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A week ago, I received an email from "YouTube Creators," an official YouTube news channel from YouTube employees. However, the video was sent in private video format. I made a huge mistake by clicking on that private video, but luckily for me this phishing scam did not somehow collect my data and I got extremely lucky, so I did some research.
Understanding This Private Video Sharing Phishing Scam
I found from a google support page that there has been a phishing scam going on via email where people send YouTube private video via email but here it specifically mentions that in that video there is an AI generated CEO of YouTube Neal Mohan talking about some monetization changes in the platform. The google support page also mentions that this is an phishing scam and you should never click on these types of videos that are private videos shared via email.
How You Should Protect Yourself From This Phishing Scam
First of all, if you receive such an email from official YouTube employees in the form of private video email sharing, do not click on the private video link.
Even if you clicked on that private video link, you must scan for malware and viruses using reliable antivirus and antimalware tools to protect your data that might be stolen.
If you receive such a phishing email, just open the email, but do not click on any links inside it or download any attachments. Then all you have to do is near the reply on the top right, click the three dots, and you will find an option called "Report Phishing," as shown in the screenshot below.
Image Source: Taken From Author's GmailIf you clicked on any kind of phishing link and you do not know how to protect your private data, then you have two options. You can reinstall your Windows and wipe your whole previous data without any backup. The last option is to contact your local government cybersecurity team to help you out in dealing with this situation.
Why You Should Never Underestimate The Cybersecurity Threats To Your PC Or Mobile Devices
Well, in 2024, I experienced some cybersecurity-related issues, and I lost access to four of my social media accounts, which were the following:
- Hive.blog password was hacked by hacker from my email inbox.
- Lost 17 dollars to a sweeper in my Meta Mask chrome extension wallet.
After these hacking incidents made me realize that cybersecurity can affect me and that to deal with it, you need to be very careful. Other than using antivirus and antimalware, my best advice to you is to keep changing passwords, and also to make it more secure you need to activate two-factor authentication via mobile cell phone and, most importantly, via Google Authenticator as well.
Final Thoughts
One thing is for certain that cybersecurity threats to you can be made possible through phishing scams. So you need to be very careful which links you click while using the internet.
Sadly, the internet is not a safe place anymore, and we should realize the fact that already our government, internet service provider that we use, the social media organizations' apps and websites that we use these all already have access to our data anyways, and that is normal. But the biggest concern is that threatening parties might get access to our data that are private entities, and they can cause us real harm, as there have been many incidents when even private photos and videos have been stolen and the hackers start to demand money via cryptocurrency or threaten to expose them to the world wide web.
Were you aware of such phishing scams before on the internet? And what troubleshooting methods do you advise that I might have missed to counter this cybersecurity threat? Please let me know in the comments section below.
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