I've made plenty of videos talking about different scams, but I realized I never really
made one focusing on different scams found here on YouTube, specifically in the comment section.
There are several different types, so you may have encountered one or two,
but I'm going to go over four different categories of spam and scam comments.
So it's very possible you haven't heard of some of these or know how they work. And I'll also
point out that even within those four major categories, there are different variations
of each. So it's important to know about them. Now, speaking of security and privacy,
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and with all that being said, let's jump in and talk about these different scams.
All right so like I said, there are what I would consider four major
categories of YouTube scams. And the first one we can talk about is probably the least
obvious. So you definitely want to know about it. And it is investment type scams.
And usually these are related to crypto, but they might also be about stocks, too.
Sometimes you'll see this as just a standalone spam comment, just right in the comments section
by itself. And it says something like, oh, I made thousands of dollars with this person,
contact them on Telegram or Instagram or search for them, whatever. They'll say,
basically "contact this person, they'll make a bunch of money!" So not very sophisticated.
However, there are other ones that may even impersonate the creator.
And I've had this happen to me on my channel. This one,
they just put a space between my name. It actually looks pretty similar if you didn't
notice the checkmark's gone and they just say, "contact me if interested in crypto investing".
Like they're not even that specific in saying, I'll make you a whole bunch of money,
or just say If you're interested, contact me. So it might not always be just some
random user. It might be someone who's pretending to look like the
creator or the original uploader. However, there is a much more sophisticated version of this
involving the scammer creating an entire thread of comments of fake comments
to basically get social proof as if a whole bunch of people are talking about the scammer.
So usually it will start off either with the
main comment top thread comment, just being about how great this person is at making you money,
and will name the person right there. Or it may just be a generic comment saying, "Oh,
crypto is such a great thing to invest in, and I don't think people should miss out.
And I made a bunch of money with it", but it won't actually name anyone. You can see in this one the
top comments says "great video really. I also agree with your opinion. Blah,
blah, blah." And then actually in the end of this one, they do mention a name of someone,
but that won't always happen. And then down in the comments though, there will be a bunch of replies.
Other generic ones like "Yes, crypto is very good, blah, blah blah." And eventually the
bots will start mentioning a person. They'll say, "Yes, I actually went to this expert
and their name is so-and-so and they made me a bunch of money." And then there will
be other bots that pretend to reply to that one saying, "How do I contact this person?"
And then of course, it'll say, "Oh, I just went on Telegram and texted them here"
and it might be WhatsApp, again Telegram, Instagram, whatever, but the idea is to
look like an entire real conversation. So just be aware of that, any type of comment or even thread,
who's talking about some specific guru to contact and they'll make you thousands of dollars.
It's a complete scam. All right moving on, the second main category
are scam giveaways. They're fake giveaways and usually this involves the scammer creating an
account and impersonating the creator in some way. So they'll usually again,
take the whole profile picture, and then in some way, these scammer will direct the user
to contact the scammer via some account, either Instagram or WhatsApp, the usual.
And they might put this in the actual username, because apparently YouTube's
comment scam filters don't work on usernames. So they might say, "Telegram me on this" or
"I'm on Instagram via this or on this account", and they'll put everything in the username. And
then the actual comment text will just direct the user to look at the username.
It'll say, "look up, look at the username, contact me at this address," or it might not
even be a username, it might be a WhatsApp number or something like that. And then the victim will
and they'll usually say something like, "Oh well, you won this phone
or you want whatever prize, and you just need to pay for the shipping."
And apparently sometimes they'll even charge as much as over $100 for the supposed shipping. And
then of course, once the person pays up either, I don't know how they do it through PayPal crypto
maybe, they just disappear. I believe also I've seen ones where the person was told
to pay in gift cards. It's really just absurd, but I guess people fall for it.
And one last note is this is especially
something you have to be conscious of. If a YouTuber is actually doing some kind of giveaway,
then it's like feeding frenzy for the spambots. They'll come in all over the place trying to
convince people that they won the giveaway and "contact this to win" and people might
be more likely to believe it because there actually is some kind of giveaway going on.
