The Scam Ring is GROWING
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- Опубликовано: 9 июн 2024
- After 5 long years of battling a scam ring on RUclips... the issue has jumped platforms (and grown) in a way that makes it far more effective.
Piped directly into the advertising funnel on twitter... this scheme is a sophisticated blend of AI fakes, phishing, and sometimes malware that targets crypto investors in particular with evasive methods that are continuously evolving.
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Informative video as always.... Ugh god so fucken annoyed, I blame Larry Fink.
youtube did make it so an account must be verified first to be able to send links to anyone, as someone who has never given google my personal data, i can't put links in my comments because i'm not verified, and before this was in place youtube would just delete these accounts, but now they require the user have a verified account if they want to send in links.
it sucks i can no longer provide links. but it is what it is, youtube must have thought this was the best ways to stop these accounts from stealing people's info, and i stopped seeing them in comment sections thankfully.
one thing i have seen platforms do is if enough people complain about something like say that scam account, the website will take it down, they just want the reports to go away, so they take the shortest rout and ban or delete the scam account, but in order for this to actually work, is if enough people complain about the same channel at once.
bet marios got a filthy greedy finger in this as well
Of course it has, RUclips gave them the tools by removing the dislike button.
Indeed!
#bringbackdislikes
There's plug-ins that fix that
@@Kenneth_A_HNo idea how to even describe how I don’t understand what to do with that.
@@Kenneth_A_Hunfortunately that is pretty much a desktop browser only thing, while mobile users have to use 3rd party api versions of YT, which YT has now said they will be going after, and are not available on iphone atleast without jailbreaking. even then the dislikes brought back are not always accurate.
My rule of thumb is to not buy ANYTHING off social media if they use ai voice bots or dont have product in a store.
Could have stopped at social media
What joker said
my rule of thumb is just never buy what you didnt look for in the first place. saves money in the long run.
the lieternet and these scams only benefit BIG TECH and they love to let it go rampant, they create themselves these problems to enforce and justify ever increasingly privacy infiltrating security measures, for some of them, they are creating these fishing and scaming / deep fakes to soft sell you their solution little by little
Had friends think they are about to get a deal on thanos infinity guanlet only to receive a rubber dishglove painted gold with dollar store gems glued on.
It's amazing that they can censor meaningful discussion but do nothing about scams like this.
exactly
Its almost like its deliberate.
It’s almost like they only care about money
They allow it because we're not the ones paying them to host the ads
@@elLooto meaningful discussion isn't profitable. In fact, meaningful discussion runs the risk of disrupting profits.
I guess not even a $2b rug-pull is enough to open some eyes.
pff... stop using the internet.
only because you're WOKE! and you love socialism, doesn't mean anything different that allows Hyper-capitalism like CRYPTO is bad.
your ideals of socialism are way worse than the 4 russian hackers stealing CRYPTO.
"Won't happen to me" and "I'm not that stupid" are hard thought processes to overcome.
The best way to scam a stupid person is convince them they're smarter than everyone. How well that works is most apparent with the creepto bros. They say some of the most gobsmackingly insufferable things you've ever heard with the highest level of confidence. It's hysterical how many times they parrot the "get with the program" malarkey. Well, it's been over a decade and they still haven't slithered off down the sewer pipe, making good on their threats to "leave us behind". They need us more than we need them. @@Smokasaurus
Adblock people. Even my own former soviet government endorses it to avoid malicious ads.
Pretty sure I've reported spam and scam bots with the adult-themed avatars and profile links more than once here on RUclips. These platforms just don't care about the standard users.
The scammers pay, they are the real customers
Interestingly enough, the first three comments on this very video are what you described.
@@franciscol3510 nailed it
Same Google which didn’t do squat to stop scammers from buying Google ads to link to fake insurance or financial site that masqueraded as real links. for example search progressive insurance and you get link for progressive as top search result but it is actually an ad linking to fake site
With all due respect, in the time that it takes you to report one bot, they can produce dozens if not hundreds if not thousands of bots with the click of a button, using yet another bot. This has been a thing for almost as long as the internet has existed. They make an improvement to stop bots, then the bot makers get better to overcome the new obstacle. It's an arms race that swings back and forth constantly, just like adblockers. I'm not saying RUclips couldn't do a better job but it's not a matter of "Caring hard enough to make the problem go away" lol
In the future, the only people who will be happy and free will be those who do not use the internet.
The Amish will survive us all.
Personally I'd say just stay away from social media and you'll be fine.
