How One Comment Can Take You Down A Rabbit Hole - The Truth Behind Logan | TRO

hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the right opinion the home vetoat with too much free time and autumn it's not far away now and soon i'm sure that we will be basking in the autumn leaves like the outdoorsy people we are however for the moments you've probably chosen to delay your joyous pastimes and watch this video in which we will discuss a curious comment that was brought to my attention recently and the interesting rabbit hole it can take us down security online is something that a lot of us value as a personal liberty for our privacy and our safety in the last decade security online has taken multiple steps forward but as large platforms are taking steps to protect their users hackers are never too far behind always looking for methods to stir up trouble whether that's attempting to obtain user data or maybe hijack someone's account for comedic purposes plenty of sites have encountered data breaches and it's an unfortunate hazard that some are clearly ill prepared for however as much as hackers obtaining user data justifiably causes concern on a macro basis i think people are much more protective over the possession of their personal accounts because our personal accounts regardless of size or influence often pertain great personal value to us as a platform that can represent our thoughts feelings and even our creative ventures it's a piece of us that sort of thing can definitely be exemplified with one's youtube account now of course many people merely create youtube accounts for the purposes of commenting subscribing and following content however many people a youtube account allows us to express ourselves and even if we're projecting our content towards a large audience it's still a product which feels deeply intimate to us which is why people care about others when they have their channels unnecessarily terminated or restricted we like to think that all in all youtube in spite of their flaws have a grip on keeping their accounts secure however when you look at their track record this could be called into contention i understand why you're wondering that the investigation resulted that no hijacking activity happened on the channel however i can assure you that our internal team carefully investigated this and didn't found any didn't found any over the last few years many creators have reported their channels stolen and subsequently used for less than dignified purposes in fact it seems to be an overwhelmingly common occurrence for many users now when you have so many channels on a website like youtube it seems inevitable that some accounts will be hacked or stolen but today we're looking at an issue that transcends a few occurrences and outlines a trend which appears pervasive on the platform and encompassed by one account which went by the name of logan if you follow any smaller creators you'll have almost definitely seen this line of text in their comments section i can without a doubt say it's the widest spread comment i've ever seen but it's so much more malicious than it seems on the surface in the small youtuber world attention and friends can be hard to come by so when you're uploading content it's easy to be particularly receptive to anybody who may provide you with attention especially larger channels however for anyone who does have experience with being a smaller creator you'll know that you have to regularly deal with comments that from a cursory perspective seem fairly friendly but often just reflect a veiled attempt to gain subscribers from inexperienced users now those who have familiarity with youtube will tell you that this technique is rather redundant and most creators partaking in this will breed no longevity on their content because you're just cultivating a load of dormant subscribers numbers really aren't everything on that front nonetheless this doesn't stop people from trying and over the years desperate creators have manufactured various automated techniques in an attempt to garner likes views and subs and eventually monetization on the surface this is what appears to be the case with the account named logan a creator commenting on numerous uploads by smaller creators with a simple three-word proposition wannabe friends and with such an enticing offer who wouldn't want to be friends with this lovely gent in times like these we could use a good friend like the lovely fellow logan here however as many of you have predicted this comment was made by a bot likely incapable of developing a meaningful friendship and logan himself was merely publishing substandard content on how to grow your channel so what was the point was it merely farming views was it something a little more sinister yeah the real way he growed his channel so large was using bots they're all bots but bots using real accounts your accounts actually well on the 13th of may a youtuber by the name of evans111 uploaded a video with the subtitle the most dangerous comment on youtube referring to logan's comment in question how could such a comment be dangerous well according to evan it appears that creators who interact with this comment risk having their channels stolen and subsequently used in logan's view farming ploy to boost his own youtube channel go on to his videos and there were a plethora of generic vague comments which appear to barely interact with the video at all and only learn credence to the idea that something is not quite right with the project that logan is running wanna be friends somehow this guy developed a way of hacking people's channels solely by having them subscribe to him and this is incredibly alarming all these accounts posting these fake comments are real accounts so this plague can go unnoticed by youtube and his channel can thrive with nobody knowing how this is not okay evan postulates that this logan character has created a bot which can take control of accounts who interact with its initial comments he warns people to not respond or react in any way if this was true it would be a huge breach in youtube security and not one that can be ignored and it wasn't in barely any time at all logan's account vanished and he became another youtube relic all's well that ends well right well not entirely the fact is that the perception of logan presented may not be the entire truth and i'll explain why very soon in spite of all the comments disappearing logan's shannon was very much alive it had merely shape-shifted a little so why aren't people doing more about this hacker well probably because he may well not be a hacker however take a look at the evidence today and you'll find a truth perhaps more alarming and one that should encourage awareness from youtubers and youtube alike [Music] so to commence this interesting tale we need to go back a few months to a time when your boy tro was a wide-eyed nipper who could still leave his house for leisure purposes yes in early 2020 i was dealing with an issue that i considered mostly internal at the time however this led me to investigate channels which i considered compromise however one comment that appeared on multiple uploads was a comment by a channel named tem if you're wondering this character's relevance all will be revealed when i clicked on tim's channel i was greeted by a similar video to that which was documented by evans in fact the format was identical the only thing different was the name yo what is going guys my name is tamar and in this video i'm gonna be showing you guys how to grow your youtube channel just like i did so as you can see i have gained a lot of subs for the past few days and the uploads that i was greeted by at the time were extremely bland uploads about how you could gain subscribers views and traffic after all this tem guy was an expert anyone who can secure tens of thousands of views on content with the personality of a grapefruit must be pulling off some impressive algorithmic massaging however there was an additional parallel that could be drawn between these two channels the comments section which was also predominantly occupied with rope responses from small channels the only real difference is that some of these comments seem a bit more fleshed out although many still represent a similar level of mental vacancy however there may be a reason for this which i'll soon divulge at this point you're probably coming to the conclusion that tim and logan have both been drawing from the same framework however it goes one step further than that because tim and logan are in