YouTube's First Scam
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- Опубликовано: 30 май 2022
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In the summer of 2010, thousands of users across RUclips received a very strange private message in their inbox, telling them to visit earnsubscribers(dot)com, a website that guaranteed overnight success for aspiring RUclipsrs. Of course, the site ended up being a total sham, but at the expense of many gullible users that ended up losing a lot along the way.
Every great innovation in technology, whether for better or for worse, starts somewhere remarkably simple. The very first motion picture to be seen in theaters was of a moving train, and the very first website was nothing more than text on a screen. These were just two out of many breakthroughs in technology that blew away the people of their time, to the point where you and I can sit down and still talk about them today. It didn’t take much complexity for them to change the world in their respective fields, because there was nothing else like it before. And of course, the same applies to online scams. During a time where people didn’t truly realize what the internet was capable of, it didn’t exactly take a lot of effort for malicious developers to get the high turnover of gullible people that they desired. May 5, 2000, was the turning point for computer viruses when something as simple as commands in a notepad file could cause billions of dollars in devastating destruction and put previous viruses to shame.
These stories almost act as folklore that we can pass down from generation to generation, but that’s not always the case. Some significant events in history are lost to time, and for the turning point in social media scams, that was April 30, 2010, when thousands of users across RUclips received a very strange private message in their inbox. The message was very cordial, praising the user for their high-quality videos. “You’re incredibly underrated. You deserve more recognition, and you can get that by simply going to Earnsubscribers(dot)com.” Wow! Was it really that easy? Could I become the next Fred, or RayWilliamJohnson? Or maybe, just maybe…was it all too good for be true?
People saw all the smoke and mirrors rather quickly, but that did not stop the messages from continuing to get around and lure in the uninformed. The only option left was to combat that and spread the word about the website’s illegitimacy, and now dozens of creators were making videos telling their community to beware. All of this was a byproduct of a scam that was so basic in its functionality, the people of today could see it coming from a mile away. But Earnsubscribers(dot)com was a product of its time, and for that, it was able to catch thousands of people in its trap, but how? What did this simple, yet ingenious website do to earn its 15 minutes of fame on one of the biggest websites in the world?
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Hello
Haha no
Ur the GOAT
Coolio
I remember I made an anime slideshow on a secondary channel back in the day and a company actually messaged me to swap out my audio for their track and showed me how to do it for $25. I thought it was a scam at first but after going through with it I actually got $25 in my PayPal account. Go figure.
Hey, free money.
What was it?
Maybe a musician?
nice
show us the video :D please UWU
I was able to use some of the knowledge i got from your BonziBuddy video in class and thought that was pretty neat. Excited for a new thing to learn!
Love to hear that!! Thank you for watching! :)
No way bonzi helped you at school xD
@@nationsquid nice vido
@@CutieFakeKirby yeah, my teacher was talking about viruses and said her dad had gotten bonzi at the time it was big
Same, i made a powepoint about youareanidiot
Who else loves how NationSquid turns a simple scandal into a video with a murder documentary format?
Me that's why I love his videos so much!!
That's... Quite a unique way of putting it 🤣
It's sounds accurate, though, now that I think about it...
Are you "chica-sexual"?
Seeing a RUclips scam makes me wanna see you do a video like the giveaway bots or "finally it's here"
I would too but those aren't really scams
The giveaway bots definitely are scam. When you actually contact them, they will ask you to pay some shipping fee for the prize.
what do they even mean by “finally it’s here” anyway?
@@KyleBunnyBunsYTube their just trying to promote a video
@@Grane1234 oh.
Man, I had no idea any of this was happening on RUclips in 2010. I was 15 when RUclips came out, so I grew up with it but in 2011 I had a roommate in college explaining RUclips subscribers and how it worked and how you could get monetized. I looked him in the face and said that would never take off and that people just go on RUclips to look at random funny videos…. And now here I sit, 11 years later, on RUclips, subscribed to idk how many channels, and my wife and I haven’t even bothered with getting cable in 5 years because we watch mostly RUclips and a few streaming services on occasion. I couldn’t have been more wrong in 2011 lol.
Same here! I was brought into the world in 2003, and only now in 2023, I didn’t know that half of these things were happening! Not until I found this channel anyway. It’s nice coming to this channel and learning more about technology and it’s growth.
I am also subscribed to who’s knows how many channels (I think it’s well over 50 😮).