Seriously though, if an emp sends modern society back to the stone age, the Amish will be doing just fine. 😐
yep! RUclips was my only "internet media" ever used. The end of me using it is drawing nearer and nearer because they demonetized the Maverick of Wallstreet channel and stole two whole months of his ad earnings and membership fees for "reasons". The internet died over a decade ago and its only purpose now is to squeeze pennies out of what attention we throw it's way. like this comment. they probably made some money off it.....sigh.
The fact that Google saw that video and thought _"yep, looks good to me"_ is kinda crazy.
people like this deserve to be unemployed
Google didn't see it, their AI did.
Google has proved with the sniperwolf incident that they're perfectly willing to welcome criminals and their scams if they bring revenue to them. People seem to get something very wrong: the regular youtube user is not Google's client. Their clients are those who pay for advertising.
And, since the pay from scammers is good, they have absolutely no trouble with letting the platform be littered with their ads. And since scammers end up getting their way and make money, this cycle will continue.
None of this should be news. All of this should be expected behavior.
sad story
This notification literally came up for me within minutes of getting another notification of a hacked crypto scam account with this exact scam with xrp. It's insane
Its about to kickstart again HARD. The crypto boom leads to a massive uptick in this rings activity.
@@UpperEchelon thanks for keeping us up to date, been following you for a while and your updates have kept me informed and able to notify other RUclipsrs I know
Ublock will never leave any browser I use, EVER.
uBlock Gang Forever!
I'm with you and I double up with privacy badger although I have found a problem when it comes to loading CAPTCHAS as ublock blocks some 3rd party frames.
My buddy told me Elon had a new crypto coin. It took 10 minutes of arguing to explain it wasn’t real
Damn
Yeah, that one was on for weeks and weeks without it being taken down and it looked so fake.
I reported this fake RUclips ad to YT and they did nothing. Apparently using an AI generated celebrity copy to promote a financial scam didn't break their community guidelines.
Same here and several times at that. It surprised me too that it didn't get taken down, especially because it was so obviously fake. I wonder what Musk would think if he'd seen it. In the (near) future this will be a bigger problem, because the deefakes will be indistinguishable from real.@@rinishan
melon the scam
The future is here, and it's awful.
Bots and human NPCs united to offend the living remains.
pff... stop using the internet.
only because you're WOKE! and you love socialism, doesn't mean anything different that allows Hyper-capitalism like CRYPTO is bad.
your ideals of socialism are way worse than the 4 russian hackers stealing CRYPTO.
They promised us flying cars and the cure for cancer.
@@karlpilkingtonspilko-pants3287 the way things are going, we're all going to get cancer building the flying cars we'll never be able to afford.
I swear I can basically smell a scam now and most ads on youtube make me want to gag. YT doesn't gaf as long as they get a piece of the pie
A VPN isn't going to help you with this. That is not what a VPN does.
Gotta get that ad revenue though….smh
@@skullnbonesx well, he could have just used his sponsorship with guardio, if that were the case. I think it was a genuine misunderstanding of the tool. Surfshark MIGHT offer tools to help you with this, but that's not because they are a VPN. That is in addition to their vpn services.
I don't have an issue with ad revenue, as I also work on this platform, so I know how rough it is. I just don't think VPN is a good suggestion for tools to help keep you safe from these scammers.
Upper Echelon needs to sca … ehm… make money some how
The true advice should be absolutely under no circumstance should you click on an executable disguised as a portable document file or renamed to a video game installer(dot)exe.
I think Jawun is a content creator that covered this. Wouldn't most legitimate installers fit within the limit to be scanned as they are mostly like a decompression program for the game's files?
In any case, a file that is unusually large should be suspicious. Though, I feel like the scanners should have a whitelist for legitimate installers that are actually large to begin with (not artificially inflated with empty bits).
Yup, he has to get his "bag" somehow. The VPN wasn't necessary, but the following guardio one is. The thing is, I wonder if a lot of the scam rings abuse VPNs to get around bans and being caught.
that's what guardio does though. VPNs usually don't have anti fraud protection, but some of them actually do like surf shark and nord. they just mask ur ip address so you're less susceptible to data hackers.
I feel like that would open RUclips up to lawsuits for ignoring blatant scams through their platform
the phrase "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" had been around for literally thousands of years. "a fool and his money are soon parted" has also been around for thousands of years.
The problem with fools is that they don't know they are one...
Are there people who actually scan QR codes and click links on ads on the internet? In this day and age? WOW
A fool and their money. Was talking with a girl who almost sent all her money to a dude she met on a dating app. She knew there were scammers out there, the app she was on was filled with them, and she still almost did it. Some people are just determined to be clueless.