fact the same person i'll give you a moment to let that sink in [Music] [Applause] the voices were identical and so was the format of the content and now this isn't a huge surprise so tim and logan are the same person big deal but there are a couple more curious observations that we can make firstly this isn't the only channel in fact his highly successful tips and tricks channel was launched off the back of another channel which was at that point going by the same name so if you click on tom you'll see oh wow this channel has like 500 000 subscribers that's crazy usually people will go and see what videos they uploaded but these aren't tom's videos you can see that this channel has no videos uploaded it was an interesting setup basically he had a playlist of his content but it was being promoted through a different channel why on earth would he be doing that well probably to loophole the youtube guidelines you see his first channel here had obtained subscribers fairly fortunately but barely had any videos this is mr beast and this isn't mr beast but why isn't it to the passive viewer it appears to be his channel it has his videos accordingly located with the complimentary view counts however this is a classic trick used by the charlatans they create a playlist call it uploaded videos and then position it at the forefront of the channel you can typically identify these channels by lack of featured video and the concealed subscriber count often i must add however for the casual user they may not notice and come to the conclusion that they've been unsubscribed by youtube's eternally faulty system an understandable assumption but an incorrect one tem or logan or tom or todd or fake mr beast would then implement his bot to comment on smaller youtubers who may find themselves star struck in the moment and not think to question the legitimacy of this account he pulled this off for a while and ended up with over a hundred thousand subscribers however if you go back further you'll realize that this wasn't even the case and that he was previously an account known as traptown who was also notorious amongst communities for guess what doing exactly the same thing if you've got a youtube channel they'll send you a nice little message saying that they like your video and they'll ask you hey do you want to be a youtube friend now you might be asking yourself what's a youtube friend they're basically asking if you subscribe to my channel i'll subscribe to yours youtube frowns on this some people call it sub4sub now the problem comes in if you subscribe to their channel now if you go to their website to subscribe when you get to their channel it looks like a normal channel now notice you can't tell how many people have already subscribed now let me show you what's really weird when you click on videos there's no videos on this channel they want you to subscribe now the problem comes in what they do with your information from what i understand they start by selling your information and with dishonest people like this who knows what else they'll do with it the creator who uploaded this video live free alleges that if you subscribe to them they acquire your information and supposedly sell it on there is no accompanying evidence shown and to be honest this guy doesn't seem completely certain what their motives are the internet is a dangerous place out there you want to protect yourself and others and that's why i've got this video out here chances are if you're watching us they've already hit your channel just do yourself and everybody else a favor stay clear one of the strangest things is that in spite of this mass live subscriber farming campaign if you look at one of the social blade archives that i saved before the channels were shut down you'd notice they almost certainly bought subscribers for their channel at some point you can see the uploaded video but heaven knows what that video was it seems they were set uploading on this other channel so after he had accrued enough subscribers tem decided to launch his channel where he provides rather useless advice for the button creator now for most people when they want to create a new channel they would just create it right well not here in fact i saved an old archive of the channel listing which tem subsequently purchased before this it was a channel by the name of xerox who had just over two and a half thousand subscribers and had the channel on the market for two hundred dollars so as we understand tem bought a channel worth two hundred dollars to add two thousand five hundred subscribers to launch his channel which he'd promote using the 150 000 subscriber channel so why would a person fork out a couple hundred for a channel which appeared no different to a clean slate two words monetization enabled a few years back youtube restricted monetization so that only channels above a certain threshold of subscribers and watch time could apply for monetization now if you were to acquire views through fraudulent methods this may be identified when one applies for monetization so by obtaining some real subscribers and then buying this second pre-monetized channel it allows them to promote monetized content and make the methods appear more above board however it's just a rather elaborate ploy to bypass the protections that youtube have in place for this so logan wanted to make a buck through a rather complex scheme but if you're aware of the original narrative you may begin to formulate some questions what business would a hacker have in buying a channel surely he'd just hack one and to that my friends i'd say good question well let's see if we can crack this confusing case with the evidence that we have assembled currently does the idea that this logan guy is a seasoned hacker really stacked up well obviously he's operating some sort of enterprise which involves less than kosher methods of acquiring traffic but is he the individual hacking all these channels which appear on his videos or is he just the buyer obviously it is a possibility that tem was the individual who listed the channel before removing the listing and deciding to use the channel himself as the seller doesn't actually have any sales to his name however the transaction may have been done off-site and it also doesn't explain the unusual methods of procuring people's data which would have been done through interaction there was no established correlation between the channels who logan commented on and the channels that had been compromised if logan had installed a bot that commented on multiple channels videos and some of those channels were subsequently targeted for hacking then of course it may lead some people to believe that logan was the individual who hacked their channel correlation however does not imply causation nonetheless it seems an exceptionally strange system being run by this mysterious character and he had developed a comment box so he must have a degree of technical proficiency unless it wasn't his which it may not have been as if this project wasn't complex enough as it was around the time that thames videos concerning channel growth were released there was another person by the name of the comical canadian who uploaded videos with nearly identical titles and thumbnails the comical canadians channel was focused around gaming however he was also notorious among smaller creators for operating a similar comment box as well as allegedly conducting spam streams in an attempt to solicit subscriptions and money from unsuspecting users so this guy is not only scamming people out of their money i mean i guess if you donate to them you know whatever but he's constantly got all this like fake giveaway fake shout out well maybe not fake shout out i haven't done enough research in them but fake giveaways right and these kids that are watching them are probably only like 10 you know it it pisses me off when i see someone like this scamming little kids out of their money in an interview with another small creator he states that he'd been conducting business the way he has for financial benefit and i suppose it makes sense this then ties back to our friend baxi or logan who is using a similar technique with a few well giveaways if we look here in one of these videos by vaxxy himself he mentions a fortnite code code canadian remember to type in code canadian in the fortnight item shop and subscribe and hit the bell so i can send you a gift and remember the comical canadian was using an interesting code back in the day about a month ago oh code canadian it's the same guy