Users receiving the fake messages post complaints on multiple communities

Sep 4, 2014 01:09 GMT  ·  By

YouTube users are currently targeted by emails claiming to be delivered by YouTube Account Manager, threatening with account suspension due to repeated violations of the community guidelines.

Complaints have been posted on Instagram and Google Groups, users expressing doubt about the legitimacy of the messages, which purport to come via YouTube’s communication system.

The fake messages contain a link that leads to web pages with online surveys, a scam more frequently encountered on Facebook.

“We’d like to inform you that due to repeated or severe violations of our community guidelines and your YouTube account will be suspended 3 days from the time of this message. After careful review we determined that activity in your account violated our community guidelines, which prohibit spam, scams or commercially deceptive content. Please be aware that you are prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts,” informs the email.

A list of instructions containing the web address with the online survey follows. Completing the survey is mentioned as a step for recovering the account, the motivation behind this activity being to prove that the attempt is not carried out automatically through a bot.

In some cases, the potential victim’s phone number is requested before completing the survey; this is information that can be used by the scammers for smishing (SMS phishing) campaigns.

Christopher Boyd of Malwarebytes says that the best way to check the status of the YouTube account is to contact YouTube directly.

“Scammers will often use similar tactics to send phishing links and malware, so in some ways recipients of this missive are getting the best of a bad deal – it’s ‘only’ surveys and forms to fill in, along with the occasional download,” says the researcher.