how the hijacker has managed to do all this stuff on YouTube???

Hello,

After searching almost for a week. I finally found the community where I hope my questions will be answered. Thanks to you all in advance.


Here is what happened:


A friend of mine had a YouTube channel on which he used to upload DJ remix songs. The channel had something 20k subscribers. Almost a month ago his channel was hijacked ( the hijacker made him filled an exact page as a google sign-in page).

The channel was gone. Long story short: I helped him to successfully recover his account.


Now, here are some important dates:


Oct 2020: applied for channel monetization ( first time) and got rejected because of reused content.

13 Jan 2021: The day when google account was hacked.

13 Jan 2021: YouTube channel got monetized.

24 Jan 2021: Account recovered successfully.


How I helped my friend to recover the account:
We reached to google through social media and asked for help. They asked several questions and we followed up on everything and in a week, google disabled the account and gave it to us.




When I signed in and saw what the hijacker has done with this account I was shocked. I am still wondering how the hijacker has managed to do all this stuff:

1. He monetized the channels in less than 24 hours. We failed when we first applied (I mean the content is the same and even there were more copyrighted videos than before). How?

2. He uploaded 14 videos and the monetization status of the videos was 'revenue sharing'. He was splitting revenue in 50-50%. I know that we can do revenue sharing of a cover song but he was sharing the revenue of every video he uploaded. He generated approx 250$ in 10 days and 15k subscribers increased.

3. When we got the channel, the hijacker threatened my friend to give the channel back or he will put copyright strikes on the channel. A few hours later, the channel got 3 strikes on his newly added videos.

Thanks to google, they undo all the bad changes made by the hijacker. They removed the copyright strikes including all the videos of the hijacker.


The channel is monetized and There are approx 300$. Money is our, right?

There are some videos (remixed songs) on the channel that have no copyright claims but uploading original songs get copyright claims. I mean youtube system is failing. All these videos are eligible for monetization. We are not monetizing any video currently. Should we monetize these videos?

Please help us with any of it. we will really appreciate your ideas and suggestions.

ravi52 said:

He uploaded 14 videos and the monetization status of the videos was 'revenue sharing'. He was splitting revenue in 50-50%. I know that we can do revenue sharing of a cover song but he was sharing the revenue of every video he uploaded. He generated approx 250$ in 10 days and 15k subscribers increased.

Click to expand...

So the 14 videos are cover songs from other channel?could u tell more about the type of videos hijacker added to channel?

YouTube deleted the videos when we got the account back. I have attached a screenshot of the removed videos. He also reuploaded 1-2 songs that my friend has already uploaded. All videos had copyright claimed.
I have an extreme case to discuss about copyright claims, if you are interested to discuss, let me know.

He was probably using the claiming method. He uploaded videos with his own music and claim it from another account . He got revenue share and an option to black mail you by giving strikes instead of revenue sharing.

ravi52 said:

Thanks to google, they undo all the bad changes made by the hijacker

Click to expand...

This part bugs me. You guys are lucky.
He's probably messing around with a lot of channels this way via revenue sharing.
Did you mention that to the support?

Forgive me for going off topic but how exactly did you reach google via “social media”?

RushingWind said:

Forgive me for going off topic but how exactly did you reach google via “social media”?

Click to expand...

+1

u2u2u2 said:

He was probably using the claiming method. He uploaded videos with his own music and claim it from another account . He got revenue share and an option to black mail you by giving strikes instead of revenue sharing.

Click to expand...

You are probably right! I guess he has access to something bigger. He uploaded many popular videos of big publishers. See the attached file. 2 kinds of emails he got when he uploaded the videos.

RushingWind said:

Forgive me for going off topic but how exactly did you reach google via “social media”?

Click to expand...

We used Twitter to message @teamyoutube. We had a conversation and they were ready to help us. Then they opened a support ticket for us. We had further conversations by email.