@@Korealignmentsi worked with a girl who sent a guy her first and last months rent for a new apartment promising her he would give her a tour and send her the keys in the mail along with the documents after he received the money.
@@Korealignments WOW
My relatives in the Philippines lost millions of PHP in an online scam through QR codes and then the scammers got in touch saying "we can get your money back if you pay us half of what you lost" and my relatives fell for it again. I told them 50 times "IT'S A SCAM" but they wouldn't listen once greed took over.
@@Holycurative9610 WOW. That’s so frustrating… 👍🏻
Once again I am reminded of yet another reason of why I don't even visit any of those 'anti-social media' platforms.
This is currently happening now with SpaceX. I just reported a fake SpaceX account broadcasting "live" the launch that happened this morning and they held the launch at two minutes to go to Elon's speech with a crypto QR code overlay.
The ever elusive "community guidelines"
This is something ive reported repeatedly to youtube (crypto scams using deepfakes of celebrities) and i always get the same 'not breaking our rules' response.
Its pathetic.
Sponsored ads on google search have been the nightmare I had to contend with. Almost every sponsored ad will lead you to tellascammers.
Man, I just get ads for knives, knife sharpening equipment, and weed/vape stuff. What the hell are you browsing? 😅
@@CGoody564you saying you use things logged in? 😮
RUclips Premium is the solution. Haven't seen ad in 3 years
Why would you have targeted ads turned on? You like literally ALL of your data being stolen and sold to 3rd world countries to try to rip you off ?@@CGoody564
@@Cloudnine2024Why pay to get screwed? Just use adblocker
Not sure if there's a pattern now, but all the channels I was subbed to on RUclips who were hacked were artists who had promoted using NFTs for art.
That's kinda win
Probably because it's similar to Crypto, so it's more likely that the audience of those channels would buy into the scam.
The social media companies don't really care
They should fix exploits, but we've already seen what happens when platforms decide to be the purveyors of morality.
We shouldn't demand platforms protect us from our own ignorance.
You know its a BANGER when he starts with...
"Alright..."
The point is that the current state of affairs merely hints at the significant disruptions and challenges that lie ahead. My prediction is that the internet, as we know it, will soon become predominantly dysfunctional and compromised, rendering it largely unusable and unreliable - a fundamentally flawed and degraded technological system, good while it lasted.
Can't help but notice Google/RUclips has gotten really bad under Sundar Pichai.
this is WHY we need ad blockers
RUclips content creators are adding QR codes in the videos for their sponsors.
Can they guarantee those links will be safe a year later... How about five years later? Some videos are over 14 years old.
The number of fake SpaceX channels today was staggering.
Meanwhile, an innocuous RUclips comments gets swallowed up by RUclips shutting down any good conversations. Bravo RUclips.
Thanks for keeping me up to date on this stuff. I don't use Twitter, Chrome, QR codes or engage in blockchain stuff, so none of it would even be on my radar if it weren't for your channel.
I find it funny that I had a scam ad right before this video that I reported. It is insane that there is not some vetting process when people apply to have their ads put up on Google and related.
They do have a vetting process. It goes like this:
1. Did the cheque clear?
2. Ad approved.
I hope this video goes viral. Its a serious issue that wouldn't be hard to address by social media companies
Why are there so many porn bots in the comments...
Yeah exactly, the video barely is minutes old and there's like 10 comments made by bots
They are set up to spam videos as soon as they are released to try to get as much traffic as possible.
I'd love for him to cover those bots.
They are used for dating scams, to fish money from people who think this hot model is actually paying attention to them...
Of course the links lead off platform and they ask for money once they hook a fish.
They happen on every channel with over certain amount of views for the first hour or two of a video being posted. Its cheap advertisement that is effective.
I report them, but don't feel like much ever happens
I wonder how long until platforms are liable for their egregious lack of advertisement moderation. Probably never.
I want you to take note on how, randomly, suddenly, your channel isn't growing as fast as it used to. But do keep up the work, it's super important. But i will say that i find it very eery that at a sudden point, your growth semi-stagnated. To me, it's fairly clear that there are passive functions that stop channels from growing as fast as they are supposed to. Which does suck.
We make tech to scam the tech-savvy for tech-money in an online world in which everything could be fake.
HTF do I explain this to my ancenstors when I die?😅
Just tell em we effed up 😋 need to reboot.
Bet@@ashwinrawat9622
I know someone involved in stuff like this and they told me that a.i. tools in the community are being developed that will 100% automate various scams like this. Their is some automation involved with them now but it is about to get next level.
