✔️Helpful prevention tips to keep your YouTube account safe. Below you will find steps to follow in case your YouTube account gets hacked or stolen as well as important signs you should pay attention to when monitoring your account for any suspicious activity that might lead to your account theft.?
The question of your channel security is something you should never neglect or compromise. The latest statistics show that the cases of YouTube account thefts are growing daily. Hundreds of creators are waiting for YouTube to respond and help them resolve the situation.
How can you ensure yourself against being a victim of this crime and prevent scammers from getting into your account? Prevention is always the best solution. We offer these recommendations to keep your channel safe.
- Never provide access to your channel. YouTube never requests passwords, identification number, or any other financial or personal data, and whoever tells you otherwise is lying. Remember this simple fact and never provide your personal information.
- Do not disable two-step authentication. 2FA is your best anti-hacking soldier that provides the highest level of security and helps protect your account. Always ignore any requests to disable 2FA under any pretext, even if the request allegedly comes from YouTube.
- Never reply to suspicious messages. Thieves will often ask you to follow links or fill in forms. Under no circumstances should you respond to such requests.
- Do not download suspicious files. Scammers often put on the guise of advertising agents offering you unbelievable opportunities and asking to open or download files. Always google domain names, phone numbers, and account nicknames, and never open or download suspicious files.
- Be careful with offers to buy your channel. This is one of the strategies scammers use to steal channels. Always use specialized services for Internet transfers and ask for payment in advance to discourage scammers. Remember also, that YouTube policies prohibit the sale of channels and therefore the platform does not provide help in such cases.
So, you’ve done everything right and didn’t jeopardize your channel security, but still, your channel got hacked. Unfortunately, this can happen; the resourcefulness of scammers seems to never end.
What are the Signs that Your YouTube Channel Got Hijacked?
There are simple actions that might not seem threatening at first glance but scammers can use them to receive access to your account. Be careful signing into your account from someone else’s computer or sharing your account data with other people. If you’ve noticed that your channel title, profile picture, descriptions, email settings, AdSense associations, or sent messages have changed or that someone, other than you, has posted videos or any other suspicious activity, start acting immediately.
What to Do if Your YouTube Channel is Hacked and Stolen
If you still have access to your account, check if anyone signed in from other devices and if they did sign out of those devices and change your password. To review devices that have used your account, follow these steps:
- Go to your Google Account.
- Click Security on the left navigation panel.
- Select Manage devices on the Your devices panel.
- You’ll see devices that signed in to your account.
To sign out on a device, select the device and click Sign out.
When changing your password, choose a strong one that you haven’t already used with this account. See helpful tips to create a strong password here: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32040.
If you’ve lost access to your account, fill in this form: https://accounts.google.com/signin/recovery. You’ll be asked to answer some questions to recover your account. Answer them as best as you can and try not to skip questions even if you’re unsure of an answer. Use the device you’ve always used to access your account and preferably from the same location. Be patient as the number of creators who had their channels stolen grows daily and it might take months to receive an answer from YouTube.
But if you don’t want to wait and desire to recover access to your account as soon as possible, you can request an account recovery through AIR Media-Tech. We’ve been YouTube certified since 2011and have solved hundreds of similar cases. Our experience and special relationship with the platform allow us to prioritize your case and minimize the chances of refusal. Sometimes when creators apply for help to YouTube directly, the platform might see them as a scammer and deny assistance. We can confirm that the recovery email belongs to the rightful owner and recover access to your account.
Our support team regularly monitors partnering channels for any suspicious activity. In many cases, we notice the early signs and recover access before it gets blocked by scammers. We regularly check creators’ Personal Accounts to make sure they haven’t been hacked and the person we talk to is the real channel owner. Sometimes we identify problems before channel owners do. We contact them immediately and provide them with the channel recovery form that they have to fill in. After they do that, we continue working directly with YouTube to recover the channel.
The key condition for account recovery is to respond to your partnering MCN. In 2020 we successfully recovered 19 channels for creators that stayed in contact with us. But 8 channels were not recovered simply because the channel owners never responded.
The safety of your channel is not something you should be lax about. Always stay alert to any suspicious activity, ignore any requests to provide account data or follow links, and report immediately if your YouTube channel was stolen. From the moment your account was hacked, every minute counts. The sooner you start the recovery process, the better results you’ll get. So, don’t waste any time and report immediately to receive timely help.