however once again it doesn't seem like much hacking comes into it i know how much he made from this method and i never had the privilege of watching his streams in action but it's possible that this bloke alongside timothy had been reinvesting their money into new get rich quick schemes which they run as long as they can until youtube notices these antics it's smash and grab content creation another creator timeworks made a good video on his theory of why they're doing it which comes down to the value of channels yeah this is a subscriber farm they're growing channels gaining hundreds of thousands of subscribers and then i would assume selling the channels for a profit more recently we've heard of people hacking channels and then selling them but this is a more efficient way because no one's actually getting harmed here it's just one big sort of scam spam thing and they make a lot of money by selling these channels that they sort of grow he provides good running commentary on the creators of these bots who've recently come back under the name bananarama and many others and even conducted an interview with one of the people involved if you want to know what the dude is up to then definitely check it out it seems they buy the channel do what they plan on doing with an undisclosed goal so the next very important question i ask is do people get hacked in all of this and i asked it right away because i knew that this was a major concern for the whole youtube community and so supremacy said straight off the bat no the only hacking here that's going on is false information uh so he did mention some other people like evans uh who was mentioned in the whole logan wannabe friend situation so he said that optimus was lying for clout evans is confusing and so he went on to defend a bunch of things why they do not hack your channel now of course they could be lying to you i personally don't think they actually do but you know they lie to you when they say want to be friends so this this actually could be a lie i don't know do you know what happens to channels when it's done being used because the vaccine channel is sort of off doing its uh whole looped livestream thing so like do they actually sell the channels that's what i was trying to get at why is vacciof doing something else now and um they didn't answer and that's where the interview sort of ended now that would explain a majority of the shenanigans utilized by this curious couple however we can't necessarily ignore the fact that hacking has been involved somewhere when you look at the comments on the uploads these are not just phantom accounts that were never occupied by anyone real these were not merely bots these are real people who make real content having their accounts hijacked on an unprecedented scale however it doesn't stop there because then we need to take a look at that 200 transaction that 10 made now on the surface there's not too much to say there was a channel up for sale someone bought it no questions eh well there are a few quibbles that one might race now firstly as i understand it selling your channel is a violation of youtube's terms of service and it's something you can find on the relevant page although they don't seem to take a particularly strong stance about it it seems that selling it on third-party websites comes into conflict with that adsense policy this makes sense for obvious reasons because people could just buy a monetized channel and begin posting content that youtube did not approve however this is more youtube's pr problem what boils down to being a creator oriented problem is what you can find by digging a little further youtube channels have value they've always held some value but if you look beyond the individual listings for that account you'll find a website flogging various accounts for varying prices known as ax market they are selling youtube instagram facebook telegram and twitter accounts now this website does have a verification procedure to make sure you have access to the account you're selling however if someone is infiltrated that account to use it for malicious purposes this is not really sufficient means of confirmation one of the most expensive listings a wrestling channel with just under 500 000 subscribers has one comment which informs people that the channel has been hacked this does not necessarily mean the channel was hacked though it's certainly not a good omen on top of this a fair few listings have disclaimer that there was no confirmation provided at all which confuses me as to why there's even a listing in that instance some posters on these sites seem to have multiple listings made them thematically dissonant not the sort of channels that one would merely feel like selling at once the website also has a feature where you can notify them that the channel is yours and you want to delete the listing however unless you're made aware prior to the sale then you would never know to react and even then it would rely on you deducing that your channel's been hacked and was being sold and then finding the marketplace channels with an online presence that may boost their algorithmic potential can be very profitable particularly ones which have monetization enabled because as mentioned earlier it is now a non-inclusive feature so people wanting to have that boost people like them will obviously see the appeal in these websites for example the person who purchased a channel by the name of tbbap otherwise known as two best brothers [ __ ] about ponies they were highly unsatisfied with their purchase because after a few weeks they lost access to the account why was this well it's because the channels were stolen from a large group of creators who actually had the clout to attract youtube's attention and after a month they managed to regain ownership of what was rightfully theirs which obviously upset the buyer my heart does weep many creators will never possess this privilege and with youtube's policy making pre-established monetized channels more lucrative and important than ever scammers are attempting to take advantage of this business and then flogging these channels online to clients like them who want a shortcut to start them the strange thing is i don't have a problem with people selling their channels on principle although i do see why it's against the terms of service it makes complete sense there's no way that youtube would be able to universally enforce such a policy so the best thing that they can do is focus on those whose accounts have been compromised and work towards recovering them right well youtube has a warringly impersonal relationship with a majority of their creators it's unavoidable to appoint but there has to be a stage where youtube starts to listen to people who represent the majority of full-time partners not just the mainstream tv imports and not just the youtube goliaths because creators from different echelons are likely to face different problems a lot of scammers tend to benefit most of small channels mainly because they're the ones that you can seize with the fewest repercussions the creators are more unacquainted with the particularities of youtube thus making them more vulnerable and once they've lost their channels they have much less power to bring it to youtube's attention a lot of these channels tend to be inactive as well which means the creator may not even be paying attention to what happens with it however more than enough times a channel is targeted which involves a somewhat influential youtuber or an individual who is part of a great community which will amplify their endeavor and send me an email asking for a lot of information which i then provided to give them for every single channel for my tune troon and fruit channel in the hopes that they would actually use that information and do something with it because i felt like if you go to ask for it you're probably going to do something with it well they sent that email on august 24th and it's now the fifth of september so that's again like like almost two weeks later [Music] why are you gonna ask for something and make me do all that work which i would obviously be happy to do and then you don't do something with it it confuses me so much and it frustrates the hell out of me i could explore the numerous anecdotes which tell us about the issue and how youtube handle it however the most notable example from the last 12 months was a creator by the name of megan reeks a beauty youtuber with over 2 million subscribers in a series of videos she speaks about an ordeal which