information or common words or letters like 1, 2, 3, your birthday, or your home address.
- Avoid using a password manager that comes with your browser. Instead, use a password manager like LastPass to store all your unique passwords for different websites on the net.
- Never give out your passwords. YouTube will never ask for a password in an email, message, or phone call. They also will never send a form that asks you for personal information.
- Don’t use the same email address for business inquiries on your About page as the one that you sign up for your Google account. Instead, use a different email address for business inquiries than the one that you sign up for your Google account.
- Do a regular security checkup. When you make your Google and YouTube account secure, it’ll block anyone from using your account without your permission. You also get an alert when there’s suspicious activity on your account. You’ll also be able to recover your account if you ever get locked out.
- Turn on two-step verification. Enabling two-step verification for your account prevents hackers from getting into your account, even if they steal your password. When you enable two-step verification, you’ll need a password and verification code every time you sign into your Google account. The password and verification code will be sent to your phone, which adds another layer of security. Even if someone guesses your password, it won’t be enough to sign into your account. Just go to this page to set up two-step verification for your Google account.
Update your software and backup your account. If your browser, operating system, or apps are out of date, it might be open to hackers. Therefore, make sure your software is updated, and back up your account regularly. For example, I keep backup copies of all my most recent videos on the external hard drive. I highly recommend you do the same.- Set and check permissions on your channel. If you set up a brand account for YouTube channel and get someone else to manage your account without giving them access to your Google account, you can assign them to be a manager, an editor or just a viewer.
- Report YouTube impersonators. As you can see from this image, someone is impersonating my channel. They’ve used the same channel name and same title and thumbnails as my videos. This is strictly against YouTube’s policies, and you need to report it right away. If you feel that your channel or another channel is being impersonated, you can report the channel.
- Remove or report spam comments. Have you ever experienced someone spamming your comments or putting a link in the comments to their website or their YouTube channel? If you have, you can remove or report spam comments by clicking on the three dots next to the comment. You can remove the comment, report the comment, or hide the user from the channel.
Another big problem that can reduce the revenue you make from YouTube channel, is demonetization of YouTube videos. Watch this video to learn, “How to avoid demonetization of YouTube videos“, so you can keep more of your ad revenue.
Click here to get The One Blueprint That Gives You Step-By-Step Instructions
On How To Grow A Profitable YouTube Channel
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