- Everybody, this is Roberto Blake
with a public service announcement
for all YouTube content creators.
It's come to our attention
that a lot of YouTube email scams are going on.
You will want to avoid these YouTube email scams
and I'm gonna tell you some other ways
to protect your YouTube account from being compromised
'cause this is very important.
Do me a favor.
I need you to do a few things when it comes to this video.
I need you to like this video
and I need you to share this video
with as many people as possible.
Share it in Facebook groups,
share it in Reddit communities,
share it in Twitter,
share it in Discord,
share it wherever you can so that more content creators
can protect themselves from being scammed
and losing their account, losing their AdSense
and being hijacked.
Okay, now that you've shared this video,
the most important thing,
and I'll get into some of the details of these email scams
and these phishing scams that are gonna try
and take your YouTube account
and like completely destroy your career
as a content creator.
And this happened to like a lot of people lately,
especially even some larger channels.
Here's the first thing I want you to do
before you do anything else.
I want you in the about section of your YouTube channel,
that thing you've been ignoring,
I want you to change your email address
and no longer make that email address
the Gmail account associated with your YouTube account
and your Google AdSense
because they are using that information to target you.
So if you change that email address
and change your contact me at your business email
to something else,
hopefully with your own website.
When they reach out,
you will know that it is in fact a scam
because then you will know
that YouTube knows the account tied to your Google
and your Gmail and your AdSense
and that the publicly available email is a different one.
Creating this one layer of separation
from the public access
to that email
knowing that that email is tied to your Google AdSense,
tied to your YouTube account,
and if you're a full-time content creator,
this really matters
because it's probably the thing
that's making you your living right now,
separating that email account from the public eye
should be one of your first priorities.
I cannot stress this enough.
It's one of the first things I tell
a lot of my coaching clients,
I tell the members in my group,
I tell everybody that I can to please for the love of God,
change the email on your about section
to something else.
Have a dedicated business email
and that's the public email.
And do not use the Google account
tied to your YouTube channel and to your AdSense
for anything else.
I know it's a hassle to make multiple email addresses.
Take it out of the equation
so that your AdSense is never compromised.
So, there was a YouTuber that had this happen
a little before the holidays.
Alexandria Ryan, I believe was the YouTube creator
that I'm thinking of.
And she lost tens of thousands of dollars
because someone decided to compromise this account
and it's because they had this email address
and they sent out one of these phishing scam like emails.
And so what happened was
they locked her out of her AdSense account,
they changed the password,
and they changed the routing number
so that her YouTube checks,
her Google AdSense YouTube checks
were going to their bank account over in Egypt
instead of to her.
Tens of thousands of dollars just walked away
until YouTube was able to sort it all out
and she was able to get access to the account
and fix all of that.
This is something that I want more of you
to put a barrier in place for
and there's a couple of ways to do it.
Number one, assume any email communication
from Google AdSense and from YouTube is a scam.
That sounds extreme but I want you to assume that first
and then do the following.
Check your account without opening that email
and see if there are any alerts or any messages
that are in your dashboard
because they will use their systems to contact you
usually before they resort to an email.
So, if there's a problem,
it'll usually be an alert in the system first.
Check the system first, do not assume the email is legit.
Assume the email is from a phishing scammer,
like just assume the worst
when you get an email in a different way.
Like, and here is the typical emails
they'll send you to frighten you.
They'll send you an account termination email,
a copyright claim or strike email,
or tell you that your Google AdSense account
had invalid click activity.
These are the tricks that they will use
to try to get you to open one of these emails.
And so, there are a couple of ways to identify it.
One, if you go to where the email came from,
you'll see that it's not from google.com.
When YouTube and Google contact you,
it's a google.com email address.
Now there are ways for people to fake that
but it's very rare that that happens,
but again, assume that all of these emails
and all emails with this type of subject line,
are in fact a scam
and just check your account first without clicking on them.
The other thing is YouTube typically doesn't require you
and Google doesn't require you to click on anything
when they send you these emails
in order to accomplish something.