involved her channels being stolen and youtube's somewhat sloppy approach to this situation which honestly may have been deserving of a separate video in itself picture this you've had a youtube channel for 10 years hey this is megan um this is gonna be my first official youtube video then one day you log into your channel and you realize that's not your channel anymore it has been completely rebranded as something called beauty dior full of weird beauty compilations that have clearly been ripped straight from instagram oddly specific because that's exactly what happened to me i'm gonna try and keep it brief but after her main account was breached it was hidden from a number of her subscribers who notified her immediately this then led to a drawn out exchange with team youtube who repeatedly sent her the wrong instructions to resolve it then they respond and they tell me seems like your channel is back it just might take a while for the features to be back to be honest don't fully know what that means but sure i'll take it but then they followed up with this it had been fixed and then they sent me a link to my vlog channel not the main channel that had been hidden not the channel that i filled out all of that paperwork for that we've been talking about for the last two weeks my god this is the vlog channel that we have not discussed for the last two weeks until today when i sent over hey this one video on that channel seems weird they say oh wow our bad we've been looking into the vlog channel i don't know about you guys but to me it doesn't really make a lot of sense not only had i filled out all of those forms and questions about my main channel the channels don't have the same or similar urls they're not attached to the same email addresses and we haven't been talking about that one they apologize for the snafu the mix-up the kerfuffle and then they proceed to send me the steps to unhide my channel they also acknowledge that these are the exact same steps that they had sent me previously and sent the screen recordings out so essentially we are back at square one where we were at on october 24th and it's november 9th despite being offended i cleared my cookies in my cachet and surprise it didn't work and then as if i wasn't about to lose it already i get an email in which they said this would be the final attempt to unhide my channel so this final attempt you would think balls to the wall something we haven't tried before risky things might grow wrong no it's the same link to unhide my channel that they sent me before the same basic instructions on how to unhide a youtube channel that anybody can access november 11th they then realize that they've sent me the wrong link oh or bad we send you the wrong link not laughing they then provide me with another link to unhide my youtube channel and guess what it works do you know why because it's a completely different link than they had sent me all of these previous times to unhide my channel it is also a link that cannot be accessed unless you have a direct link you need someone from youtube to send you this link directly for you to be able to even see this part of the site a link so instead it took from october 24th to november 11 for my channel to be fully reinstated when all i needed was a link this was already a bit of a shambles however in this instance the hackers were particularly persistent and eventually gained access to megan's second account her vlog channel changing the login before she could even react then selling it on a forum for the grand fee of five hundred dollars and this would be the first of several compilation videos of pretty obviously stolen content which are accompanied by a bunch of comments which seem totally legit very much pertaining to the content of the video definitely human and definitely from the 500 000 people that had been subscribed to this youtube channel sounds similar i thought so this channel then rebrands to beauty dior and begins uploading copyrighted content this then triggers thousands of people to unsubscribe as the audience didn't recognize the channel and wouldn't want anything to do with such meritless content with the sufficient level of evidence it becomes quite apparent that this channel is no longer in megan's possession so if it isn't too difficult for any casual observer to see the problem then you shouldn't have too much trouble either should they not to mention with a quick search you could tell that this url was my vlog channel which seemed to be much simpler than explaining over the course of nearly a month of emails what a hidden channel looks like this time i have so much more ammo literally it's been rebranded there's a whole other name there's a description there is a video up i feel like this is like open and shut case well apparently so after escalating the issue to their internal team they conducted an extensive investigation and came to the resounding conclusion that there was no suspicious activity what so then between february 13th and february 21st there have been multiple emails exchanged lots of these very human responses from youtube giving me updates that don't say anything and lots of my manager being like hey what's going on we need to figure this out then february 22nd comes around and youtube had finally figured it out actually first my manager had followed up yet again and they responded to that email with their findings hi there thanks for the prompt response this case was opened because this second channel of megan was claimed hacked we asked our internal team to do an investigation about this report we just got an update from our team that after our investigation we can state that there were no signs of abnormal activity found in the channel feel free to email us back if you have any other concerns oh the fact that i am not beauty dior this is not my channel and this has clearly been hacked i understand why you're wondering that the investigation resulted that no hijacking activity happened on the channel however i can assure you that our internal team carefully investigated this and didn't found any didn't found any to help keep your account safe in the future please view these tips on how to create a strong password and give your account extra security here sorry that i don't have good news for you but if you have other concerns let us know they are telling me that my youtube account has not been hacked and then they give me the steps to protect my youtube account from being hacked the youtube account that i don't have access to because it has been hacked yes it seems that in spite of the deluge of verification that megan displays the very professional specialist cyber monkeys at the eternal team were not won over on top of this a lot of youtube's correspondents could be described as a bit incompetent until february 11 radio silence my manager emails again just following up will she ever get her channel back someone hacked it and has been using it and uploading to it and she's already lost 30 000 subscribers we are baffled why it takes so long honestly i was shocked but we did get a pretty prompt response letting us know that the person we'd been talking to was going on holiday the same person who had gone on holiday before was going on holiday again the email starts with hi alex how's it going i want to let you know that there's about 10 people on this email chain no one's name is alex there's no alexander there's no alexandra i've never spoken to an alex at youtube i'm alex bob here stepping in for chad today who has been so eager to resolve your case have you been have you been so eager you've clearly done so much i just wanted you to know that our eyes are all glued on our case let me remind you that i haven't been on these emails since the end of january so i only get these sent later my manager's assistant responds with thanks the manager's name is and the client's name is megan rinks nobody's named alex here hi apologies my last email was meant for you and not someone by the name of alex thanks for understanding in response megan decides there's only one option which is to openly drag youtube because as many creators have experienced is often the only way to make them actually take notice so she tweets out her frustrations and eventually with the help of shane dawson and gigi hadid megan initiates a conversation with the team youtube twitter accounts however this conversation was equally confusing and unsatisfying particularly with mind to the emails she was now being sent but they then also informed me that they would be marking