HustleTong said:

This part bugs me. You guys are lucky.
He's probably messing around with a lot of channels this way via revenue sharing.
Did you mention that to the support?

Click to expand...

I mentioned everything except the monetization ( I was worried more about stikes, my channel had got 3 strikes at that time). In the end, they said that they have undone all the bad changes by the hijacker and we can continue to use the account.

I know how the hijacker managed it.
But as a channel seller, i smell something fishy.
One question
You and your friend didnt sell the channel then take it back, did you ?
Fill an exact page as a google sign-in page is not enough to take a channel from you guys.

Looks bunch of bollywood songs

YTMonetized said:

I know how the hijacker managed it.
But as a channel seller, i smell something fishy.
One question
You and your friend didnt sell the channel then take it back, did you ?
Fill an exact page as a google sign-in page is not enough to take a channel from you guys.

Click to expand...

let me tell you how exactly this happened:
My friend got a call from someone about enabling channel monetization. He asked my friend to sign in with his google account. He received a message. My friend was dumb enough to follow him and fill in the info. The biggest mistake he made is that he allowed the pop-up of new sign-in on his smartphone. That's it. suddenly, his smartphone got reset ( Later, I found an email from 'find my device' to erase the phone data). The moment my friend reached me, all the recovery options had changed.

That's how it all happened.

YTMonetized said:

I know how the hijacker managed it.
But as a channel seller, i smell something fishy.
One question
You and your friend didnt sell the channel then take it back, did you ?
Fill an exact page as a google sign-in page is not enough to take a channel from you guys.

Click to expand...

Hijacker stealed the password using phishing attack

u2u2u2 said:

He was probably using the claiming method. He uploaded videos with his own music and claim it from another account . He got revenue share and an option to black mail you by giving strikes instead of revenue sharing.

Click to expand...

This is what he did I guess, dj and music accounts are a target very often nowadays

YTMonetized said:

I know how the hijacker managed it.
But as a channel seller, i smell something fishy.
One question
You and your friend didnt sell the channel then take it back, did you ?
Fill an exact page as a google sign-in page is not enough to take a channel from you guys.

Click to expand...

Can you please explain, how the hijacker monetized the channel in less than 24 hours?

ravi52 said:

Can you please explain, how the hijacker monetized the channel in less than 24 hours?

Click to expand...

+1

ravi52 said:

Can you please explain, how the hijacker monetized the channel in less than 24 hours?

Click to expand...

Its not a secret method or anything. Approve time now is usually < 24hours.
He took ur channel, he didnt lose anything to re-apply monetized. Lucky this time channel is approved, nothing special.

YTMonetized said:

Its not a secret method or anything. Approve time now is usually < 24hours.
He took ur channel, he didnt lose anything to re-apply monetized. Lucky this time channel is approved, nothing special.

Click to expand...

okay, let us assume that he was lucky!

I can defiantly say that he is not the owner of all the songs. He also uploaded some really famous songs. how was he sharing the revenue of all the 14 videos? His plan was to continuously upload new videos and make as much money as possible.
is there any website or something which allow us to share revenue?

can you please explain this too?

Very interating case, I’m following.
Regarding monetization, I have no clue. But what I noticed with Adsence is when I tried to apply for monetization for 2 sites from a new account I was rejected maube 10 times and I left it. After few months I bought a website on flippa which has been monetized via adsence for few years. After taking over the ownership I immediatelly applied for monetization on that site from the same fresh account and Adsence accepted me. Then, after couple of weeks I remembered about the other two rejected sites which were left untouched during the whole time. And guess what, I cannot remember now if it was in 24 hrs or more, but those two sites were approved very quick. I was really surprised.
So maybe he added some trusted account to your channel and claimed monetization that way.
Anyway, this is just a thought.

As for stealing your account - someone’s got a serious hussle going. Social engineering plus some malware/hacking shit, seems way beyong just black hat.