So, avoid that at all costs as well.
There's usually no reason
for them to send you an email like this
and usually there's no reason for them
to have a button for you to click on, nope.
I haven't seen it in my entire career as a content creator.
They usually don't need you to do that.
They also never ask for your password,
so don't do that either.
So, that's a big part of this.
Separate that email address
and assume that any email
that says that it's from Google AdSense
or from YouTube, is a scam.
Next, the thing that I want you to do is again,
have all of these different separate emails
and by the way, do not tie your other social media accounts
to the Gmail account that you use for YouTube
in case they're ever compromised.
All of those accounts can probably have one email address
for all of your other social media
and then you have another email address for YouTube
and then you have a public email address
that people can email you at and send you business to.
Again, I know it's inconvenient
to have like five email accounts,
you will thank me later.
The next thing is do not trust any browser plugins
that are not YouTube certified.
The YouTube certified plugins
that I know that you can trust if you're a YouTuber
are things like vidIQ, TubeBuddy,
Social Blade, VideoAmigo,
and those are basically the main ones.
And oh yeah, Morningfame.
Okay, these are usually the things that you can trust.
Do not give things access to your YouTube account.
Do not give things access to your Google account.
You can trust a few other things like If This Then That.
You can trust a lot of these higher-end,
larger public-facing organizations
that have browser plugins.
If it has a browser plugin
and their Twitter account is verified,
more likely to trust that
but just be very careful about what you give access
to your YouTube and Google account
because that could compromise it too
and that could be a problem.
So, you'll want to avoid that.
Finally, if you're doing sponsorship and brand deals
and you get an email where it seems too good to be true
and they want you to give them access
through a click or a link to something, avoid that.
And also, if you're getting a sponsor email
and they don't have a website address
and usually if they don't have a phone number,
again, it's probably not legit.
And if they're asking you in the first email interaction
to click on something,
it's probably a phishing scam that if you click on it,
will give them access to your Google or YouTube account
through that link.
Avoid this at all costs.
Avoid this at all costs,
especially those of you who are smaller YouTubers,
you are more likely to fall for this
because you are ecstatic
about finally getting your first brand deal.
And they know that
and that's how they're going to try to get you.
So again, quick public service announcement,
I know that that's a lot
and it might be scary and overwhelming
but I really do believe that these are the things
that will protect your YouTube account
and your Google Adsense account
from being compromised and hijacked.
You don't wanna lose your YouTube channel,
you don't want something stealing your AdSense
and your hard-earned money,
and these are the preventative measures
that are going to keep you safe as a content creator.
So, you know, I'm losing my voice again now,
but I had to make this video to let you guys know
that these phishing scams and these email scams
and these fake sponsorship scams
are a thing
and that you should always approach anything like this
that seems too good to be true or is very scary,
with skepticism and doubt.
It's very important for you
and like I said, the easiest way to start to filter this
is if you change your public email
and don't give out your Google AdSense email
to anyone anymore.
And if you change your public email
to a business email address,
usually, I would hope with your own website
or just make another Google account,
Gmail account, whatever,
but hopefully your own email address
so that you can better filter these things
because I know that getting an email saying,
something happened to your account is scary.
They are banking on your fear in order to trick you
into doing exactly the thing that you're afraid of.
So, I really want you to take these measures
to protect yourself.
So, that's it for this video.
By the way, scary topic I know,
like I said share it with everyday,
if you are somebody who's new to my channel
and this was the first video,
I'm sorry that we had to start off with a terrifying topic.
It's not the great first impression
I would want you to have,
but I hope you'll stick around
and if you like the content, subscribe.
Again, scary topic, if you have questions,
leave them for me in the comment section.
I will try to reply to as many of you as I can,
as much detail as I can.
I hope this video gave you some good advice
to help protect you
and if I have any other crazy PSAs,
don't worry, I will be posting them.
Anyway guys, like this video if it was helpful.
Subscribe if you want more.
And I will catch you on the next video
with something hopefully less terrifying.
Stay awesome.
Take care.