I believe RUclips came out in 2005 or 2006, possibly sooner. I was just a little girl.
There is so much more to learn about my parents generation. Furthermore, there’s so much happening for anticipation of the future!
Not sure if it was intentional or not but i love the placement of "is crying in the shower normal" it's the first one to immediately catch your eye but it makes sense cause it'd be hard to tell which icon is the right one through teary eyes
@p1ss 16:51
?
You know how some people who are usually over the age of 65 get scammed easily with methods like emails and scam phone calls? For our generation it’s pretty obvious that these are scams but I’m wondering how scammers are going to trick us whenever my generation gets that old. Side note: I love NationSquid’s videos on online scams, they’re always so fascinating to me!
I think their ability to trick old people lies less in the old people lacking the necessary life experience to understand that they are scams. It lies more with the cognitive decline that accompanies old age and dementia. As you get older, if someone calls you and yells at you and stresses you out, you become less able to process the situation rationally.
@@Iudicatio That's exactly it. It's rarely the stubborn old man who has a healthy distrust for everything who falls for these scams. It's usually the elderly who are already compromised mentally and/or physically which only makes these scammers even more deplorable IMO.
i think they are eventually going to find a way, an advanced way to trick today's generation
It wont work
I already have an stubborn old man mentality and am only 30
I was about 7 years old at the time this scam was spreading about, and I actually visted the website.
My immediate thought was that it didn't look like an official RUclips site. In fact, it looked kinda "scary", and that was reason enough for me to leave that site and never come back.
Again, I was 7 years old when this website was around. I still believed that those copy/paste messages that said stuff like "your crush's name will appear in big letters on your screen when you hit this key after copy/pasting this message" or "copy/paste this whole message or a ghost will possess you and kill you in your sleep" would actually WORK. So if my younger self hadn't found that site "scary", I would have probably put in information that shouldn't be given to a website like this and regretted it wholeheartedly.
FOUND YOU NOW I’M IT
@@Kyoobur9000 That's not how this works, Kyoob...but if it was, I'd so do it.
@thenormz1n It's an inside joke. Don't worry about it.
@@PearangeProductions Haha funny
what the f actually the ghost part? people were just as fucked up back then
God, the scariest thing is that these survey scams are still around today.
How is it scary? It’s hilarious!
@@flariz4824 Exactly, just inform other people you know and avoid them. Other than that it is hilarious.
@@CoffeeOn I think that’s part of the problem. They can be hilarious but maybe that’s what some people want you to think about their surveys. Possibly, they do this in the hope you’ll let your guard down. But, that’s just my understanding of it. There may be parts that I am missing.
Some random guy in my school district was scammed by an "Love Letter" type email and he sent the same email to me. He emailed after wondering why his account was sending weird emails and I was able to let him know how the scam worked and I got him some tech help. Thanks for your videos!
Iloveyou worm?
then everyone clapped
@@fantaslurp then you were praised and loved
@@M50A1 touche
God there's just something so Magical about the old youtube layout. All those ancient videos just feel right at home with it. I wonder how it would feel watching videos post 2017 with this layout...
Oh, yeah! I remember that. And i remember getting lots of messages like that one.
For me it was different: I opened a RUclips account to share videos with my friends via MySpace (since I moved abroad, that was the best way to stay in contact). I was actually getting annoyed when strangers were subscribing my channel as i had "personal videos", you know, me playing guitar, things like that.
What's funny was that at first I though it was kinda cute how when you type in the user it would put you on the list so people would subscribe, and how everyone got a chance. But then I saw how the surveys did stuff and my smile left real quick.
But still,it works So it is legit but it does stuff
I just came back after so many months struggling at college, and I wanna thank you for all the great content you bring in. Despite me being a kid when RUclips was at its peak, these kind of events are so interesting and you’re right, the Internet was so so different back then, that almost everything seemed possible. And it’s even more curious if you realize that just a few years later (2013), the RUclips bots things would emerge. There’s this Chilean RUclipsr called HolaSoyGerman that was accused of using bots during those times because no one believed he could get millions of subs, and whether this was true or not, it really changed the perception of subscribers for a lot of people. Things such as likes and comments started getting more and more weight and nowadays it seems that the Yt algorithms care more about these interactions and not the subs count (perhaps it’s been like this since ever but I am just realizing lolol). See? This is what I like about your videos, they make me think, remember and reflect. Amazing job!