So you really just have to kind of be on your toes any time someone is offering something free
through a comment, it's suspicious. All right moving on to the third major category of scam
comments I've observed at least, and this is the one that recently I've
been getting the most on my channel at least, are fake hacking services.
A lot of times these comments actually pop up on my videos about scams. So you might even see some
on this one later. But basically these comments scams involve someone replying
to another comment that says they got scammed. So a real person might give an example on my
video that I talk about scams and then, you know, to warn people,
someone might say, "Oh, I got scammed recently from this, watch out."
And then a scammer will come along and reply to that comment and say, "Oh, I got scammed too,
contact this person. They got my money back, or they'll hack back the hacker,"
stuff like that. They basically pretend to be some kind of service or pretend to recommend
a service that will counter-hack how you got scammed, and for them to get your money back.
And then they obviously charge you some kind of fee, and then nothing happens, you lose it. So you
can see a couple examples what these look like, it says in the username, says "he's on Instagram
as this" and then that's the username of your contact. And then the actual comment text doesn't
off the bat look like a scam unless you actually read the whole thing and know about these.
And this one even talks about scammers, says "you should be aware of scammers
and bots in the comments section", kind of meta there. And then here it says
"if you ever got scammed and you're looking for a way to get it back,
kindly send a message to the name I use as my YouTube name. Text him to help you.
He is the only one I can recommend." So. Oh wow, how nice of this person to recommend
this scammer. So they might be whole things of long text like this, or they might just be
super short saying "this person helped me contact him" or whatever. So a
lot of different ways they might switch it up and be a bit clever.
So again, the usual advice is do not believe anyone that says that they can get your money back
after you've been scammed. They are just preying on victims who they presume,
"hey if they've been scammed once, they're probably gullible enough to get scammed
again." It's really despicable if you ask me. Though I will also note that I've seen another
variation where the spam bot actually doesn't talk about hacking services or hacking back scammers,
but instead about credit cards or something.
They say, "Oh, this person got me a credit card." I don't know what that's all about,
but it's the same idea, they'll look kind of similar. They'll say, "Contact this person
on Instagram." I don't know what it is about Instagram and Telegram, maybe they're not good at
dealing with scammers, but usually it's one of those two,
and also WhatsApp. Alright now the final main category of spam comments
are "adult website" promotion spambots. Now, I don't know if I would consider
these exactly scams, but there's such a common spam comment that you see,
that I really have to mention it. Now from what I've seen, there are two main variations of this.
The first one is that the actual scam site will be linked or mentioned in the actual comment
text. So it'll be some temporary domain that the scammer set up. It's basically a throwaway thing,
and then you click it and it'll get redirected to like the actual scam
one they're using long term. And they'll just say, "Oh,
check out these girls on this site, blah blah, blah," you know, to get you to click on it.
And then that's how that one works. Another variation that I've seen is where the spam bot
actually will steal a legitimate comment, and make that as the comment text. And the actual
scam occurs in the username. So again, they're using the username to get around it, and it'll
say something like, "Check out my profile, check out my latest video" and other more "adult themed"
messages to get you to click on the username, and then on the profile
or on the latest video, there will be similarly another link to some website.
Now again, I don't really know what happens after you go on one of these. It might be
just a general spam cam site or something like that, that just tries to get people
to sign up for it, and this is just a way of advertising it in a scummy way. Though,
I would also not be surprised if these sites ended up just stealing the login or payment credentials
of the people who do sign up, and also maybe some of the information.
So if it's not an outright scam where they steal your money, they're at least
promoting some really sketchy website that is obviously not legit. So those are the four main
categories. I'm sure there's plenty others out there that might be slightly different
from the ones I've mentioned, but those are just the general ones that I've seen.
Again as usual, though, just because I didn't mention a specific variation that
might come up and they're always adapting doesn't mean that it's not a scam. So you
always got to be on your toes. If you guys enjoyed this video, you can also check out
my video where I talked about new scams in 2022, you can click that right there.
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