The news of hackers gaining control of social media accounts owned by popular figures with large followers does not seem to be ending anytime soon, as scammers temporarily stole a 2.43 million subscribers YouTube channel belonging to a Brazillian.
The YouTube channel, UniversoCurioso, owned by David Damasceno, published a video yesterday narrating how hackers gained illegal access to his account and posted fake 100 million Ripple (XRP) giveaways.
Damasceno revealed that after his account was hacked, the malefactors posted live videos of a fake XRP giveaway that was watched by more than 26,000 viewers on the popular online video platform.
Send XRP and get double
The scammers urged interested participants to send between 2,000 to 150,000 XRP to a wallet address, with a promise to have their investments doubled within a few minutes.
Narrating how the hackers gained control of his three years old YouTube channel, Damasceno revealed that he got a mail from a company seeking to have ads about their video editing software named “Zenium” published on his channel.
He said the company promised to pay $3,000 to review the product, which would require him to first download and install the software on his PC before publicizing the review on the channel.
Damasceno continued that 10 minutes into downloading the software; he lost control of his YouTube account and discovered that the attackers were using his account for a fake XRP giveaway.
The YouTuber made efforts to retrieve his accounts, including notifying YouTube about the incident and subsequently creating a temporary channel to post a video warning his subscribers of the ongoing fake XRP giveaway.
The $10,000 Bitcoin offer
Damasceno’s moves did not go down well with the attackers, as they reached out to him and offered to pay $10,000 worth of Bitcoin in order to continue with the act. The YouTuber said he refused the offer as he was poised on getting back his hacked account.
With the help of YouTube’s support team, Damasceno said he regained access to his hacked account six hours later, and he deleted the scam video.
YouTube vs Ripple
This is not the first time scammers would be gaining access to YouTube accounts with large followers to publicize fake XRP giveaway videos.
Coinfomania reported that Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, had filed a lawsuit against the popular video-sharing platform, alleging that the firm has constantly refused to takedown Ripple-related scam videos on their platform. These scam videos, according to Garlinghouse, go a long way to damage the reputation of Ripple.
However, YouTube moved to counter-motion Ripple’s lawsuit citing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which absolves YouTube of being the publisher of any video, including scams or legit, uploaded on its platform.
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