As someone who has never used Twitter, I see this as an absolute win!
All they would need is a handful of people checking ads before they go live but companies would rather just accept the ad payment and not care what happens....
Twitter has gotten worse but I also feel like the bots are way more aggressive and overt than the used to be, and half the time it's hard to even find out what it's trying to sell. I don't think they're doing nothing but it's obviously not enough.
I still think youtube getting rid of downvotes helped these scammers more than anything.
the endless pump & dump scam adverts i get on twitter is driving me insane, seems like twitter is either unable to stop it, doesn't care or at worst complicit.
pff... stop using the internet.
only because you're WOKE! and you love socialism, doesn't mean anything different that allows Hyper-capitalism like CRYPTO is bad.
your ideals of socialism are way worse than the 4 russian hackers stealing CRYPTO.
Don't forget we're all eligible for a huge tax incentive as well. 😂
Doctors hate this trick
So if RUclips has determined a scam ad to not be a violation of their policies, does that not mean they're liable if someone is scammed through one of those ads because they have effectively endorsed that ad?
Also don't use Chrome, always use a reliable adblocker, and don't use crypto.
Why do they do this? Who on Earth would be stupid enough to fall for this? There's no subtlety at all, they're in your face like taking a lead sledgehammer to the noggin over and over again.
Thank you for your commitment to informing people in a clear understandable view on very important subjects!
I'm really disappointed you didn't mention alternative browsers like Firefox to avoid those chrome targeted schemes.
Hey there mate. Keeping fighting the good fight. We're with you.
Wow, now that elmo owns twitter the scam also jumped over there?? *insert fake shock meme*
The fact that RUclips and Google as a whole won't even moderate their security says a lot about their morals. They should have some empathy and stop looking at statistics like they're dollar signs. The safety of the consumers should be a priority and not as an afterthought.
RUclips or their employee is probably the one who made the scam video to make money that’s why it was said to be ok😂
I'd argue the state of advertisement on the internet in general has gone down the shitter since 2020, not exclusively on twitter. I get literal malware ads with clear AI voice and generated videos here on YT and FB (and presumably insta but I'm not on there) as well.
Maybe there should be some community security that can strike down these accounts but that has its cons where it can be abused to take down political rivals or people that you don’t like
The person the responded from RUclips customer support probably has no idea who these scams works and no idea of what their looking at.
I would imagine this is the type of job that gets sold to the lowest bidder and speed is everything.
"person"
Upcoming scammers be like *taking notes*
I’ve reported Elon Musk deepfake adverts which were dismissed. Its wild. Thanks for this video
It's crazy to me the insane length people will go to for money. It all comes down to money.
honestly at this point I believe these sites are in on scams and demand portion of "profits" in exchange of not looking too hard (or at all)
pretty much all browsers have a feature called 'profiles'. dont use a single profile for all of your internet browsing. next levels would be temporary profiles, sandboxing with VMs, ... . but with profiles you are already in a so much better space. and no, incognito mode is not the same. dont use gmail on the same profile with anything else.
Normies YT channel literally got yoinked by this scam a few hours ago
I’ve seen RUclips serve some pf these videos as legitimate preroll and interstitial ads viewing RUclips on my TV via the official Chromecast app that I can’t run an adblock on. One variant was a deepfake of Tucker Carlson and the other was some crypto CEO. Since these were gone through the official ad pipeline they were unblockable and being served by RUclips gives them a false sense of validity as one would THINK that RUclips is vetting the ads they serve.
Thank you! Will share your work is much appreciated! 😊💯
Literally had a scam advertisement for this video lol
Its come to a point where I've made an anti-scam guidelines channel on my discord server and EVERYTIME something like this happens, we plaster it there with a big @ everyone to make sure people see. Its become a time of "don't trust anyone". Question: Does this affect non chromium-based navigators? Are those an option beyond just natural safety measures and awareness?
The worst part is you don't even need to buy a stolen account, Twitter lets you sign up for premium with prepaid cards. So much for the authentication Elon was promising.
scams will always target the weakest link in the chain, the human being. And always target the platform with most people, mobile nowadays.
Storing your credentials in chrome has nothing to do with cookies.
Cookies are created by the website, and it depends entirely on them what they write there. As soon as you log in, the website may store your password in plain text in a cookie (it is dumb but far from impossible). Most websites will store a session cookie that basically says "I'm " and website just has that identifier associated with a successful login made in the past.
He does not know the basic of HTTP session handling... Not many do, I'm afraid.
