Think Before You Click That E-mail YouTube Link!

I’m plowing through my e-mails and I see one of them in the spam folder. It is a message from YouTube. Or is it. I move my mouse pointer over a link and find out that it is not. Diggum the example below:

For a moment I almost took it out of the spam basket because I did recently upload videos. Which is what the stinkers count on.

I have change the name of the offending site because I don’t want you to catch cooties and I’ve reported them to my ISP. I can tell you that I looked up the words used in the links in the e-mail. Turkish as in Turkey not as in gobble gobble.

Here is what stopped me and can help you from getting your account hi-jacked:

Read The E-mail.

I did uploaded videos but not on the date stated in the e-mail.

Always Hoover Over The Link.

Every link each time. I don’t care how many times you have seen the logo just take a moment to make sure you have a legit e-mail. In this case, each link lead someplace other than YouTube. YouTube does a lot of things but I don’t think they have opened a rib joint yet.

What this probably refers to is the skin that they placed over their website that will look as much as possible to the real site. It is not. I have no doubt there would have been a confirmation request for a user name and password.

Is It the Correct E-Mail Address?

For additional safety set up a specific e-mail account for a service and use a unique password. This crap appeared in the right and wrong e-mail account. They are spamming everybody in the domain.

Approval? There Ain’t No Freaking Approval!

Some things are more subtle. Or not. YouTube does not approve videos. Really. There is a very good reason why they do not. Placere considerandam actuariorum notitia a fistula…

• 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, or one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second.
• Over 4 billion videos are viewed a day
• More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years

Yeah, that is a lot of video. And no computer algorithm can evaluate or “accept” every freaking video pumping up into the electrons. YouTube would not be in court fighting copyright charges if it could evaluate each videos after an upload..

I have been using the Internet since before web pages. I’m talking Compuserve. I still can get trapped and have almost fallen for the maleware floating past the stream. It happens when you are tired. Bored. Trying to clean out you backlogged email.

The crooks are growing in number.  There is nothing to indicate to me that the international governments are taking spam and identity theft across borders seriously.

We as users have to step up and at least be aware that there are people in other countries really trying to get their hands on other peoples’ money and identities.

Be safe.