I need to talk to more people roundabout my age and sounds like you might be a much more intelligent and successful version of someone a lot like me (I'm 22 lol), nothin creepy (someone saying an age and requesting an interaction are usually two red flags for me lmfao) legit just love talking to people and learning from one another if we can, ya know what I mean lol? Any other readers feel free to contribute, we can never learn too much from other people if we're really interested in learning ;)
I remember getting two of these messages when I was like 14. Even then it was so obviously a scam that I just disregarded both of them.
This channel is easily one of my favorite discoveries in awhile, your voice is so mysterious and helps these "darkside of the internet" style videos.
I feel like it wasn't until 2012 or so that most of us figured out scams and shit. I remember going on websites promising Halo Reach flaming skull helmets if you filled out 3 surveys and trying to pirate COD MW on Xbox 360 without any idea how to actually do that, and let's not even talk about trying to pirate music on to my little flip phone so I could show my friends at school how funny Doing Your Mom or Tik Tok (Halo Parody) was.
Man I miss those days, the internet felt so much more simple. I see kids now where their main hobby is Tiktok and I can't help but go wtf?
Do not long for the good days. That is not wise.
- Ecclesiastes 7:10
Nostalgia is only a lens to view the world’s past improperly
The internet was just as shit as it is now
yeah
The kids on TikTok will probably be going "wtf" at the next generation, and so on and so forth... It's a never ending cycle
I remember creating a website like that to steal a friend's facebook login credentials and then use them to shitpost with his account, I also remember stealing his glasses and trowing them by the sewers, in retrospective i was a pretty shitty friend.
This reminds me of when everyone was warning not to click on "bit urls" because if you did your channel would be stolen... Somehow. I just avoided the links and didn't look into it.
Fortunately, you can 'peek' at the url's true location by adding a plus sign at the end. +
I have learned a lot from these videos and for that I thank you for making my 12yr old mind interested in malware spyware etc) your the best thing to happen to me thank you
Watch Danoct1, when I was a kid in 2008 I loved those videos.
watch danooct1! he demonstrates early computer malware and explains how they worked, it's pretty neat :)
@@arlovskaya ok thanks for the suggestion
wow, people are really starting to get smart much younger than before. thats really exciting
Dan is actually really cool thanks for telling me about him
NationSquid!- Youre about to have over 275k subscribers, dominating RUclips and surpassing Disney superstars Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers!!
how can i describe this...... BEST. RUclipsR. EVER. its not just random stuff, its useful, great info. keep it up dude u r absolutely cool
Hah! Goggle couldn't take me out! Surprised they never tried to get me with this haha.
All those background clips really brought me back. It still feels crazy to me that these people ended up with celebrity status in this way. Seems obvious now but that concept was so crazy at the time. It doesn't surprise me that some fell for these scams. Everyone wanted to get more subs. I feel like I remember chatting with makemebad35 about this back when he was starting to get a big following.
Had no idea you spoke with Makemebad35! Early RUclips really was a treasure haha. Thanks for watching! :)
@@nationsquid Haha, yeah back in his "hyper video" days he would do live streams outside of RUclips. I would catch him often and we would talk about guitar lol. Early youtube was really nuts, I remember watching the first RUclips live and thinking "wow this is really becoming something huge."
Love the content as always, it's a huge nostalgia trip for me.
Everyone wanted more subs? I didn’t care about it. I remember my channel was terminated by RUclips back in 2008 and I haven’t made any videos ever since.
Goggle was actually cool, though. This was just stupid.
NationSquid could read the phone book to me and I'd still love it. Such a soothing voice
Your videos are so well made and informative and I learn so much from you. To that is say thank you
Been awhile since I saw one of your videos. This brought back memories. Thanks, man.
I rarely support a channel. Absolutely love your content and I'll be supporting you from here on in. Thank you.
I remember this scam. I was suspicious when I got the message, given that I'd never posted a video on RUclips before.
Also I'm uncomfortable with all the references to 'back in 2010'. It wasn't that long ago, surely. I still have underwear I bought in 2010.
its 2022 now, so you can it was long ago
Do you deadass still wear that underwear 💀
IKR? I have been using the same cigarette lighter since....1978! 2010 seems like last week to me!
@@fjrqjadlrns 12 years is NOT "long ago". I start that verbiage at 20+ years.
I think a lot of the audience of this channel are teenagers and young adults. 12 years is still a lot of time, but it feels like a lot more than that.