this case a high priority again the emails we had previously talked about we were done it was done nothing had happened but it wasn't until shane tweeted they were like actually we're going to make this a hype make what a hyper i thought this case did you are we doing it again prior to this there was no suspicious activity they couldn't found any case was pretty much closed is it a weird coincidence that this new email comes with them marking this case as high priority just a mere hour after shane tweeted and also then talked to his personal youtube rep about it what do you think seems a little sus to me eventually over two months after her channel was stolen youtube emailed her a resolution on how to recover her channel fantastic well not quite you see there was a catch hi there i hope you're having a good day in spite of the issue you're having with your channel my name is tim and i'll be working on your case for the time being to get started we need these information from you in order for us to transfer the channel ownership back to you why weren't these steps going on before this is the legal template we would really appreciate if you can fill this out as soon as for us to start the process of transferring your channel to your new email address i'm sorry fast for you because you took months to do this and also you had given up you can transfer an account back to me and you won't even tell me are you [ __ ] kidding me personal google account slash email address please provide the email address if you have it enter address or link this account cannot already have a channel on it please certify that you're the owner of this channel to certify that you have the commercial used rights to all content contained on the account please certify there are no ongoing outstanding debts arrangements or contractual obligations still pending regarding this channel it's definitely stolen content but i can steal it please certify that you're understanding that we will delete personal data associated with the original channel prior to transfer that includes the following private videos private and unlisted playlists all of my videos are private you're just gonna delete them why to the extent permitted by applicable law i agree to defend identify and hold harmless youtube impaired corporation officers directors employees and agents for men against any all claims damages obligations losses liabilities costs or debt and expenses including but not limited to attorney fees arising from the content on this channel the users of this account and or any claim that my content caused damage to a third party this defense identification obligation will survive these terms and my use of the youtube service so if you didn't catch that the email youtube just sent uh is that i can have my channel and they're transferred over to me i just have to agree to not sue them and also i can't have any of the videos that were privated which is all of them literally why i don't want beauty to yours videos however it wasn't really much of a catch because as she would later observe such an email could not possibly be legally binding for a multitude of reasons so the video goes live and there's a load more debauchery which i shan't delve into if you want to watch the videos you know where to find them so after the video and after all the publicity youtube manages to scramble together two options presented to megan in a phone call the first option being that as the hacker has deleted all the videos megan can send them all her old videos and youtube will upload them all at once following the restoration of the channel megan can't really agree to this option as she doesn't have her old uploads youtube was her archive for that content so the second option yes this one being that youtube can delete the channel and let megan make a new one an option which megan doesn't seem particularly thrilled by how is that helping also again i don't really have plans on uploading to this channel i just want the videos would i love if the channel was intact with the videos there yes but would i like to make a new vlog channel no also i don't need your permission to make a youtube channel claire i can do that whenever i want between these two options you are literally offering me a channel with 500 000 subscribers and a channel with none neither of which have my videos which is the only thing i wanted they explained were you not protecting the first one apparently that is a superpower they have you just need to know really far in advance before they hack it so they can like put you on an elite list and be like don't hack them they're my friends also it's not even that i think she just said that like there's literally nothing she could do to prevent my channel from being hacked i don't think they care now for many people at this point i'm sure you're thinking that there must be some degree in which youtube keeps archives of the videos themselves in case of this sort of eventuality well it seems they do but the youtube representatives claim that they can only keep archives of creative videos for 30 days following their deletion however megan then appears to disprove that as well i think i must have asked three separate times what is the average amount of time it takes for a channel to be back through hacking they couldn't respond and they finally said it which is a totally legitimate and fine answer if you didn't tell me before that there is a set in stone 30-day time limit in which the time for the videos are fully deleted and not recoverable from youtube anymore how can it vary it varies from what one weeks to four and a half weeks regardless if you didn't figure it out in 30 days that's on you that is your fault a lot of stuff in here adsense things like that but what i'm gonna focus on is that 30-day rule of data retention she says and i quote regarding your question about data retention so she didn't thank me for asking this question regarding your question about data retention as we mentioned during our call we have data retention policies that this is a link to the google data retention policy i then click on the link of the data retention policies assuming that it's going to verify in detail everything that they said to me on the call and this email specifically the 30-day data retention policy that claire and walter keep referencing as literal fact i assume this link is going to verify everything they've been telling me and i am only a few sentences in before i realized that everything they've been saying is not true according to this article there is absolutely a chance that i should be able to get my videos back something that has never been a part of option one or two not once in the document does it ever say there is a set in stone forever and always 30 day policy in which videos will be deleted 30 days is not mentioned once for being mentioned so many times on the phone call and the emails it is not mentioned once on google's official page of their data retention policy to this day i have never seen 30 days in writing other than these emails furthermore inserting an exact quote from the policy they sent me our services also use encrypted backup storage as another layer of protection to help recover from potential disasters data can remain on these systems for up to six months this process generally takes around two months from the time of deletion i say the videos were not deleted two months ago if it takes two months for the videos to be fully deleted why wouldn't any of the videos be left did you halt the two month deleting process when this often includes up to a month-long recovery period in case the data was removed unintentionally to which i specified the wording here is often not always or not standard policy there is no mention of a hard binding 30-day limit i then send a link to a video that lily had sent me earlier about someone whose channel was hacked and they got all of their videos back the description of this guy's video literally says that someone on the inside of youtube was able to get his videos back and it took a miracle i say why wasn't this my experience and with this some glaring issues begin to become apparent why did it take so long for my channel to be investigated only to be resulted in no hijacking why did youtube just now tell me that this 30 day time limit when this is such pertinent information if i'm frantically trying to recover my youtube videos and that has always been my number one priority is to recover my youtube videos if investigating faster would have improved the chances