One of the challenges you may face as a YouTube creator is getting hacked. Malicious cybercriminals can access your account details, private data, and payment information through hacking.
You should be on the lookout to spot any suspicious activity on your YouTube account. How do you know if your YouTube account is hacked?
Suspicious activity like new videos, playlists, and comments. Login activity you don’t recognize. Changes you didn’t make to your account, including new profile picture, channel description, and Adsense details. Fishy YouTube-related emails. Inability to sign in to your account.
This post teaches you how to know if your YouTube account is hacked.
An Overview of Hacking a YouTube Account
Discovering that you’re not fully controlling your YouTube account is devastating. It puts your data at risk and could also result in identity theft.
Hackers who access your account can disguise themselves as you and obtain private information. This data includes financial data, credit card numbers, and passwords.
With such sensitive data, they can empty your bank accounts, authorize serious transactions, or use your identity maliciously.
They can also use your email address and personal contacts to contact family, institutions, and friends. They can solicit money or trick your close contacts into forfeiting private information.
How To Know if Your YouTube Account Is Hacked
Here are the tell-tale signs your YouTube account is hacked.
Suspicious Activity
As the sole administrator of your YouTube account, you can know all your account details, including videos, playlists, and comments. You can tell apart a video you created and uploaded from a foreign clip posted by someone else.
Your account is probably hacked when you see suspicious video uploads, new playlists, or comments. If you have a management team, verify if they made new uploads, playlists, or comments.
Login Activity You Don’t Recognize
It is not hard to catch a login activity you don’t recognize. Unless you have a remote management team, your login activity should be tied to devices you recognize, such as your mobile phone, tablet, and computer.
You might be hacked if you notice a login activity at a suspicious time, on unrecognized devices, and from a suspicious location.
Changes You Didn’t Make
Depending on a hacker’s agenda with your YouTube account, they may take over your brand personality. They may remove your profile picture and replace it with theirs if the agenda is to use your account to gain followers.
You may also notice a change in the channel description. If you notice such changes, your account is at risk. Reach out to Google to help you recover your account before it’s too late.
Other changes to look out for include primary email, recovery email, and Adsense details.
Fishy YouTube-Related Emails
Your YouTube account is connected to your Google account. This means you get all your emails from different entities in your inbox.
It could be a warning if you notice a suspicious amount of YouTube-related emails in your inbox. These include hundreds of spam emails, comments, or password reset requests.
Inability To Log In to Your Account
In extreme cases, a hacker can access your account and change your login details. When this happens, your efforts to log in to your Google account will be futile. You’ll get an error message whenever you input your username, email address, or password.
Try using the “Forgot Password” route to recover your YouTube account. If the recovery fails, contact Google for more guidance.
What To Do When You Suspect Your YouTube Account Is Hacked?
If you suspect someone has hacked your account, do the following.
- Contact Google to help you recover and secure your account.
- Create a new, strong, unique password unrelated to the old one.
- Enable the two-factor authentication(2FA) on YouTube.
- After recovering the account, review the account activity and undo any changes.
- Log out of all connected devices to ensure only authorized users regain access to the account.
- Keep an eye on your account to monitor further suspicious activities.
Wrapping Up
There are various ways to know if your YouTube account is hacked. These include suspicious uploads and playlists, changes you didn’t make, suspicious login activity, fishy YouTube-related emails, and inability to log into your account.
Thankfully, you can recover your hacked YouTube account by contacting Google customer support.