I thought YT did this, this changed my prospective 😅
*perspective
Lol
amazing video dude
Hi,
I just saw the video you uploaded and thought it was pretty amazing. excellent..
Really, great work!
The implication that people were to use such a site in lieu of hard work is pretty unfair. Many can work hard and make great content and never make it very big at all, and I could certainly see wanting your content out there if that is the case, and hoping for such a thing to be legitimate. Or even just very young naive kids who want maybe leave a mark somehow, and hard work is pretty relative.
Dope video man crazy stuff! Love this internet history content, subbed!
Love your channel! Another great video
Your ad lead-ins are legendary
Great video, loving this internet history series
All your videos about technology has helped with my dream of becoming a dewormer for viruses! I know what I am working with more with your videos!
I love these sort of videos especially the nations quid videos. Im not the only one but this rly made me smile
I clicked that link back in the day. I remember the look of the site, even. My earliest RUclips experience.
Smashing video!
Nah I'm joking haha.. Great video, the wait paid off so much!! Great production as always and the topic is engrossing and engaging. Keep it up man!!
Thank you again as always!! :)
Btw, you should check out this new smashing site called earnsubscribers(dot)com! Spread the word!
@@nationsquid *lindows error
Honestly I love these videos. Keep up the good work!
Totally worth the wait, Squid. Great job!
OMG That bit at the end on Windows XP loading up Old RUclips I remember when Channels had Direct Messaging, CSS for making Custom Channel Layout's just like MySpace.
Memories 😊
Direct Messaging used to exist until quite recently, I think, as I remember getting a direct message from someone in 2013/2014.
@@pabblo1 2013/2014 was 8 and 9 years ago.
That's not really recent 👀
this happens too often nowadays but back then people wouldnt think it was a scam
I was stressing bout upcoming life stuff but I saw this come up in my recommended. Thanks Nationsquid
Thanks for your support! Whatever it is you're going through, I wish you the very best and send good vibes. :)
you have educated me alot thank you so much
Bro I love your videos so much it's so professional and educational I love this types of videos . you're one of my favourite RUclips content creator your content is very different and very nice and beautiful in his own way love ur videos 👍👍👍
don’t know why i was so happy to see a new NationSquid video after so long
just got a scam commercial before watching this video 💀
Fr💀
Evertime you post I eat what you post UP this is the type of content I love it so much 💥💥
Very good video! The thumbnail looks like "Eam Subscribers" to me.
You really really work hard for these videos, keep it up 👍
Another great video, great job squid brother
4:39 this is very true. I post stuff on soundcloud and get bots liking or reposting my stuff, or following me, and their profiles always link to some sketchy site that'll supposedly get you a bunch of likes, reposts, and views from bots so that you look bigger than you really are.
Hello NationSquid, I love your videos, i saw this video in my fyp and i clicked it because i was intrested! I like your videos, keep going!!!!!
Love your videos, I think I remember this myself. Very interesting
around that time I fell for one of these. This was at a point where my channel was about to get 1k subs and about to become a RUclips Partner. But that was on my very first account and luckily I made this second account in time.
Please make a video about the browser hijackers. This includes Conduit, Search Encrypt, and many others. Love your videos!
Browser hijackers are websites that change the browser settings of users' PCs without the knowledge of the users. For example, the Conduit website changes your browser's homepage to the Conduit search page. I had it on one of my PCs at home in the spring of 2012. While I don't remember being affected by it in any harmful way, the Wikipedia page on "Conduit toolbar" says it is often considered an unwanted program and is hard to remove. The Malware Wiki page for "Conduit Search" says that people have been affected by unwanted emails and phishing attempts due to this program. And three years ago, one of the laptops at home had Search Encrypt on its web browser.
Yay new vid :) btw do you have a podcast on Spotify? I would love to go and hear it
Hey nation squid. Another great video. Big loves from your veteran fan.
I don't even know how this man finds a way to include a sponsorship without making it annoying. Amazing job!!!
Hi NationSquid! Love your vids. Hope you have a good and safe summer!
These vdeos are really intresting, ever since you created a video about the ILoveYou virus I've been very intrigued by your channel Keep it up👍 :)
nationsquid back with a another great video!
This is crazy can’t believe this kind of thing happened in 2010
Great video, as usual!
NationSquid is the only youtuber who has gotten a sponsorship and I actually paid attention to it
Oh boy...
Here in for another good one!