of retaining my entire library of content why did no one intervene sooner and why is it not public knowledge there are multiple pitfalls in youtube's reaction in response to this situation however it boils down to one key problem that being simply put youtube relies on templates for situations that cannot merely rely on templates and then claire jumps right back in and says so essentially just trying to determine from getting more information asking more questions mostly because i'm pretty sure that they also are kind of reading from a template and they can't give me information that i need every single question i asked i never got a straight answer any time that i expressed my frustration and asked a question the response i would get is thank you for sharing that with us a fair proportion of megan's second video highlights youtube attempting and mostly failing to cover for their egregious oversight through vague evasive language which provides no information for how on earth when originally investigating they found no signs of suspicious activity in my opinion this was because their internal team were using a template which had a set of prerequisites to identify what suspicious activity would constitute as and what occurred on megan's second channel was not picked up because they didn't know who meghan was if the crew over at youtube had even attempted to branch out into basic logic then they would have identified the problem quickly and dealt with it the internet is one of the fastest evolving environments and too often youtube has shown that they cannot keep up to add to this the youtube creator support team used templates when in contact with megan which led to the rather insulting errors and what megan read into as gaslighting this then nft followed through to the more advanced team members she came into correspondence with because they clearly didn't know everything which had been said to her previously and thus didn't know how to respond to megan's comments which were loaded with her previous experiences youtube likes to have a singular narrative which is based on what they know the problem is that there are just so many people at youtube who hold different pieces of information to deal with such problems and the fact that this has been happening for so long and it took a large creator to bring attention to it is unbelievable yet unsurprising i am so tired and i'm so exhausted with dealing with all of this stuff and it's been such a toll on my mental health especially like ugh don't i have to be okay with the fact that i lost my vlog like i have to be okay with it because i need to move on if i just try and find all of these other like loopholes and things like that like it's exhausting like i i need to start the process of getting over it and being okay in a final video on the situation megan states that youtube has since taken responsibility and apologized for the fiasco while committing to some serious changes changes that will be welcomed but they still don't really acknowledge the amplitude of the problem hacking isn't a problem that's going to disappear overnight this problem is going to persist as long as there continues to be people looking to purchase channels with greater financial potential than those which are newly created and as we've seen people who are in the business of mass selling channels probably didn't come into possession of them by asking nicely maybe youtube has a better system of identifying this when a person complains about it now but in times like these a lot of those voices will not be heard additionally megan rinks had a content manager which is another benefit that many individuals are not privy to when i emailed them recently about an issue they asked me to name my content manager and when i said i didn't have a content manager and that it would be really good to have one the youtube representative who i was talking to just straight up asked what a content manager was when i explained he redirected me to the content id system which was not thrilling so unfortunately i cannot confirm that youtube's creator support is improving on the template front youtube need to get with it there are too many layers too much incoherence and too much impersonality when dealing with creators as i have said it's impossible to completely prevent the hacking of channels when there are so many given youtube size but for too long it was treated with inaction which has led to a lot of flaws being exposed they have since been encouraging two-factor authentication which is definitely a step in the right direction but i feel that for many creators unfamiliar with the platform the request will probably fall on deaf ears a lot of people just don't pay enough attention if it doesn't happen to them particularly when the channels are only being used as basic comment or like bots once again in spite of the rules against it it's often hard to notice which channels are using it unless it's really transparent like with logan particularly with youtube's policy which rounds up subscriber counts now there are companies that advertise their service some of which boast that all their accounts are organic and legit how do you think they obtain those legit accounts hell recently a large creator by the name of deji ended up in hot water after it was pretty seriously alleged that he botted his way to 10 million subscribers the evidence was quite convincing and his response left a bit to be desired you really think i'm that much of a [ __ ] to what subs when my views aren't that high it won't calibrate it just wouldn't work it makes no sense you guys must really think i'm dumb ah my iq level was it's dumb high all right i'm i'm not i'm not gonna break my iq level is 189 that is a very high iq okay without any real behind the scenes technical evidence you couldn't prove anything to a degree where his channel would face repercussions particularly given his size this actually could be a topic for another time so i'll leave that here in megan's third video she explained how she needed to speak to executive level people with serious clearance to even understand why she couldn't recover her channels and they couldn't tell me claire and walter on the phone what day the vlogs had been deleted because they didn't have access they didn't have that level of like i want to make it sound like the white house but like that security clearance or access and even the person i talked to who's incredibly high up at youtube they had to go ask somebody who's really high up in the tech spot to specifically go in and figure that out and the day that my videos were deleted was the day that my channel got hacked their video count uploader that's not something that updates regularly it takes a little while before it reflects that and that was the answer that i was given as to why i didn't get my videos back because it had been more than 30 days and those loopholes that we had found in the 30-day process and all of that sort of stuff they pointed out yeah we're all valid and all really great arguments but it doesn't change the fact that those videos are gone and they were like if we had them we would give them to you that is such a fantastic white horse like night and shining armor story of being able to really clear our name and make us look a lot better and there's no reason why we wouldn't give them to you at this point like the videos have blown up everybody's talking about them it's caused quite the fuss in the office and there's no reason like we wouldn't just keep them from you because it makes us look worse for the fact that we can't give them back there's so much we don't know so much that youtube doesn't want us to know but it extends beyond that the things that most youtube staff employ to talk with the creators barely know about their own company and thus cannot deal with these problems effectively youtube always feels like it's one step behind the issue well multiple steps as much as i thought mine was terrible i was getting people sending me screenshots of the fact that their accounts had been dealing with all of this and they got shut out and no response for two years what this is a failed system and it's not working and also through all of this i found it's not working for me it's not working for so many creators who have much smaller channels but also still it took shane tweeting for them to care about me two million not enough when people first discovered logan it was pretty clear that suspicious activity was present and i can't really blame people for theorizing about his