@@GegoXaren Well he probably should learn a bit before reporting on it
@@cubiss1273
Aye.
Another scam exposé video? Thats what im here for!
You mentioned the attack specifically targets chrome does this mean users of Firefox and its various forks are immune or is the attack cross browser compatible?
When I was telling people that Elon was going to tank Twitter, and make it worse, all the musk simps piled on me and told me that I'm wrong, or an idiot, or a hater. Now they go through mental gymnastics to try and pretend its some 5D chess move on his part to lose money. Absolute clowns the lot of them.
Its still incredible people are stupid enough to believe these ads, and just as frustrating that RUclips and other platforms are so slow to deal with them when they happen.
I found an ad on Facebook where it was literally a block of cocaine on a scale I reported it and apparently isn’t against the rules
This topic was relatively familiar to me, thanks
We don't have cryptobro friends because cryptobros don't have friends.
people always used to do terrible things for money. we live in good times when scamming means scamming people out of money via the internet.
VPN: No protection. It just changes your IP address.
Guardio: May detect the threat, but also might not.
Disabling JavaScript by default (including in the PDF reader): Full prevention of threats. You will need to enable it for trusted sites, but browser malware won’t have hardly any vulnerabilities to exploit.
Ahh. That explains some of my new follows on twatter. I couldn't tell if they were more bots or just odd users.
The amount of times I've reported those fake celebrity give away posts and had the site not take it down is way too high.
apropos scam, how is earth 2 doing?
They just did a "gameplay" reveal. That shit needs a followup
Oh heck yeah @@UpperEchelon
Love your content. I watch every video to the end just to make sure the Jiraffe is there because of that one time you didnt have it as an outro and i was very sad.
I check links with previews and other tools before I click them, I was doing that on discord and twitter links due to shorten links and extend messy it puts on the end of links.
Good to know it wasn't me being over cautious and there are dangerous scam links floating about.
I hate when I go to block an obvious scam ad, google literally says "this advertiser hasn't confirmed their identity yet" so why the fuck are they allowed to advertise something that hasn't even been checked before going live???
Imagine clicking on an ad for crypto...imagine clicking on an ad!
Isn't youtube forcing reauth now if it detects and IP change with an old auth cookie?
Great video.
Edit:Wish theirs a way stop these scams for good.
Somehow, the modern internet is becoming more unsafe than even the wild west days used to be. And I'm not just talking about cyber-security, but at least up until now I could say the cyber-security part was much safer now than back then. Not even that anymore.
people really click on those qr codes? thats crazy
Send to Nerdslayer
Also I think some Google employees may be behind these scams.
Tried reporting multiple scam adverts on facebook. Tried reporting multiple fake accounts trying to scam me on facebook. In each case OBVIOUS scam adverts and scam accounts. Each time facebook responds with nothing wrong with adverts or accounts.
Why would you click an ad for anything? And better yet, why are you not using adblock
I assumed everyone used userscripts to block all the ads and promoted tweets on X. I haven't seen an ad in years.
Considering how Google Gemini turned out, I'm fairly certain a lot of their stuff is not in order.
I have to ask. You rely on RUclips for your livelihood and use a RUclips ad blocker ? I noticed no ads and no premium unless you're creator mode or whatever disables them by default.
I would like to inquire as to why exactly do you single out Chrome in this video, what is it about other browsers that makes it presumably immune to the attack? Also, how exactly does the attack work in this case?
You mention cookie copying, but that's is something that's only possible via running external software that you launch on your system yourself as far as my understanding goes, at which point it doesn't matter what browser you use or what extensions you use, or what VPN you have - you are done. Sure, those measures could warn you if a certain website is known to distribute malware, but still, if you are running executables from random websites, nothing short of a virtual machine is going to save you, and even then it's not 100% safe.
Is it just the fact that Chrome is the most popular browser, which makes it the most likely to be targeted, or is it because it's Guardio talking point?
0:57 - what "wrong thing" you can click?
I actively hate ads. So I never click on them.
I click on them.... it costs the advertiser more and still doesnt generate a sale. Enough people do this and the KPI's will fall to the point where advertising on the net wont be worth it, and it will stop.
When I have a bit more time, I'll write a bot (operating inside a VM) that clicks ads.... millions of ads... every day.
Ad blocking master race.
Google doesn't care since the scammers are paying for the ads... I tried to report a Mr. Beast imposter ads offering $1000 if you click (despite the highlighted URL linking to an Indian website). Google's response? Naaaa~ it's all good!
I saw this for the first time yesterday. a famous fishing account with 500k subs was posting illegal streams and highlights for UFC last night