Great Video....Worth The Wait
On my old channel back then, there were several accounts that were subscribed to me that weren't able to be removed off of my list of subscribers. It was creepy. Ghost accounts and dupes.
My thought is that perhaps they have filled security questions in the surveys which the scammers could then use to log in thanks to the forgotten password login and inputting the personal questions through there
I love your videos so much, the second I see them in my recommended I have to click lol
Thank you!!
I love your videos, but I don't necessarily know if this was the 'first' scam. I recall messages on my account in 2008 (or, more likely, 2009ish) that involved female profile accounts luring people to very questionable cam sites or other sites that either tried to force you to put in an email (which it would hack) or would give your browser a cookie that was infected in and of itself. However, the way you strongly document this, I'll just hand it to you because.... well, you're reputable, I'm just some guy (with an old account).
the little tune you use sometimes reminds me of 'bright outside' from the misao soundtrack
I actually remember getting that scam email or something similar to it. Never fell for it because I wanted to earn subscribers honestly.
@NationSquid how are you doing? I just got my Xbox so I'm very happy that you premiered today!
I'm doing well! Thank you for asking! I hope you're doing well too. :)
Hi! I watched your virus videos! And I’m subscribed
You are sure an underrated youtuber I hope you get more subscribers
Your voice is verry calming
Man you make amazing videos
I find it ironic that I got an ad about half way through the video about "growing a RUclips channel is hard but most people do it wrong"
But nonetheless I liked this video, was interesting considering I was just getting into RUclips in 2010
I really like the fact you put Eduard khil in the clip thing
These videos make me feel smarter keep it up
Ah, I remember similar "too good to be true" sites at the time, something like Facebook password hacker and whatnot. They all end up with those "survey" and sometimes decoy file yet to be downloaded or unlocked.
"IsCryingInShowerNormal"... and "BlueManGroup Auditions"... is the Windows XP desktop at the end just a massive Arrested Development reference?
It's one subscriber, Charles. What could it cost, $10?
Just have a curiosity what method do you use to re-create these websites for your demonstrations I understand you can view them on the Internet archive but most of them are non-functional do you take the time to build them yourself to the same specifications and then run them on a local server? Or is there more to it than that?
I genuinely thought you'd do a skit at the end similar to the 1,000,000th visitor video.
Sheesh another upload already!
When the hell did you reach 200k subs. What did I miss
It's been a great year!! Thanks for sticking with me along the way! :)
wait HE DID? I DIDN'T EVEN SEE
@@nationsquid you deserve more subs, ur vids are great
@@nationsquid Ill stay around for as long as you continue! Didn’t realize I missed so many videos so imma have a fun time binging what I missed for a lil while!
Made it in time before the fun part begins! Nothing too late, just 7 minutes in.
That was a brilliant ad transition
This is legitimately really interesting. Were do you do your research?
Thank you! I get it from all kinds of places! Primarily it will be from articles, archived Internet forums, some books, and even my personal observations of the subject itself. :)
@@nationsquid cool
Yess
I love your channel!!
when my cousin had a youtube channel, he saw this scam. he didnt know what it was. i was younger than him and was hearing a lot about this scam. i told him not to press it. he later reported it. i was 5 at the time and he was 14.
14:10 Websites can't contain keyloggers. A webpage can't see outside itself. Older browsers had certain vulnerabilities that allowed websites to escape the browser, but I think with this you'd get something much much worse. CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) might have been used since it involves malicious webpage opening URLs that would do something on a different site.
While websites can't give you keyloggers, the programs you unknowingly download from them can, which is why you should always be careful about what you download online! You're definitely right about CSRF, which is likely where the surveys come into play. :)
Browsers aren't bulletproof. Plenty of 0days released on the regular that exit sandbox. String enough together and you could steal cookies, or given enough exploits take fulll control
Yo! Another NationSquid video, can't wait for the next.
I miss old RUclips so very very much I’m happy for those who can make a living off it now but there was something pure about early RUclips
The freedom and wild west vibe is what I miss about old RUclips, plus the whole "Broadcast Yourself™” tag line we used to have, plus more I can't really think of at the moment. 😕
THAT right there is what I was thinking of! Man, RUclips's really gone down the shitter since then.
Awesome. Really good video
the early youtube homepage was a chronological list of uploaded videos by people you were subscribed to, that's why subscriber counts were so important. it wasn't a For You page designed by the algorithm as it is now.
2:47 I totally saw that coming!