nature which clearly demonstrates some proficiency but to allege that he was taking control of channels which merely interacted with him before using them to interact with his own channel was likely giving the guy a little too much credit however at the same time if it were a case more local to him this explanation would be the end of the issue when really it was just the start one that revealed the underbelly of a crooked system and those who exploit it but what can be done well let's tie up this discussion security online for many creators large and small it's a priceless asset and one that hopefully we can do a better job of protecting from here on out i focused on specific examples today but so many people have lost their channels unnecessarily even people who i know and those who did manage to recover them often had to go through excessively stressful scenarios which incurred great cost in my opinion regardless of the tricks they've pulled people like logan are just the tail end of the snake until we aim for the head we will see a repeat of these sorts of situations i've already spoken a bit about what youtube can do but it's down to them as to how they want to implement prevention measures effectively and how much they want their teams to be in the know youtube has set policy and structure which is primed to provide benefit to those who take advantage of it whether that's merely botting or forcefully seizing channels with intrinsic value their teams need to have a better grip on these perils and how to identify the patterns they take or disseminating necessary warnings to creators when these patterns arise in these circumstances everyone does better by knowing a little more as for the sites it's hard to really do anything else than make sure the people who you rate aren't having their channels sold off without their knowledge and if you see someone you know ask them if they're the owner of the listing however we're not going to be on these sites all the time in fact i'm sure most of us have no intention to go anywhere near these sites the truth is a lot of smaller channels will never be noticed and i'd recommend a better verification system for these sites to utilize if they do truly care about this stuff which they may not so i won't hold my breath so what's the final piece of this puzzle well i guess it's where you guys come in the crater at the end of the day these are your accounts and although it's impossible to guarantee a fully secure account there are definitely ways to protect it that are worth noting with that in mind i think it's time for a feature when i was a small creator on the platform there were a few people within the community who i looked up to most of these people have either garnered popularity or left the site without a trace my guest today is someone who had done the latter for a long time but recently returned dropping me a line and i thought you know what you guys might like to meet him so ladies and gentlemen talking about security vulnerability online and how to prevent it i present to you my good friend mug cup vulnerability online it's a more prevalent issue now than ever with classes over platforms like zoom regularly having their vulnerability tested and pushed often past their limits so what's the solution here youtubers should just pick longer passwords right no i i mean yes you should have a long password but no that's not why most instances of youtube channel theft occur the fact of the matter is google is a ridiculously secure company in the grand scheme of things which is to say that it takes quite a bit of doing to get into an account that isn't yours brute forcing your way through a password check will just get you to an ip check and yada yada point being there's a lot of hoops to jump through and some of those hoops are quite small you know because they're like hard to jump through you get it anyway so how do youtube channels get stolen well oftentimes it's through a process called social engineering or s-e-ing for short seeing is pretty much just getting people to do stuff for you altering another person's actions with your own social stimulus in the pursuit of a favorable outcome to try to use this tactic in person in my opinion is just neck beardy [ __ ] i know there's some studies about mirroring and its effect on openness but i am of the firm belief that in any in-person social interaction you will have infinitely more success being yourself than by playing the game however online because the social stimulus we receive is so vague generally occurring through text we are much more vulnerable to social engineering and yes i understand that this sounds completely counterintuitive being more vulnerable on the internet you would think you would have your guard up all the more but it's important to remember that when you're navigating the internet your goal is not always to keep yourself safe from information fishing it's usually either to work or to entertain yourself and when you're on youtube as a small creator not only is your primary goal not to keep yourself safe from phishing attacks keeping yourself safe is actually downgraded to at least your tertiary goal with your primary being entertainment and your secondary being success so we've proven that s-e-ing is effective even though it feels like only an idiot would fall for it but how does it actually happen we touched on this a little before but on youtube given that a password isn't enough to steal an account hackers are going to need a little bit more making their social engineering attacks go a little bit deeper while you'll occasionally spot a fake youtube link or merch store link or another weird tailgating attempt from a misspelled pewdiepie generally the kinds of social engineering schemes that put small creators in the face of danger have a little more nuance let's say a guy emails you he says hey this is chet from youtube i tried to log into your account to fix some issues on our back end but due to your settings i need you to approve my entry into your account don't worry i'm just updating some things like all other chats this chet is a liar he's not with youtube and he's gearing up to get his buttery little hands all over your youtube channel either to sell it or to add it to his collection of youtube channels that he can alluringly spam people with and start the cycle anew with another poor soul so basically if you're a small creator just don't let your excitement lead to your demise as a small creator on youtube the most exciting things are also mixed with the most danger case in point sponsorships they are the best way to make money on this site these days but they also come with the most risk even ignoring all the possible monetary scamming that can occur in these situations the risk of malware is surprisingly high as fake companies like pole boost and nexi will attempt to infect youtubers computers with remote administration tools or rats for short rats allow the administrator or in this instance the hacker scammer whatever you want to call them to view all your saved passwords record your keystrokes view your webcam listen to your microphone speak through your headphones any nook and cranny of your privacy essentially can be rifled through by some random guy because you've downloaded and opened a program hoping to make some money so of course from there the next logical question is so how do we avoid that i know it's scary to risk losing a potential sponsor but you have to do your research and if something seems suspicious you owe it to yourself to take that impulse seriously look for the little things the gaps in professionalism that a legitimate company would never dare show advertisers admitting they aren't good at their jobs but will make up for it monetarily is a dead giveaway and a pretty common one too as what employee on any actual company email would ever write that and yet we can see this on proud display in the case of tech it easy a man contacted by a company named oreo cleaner orio cleaner either way it doesn't matter i'm gonna spoil it it's another made-up company and yet again we see this company representative openly admitting that he's not very good at his job attempting to explain away his own lack of professionalism and once again ensuring that his rat will be downloaded to the victim's hard drive by promising a monetary reward in exchange for a review a process that requires at the very least a brief look at the software more than enough time for a rat to take root and steal the data of the content creator in question another important point your phone can get viruses and has a high probability of doing so if you randomly download every app that any rando pretending to be a company sends you point being stay vigilant and follow your instincts you are not selfish nor are you stupid for wanting to work with reputable people a lot of scams will also try to scare you into stupidity by giving you a time limit to take action and avoid a negative result like the loss of your channel or in the case of sponsorships a loss of income even our very own the right opinion had two particularly clever attempts at his channel mate with a scammer using a throwaway email with an altered name to make themselves appear to be a youtube employee in both scams in the first scam the right opinion was directed to a phishing link disguised as an altered terms of service with his channel being threatened with deletion while in the second scam he was accused of uploading harmful and violent content and it was declared that his channel had a strike and once again he was directed to a phishing link but this time it was disguised as an appeal form once again we see a trend in both of these strategies as they both attempt to induce panic in order to compromise your judgment but with all scams like these it's important to remember that youtube isn't just going to email you about anything significant that happens to your channel it'll also show up in your youtube studio or in the case of a terms of service change it'll likely appear on your home page so rather than following any risky links just type youtube.com into your browser and you will get a version of the site that will not steal your data scammers prey on the parts of us that aren't reasonable or rational and loss aversion the cognitive distortion of value that it is is certainly neither of those things and is thus often exploited by scammers in addition to everything we've talked about so far due to how little is known about the wannabe friends comment a lot of people are suspecting that channels like logan are using an exploit in the oauth token system in order to gain people's account permissions without needing to obtain their details so every time you allow an app to manage your youtube channel like tubebuddy or vid iq people are currently theorizing that there is an issue with that system i'm not trying to fear monger i'm just trying to make you as aware as possible because not a lot is known about this particular scam so long story short be wary of any app that you provide with permissions to your account right now as it's being theorized that that system is compromised or compromisable but who knows for sure maybe a hacker but hopefully not so to sum it all up if someone sends you a link even if it's a slightly misspelled team youtube it's not probably fine and if you get a sponsorship deal but it's for a company that you can't find on the internet or when you do find them it looks very suspicious probably avoid that too and we can definitely get super niche and specific here but for the sake of not overwhelming you with little things to do on the internet i'll just condense what i'm saying into a single sentence look around before you type in your information make sure that the google login page you're about to use looks like a google login page and listen to your antivirus or your browser when it tries to point you in the other direction thank you mug cup thank you for being such a top land i hope we will see you around soon and i hope you imparted the viewers with a little wisdom i'll be leaving a link in the pinned comment if you guys feel he did at the start of this video we were presented with a problem one which led to certain interpretations which seemed quite serious but also slightly reductionist and presumptuous people identified logan's antics as the problem rather than the symptom although it may well be a problem in itself it's always good to ask a few questions about how someone could play the system in the way that logan has all over youtube there is an abundance of boilerplate content set up on the foundations of other channels aiming to acquire the bag through strong clickbait and content that people won't think twice about what logan's or whichever name they go by at this point intentions are is unclear but they seem to be a mere cog in a greater system behind the scenes there are people working round the clock to wring out channels from unsuspecting small and medium-sized craters those who may not be too familiar with the trickery operated by these fiends when these people notice it's often after they've lost access to their account and respective emails and their means of finding help is limited youtube's response has often been lackluster typically relying on a rudimentary checklist which has occasionally failed to diagnose the problem altogether even when it appears flagrantly obvious this was revealed most sensationally in megan rinks's video but can be attested in the rants of many other frustrated creators the main thing that pissed me off the most was losing my troon channel i went [ __ ] insane in like the last couple six weeks not gonna lie insane as in i had no control over my emotions anymore when they compressed that's basically what happened depressed to the point where i could relate myself to 14 year olds in me who had suicidal problems given youtube is about as transparent as they ever are it's hard to know whether they've truly ameliorated people's concerns but i hope they are at least a bit more conscious of the matters highlighted in this video and others and google and youtube support were just taking me in circles telling me to do the same thing over and over again completely useless like completely useless so finally on the 10th day 10 days the account recovery comes through and i get my account back so thank you google even though you didn't really help that much well that's faster than before nonetheless it's best not to rely on corporations to look out for you it doesn't always end too well take all necessary precautions to safeguard your account from malicious actors and be sure not to fall for any of the machinations which may seem credible to the untrained eye if you do this not only do you protect your own accounts but you allow youtube to perhaps dedicate more time to those who have fallen victim emphasis on the perhaps i shan't speak too unequivocally on their priorities the internet is an evolving place with evolving problems and we need to evolve with it it's strange how a simple question from an appearingly unexceptional account can cause so much concern in a community that concern is justified but sometimes misplaced sometimes the truth is a little less far-fetched and a little more well preventable so how secure is your account online well that's down to you all i'll say is don't find out the hard way before you know it your account might be transformed into a comment box or even worse a half-assed top 10 compilation channel that is no way for a man to meet his fate so yes guys that was the video i hope you really enjoyed it i know that was a fun video mug cup check him out what a great lad i love mug cup he's my muggiest cup i know and he's a legend so send him some love i want to give big thanks to my editors they've done a fantastic job and i cannot thank them enough i need to help my patrons the 10 patrons are up on screen right now thank you guys for your support and contribution i really appreciate it but also the 50 patreons samhala blue caroline hypercube amanda devon shiro chigo vertex avenger and doug nolan with extra special thanks to my hundred dollar patreons christopher carrass and iliana banana what a charming name thank you so much for your support it really means a hell of a lot you guys are top-notch top-notch people keep it up thank you for your continued support anyhow i don't have too much else to add if you want to find me on my social medias they'll be in the pinned comment discord twitter i'm not using facebook right now but you can still follow if you want anyhow i don't have too much else to say but i hope you guys take care of yourself and i'm the right opinion i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: The Right Opinion

Views: 1,558,533

Rating: 4.9554772 out of 5

Keywords: Logan, comical canadian, the right opinion, timeworks, logan opinion, meghan rienks hacked, meghan rienks opinion, logan comment, meghan rienks, wanna be friends, deji sub bot

Id: JUJOe2MCJp8

Length: 63min 43sec (3823 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020