Weird activity on my Youtube page

[Dweller_Benthos]

I was going to post this in the other Youtube thread, but that's Art's, and I didn't want to hijack.

Anyway, just a place to vent, well, not really vent, just express some mystification on my part? After I posted the last Generation Zero video, I got a few comments that were a bit ... strange. Not the usual, "Hey nice video" and stuff like that, but more in the line of "Hey you have almost 100 subs - want to be friends?" Stuff like that. I've gotten messages before with the old "Hey, I'll trade a sub for a sub" deal, from people looking to increase their sub count, and I usually ignore those, as I don't subscribe to channels I'm not interested in. And the thing is, I look at the person's channel, and there are no videos? I don't get it. Post some videos, and maybe people will subscribe to your channel?

I know, kind of a random thought, but I got another one like it today and it just made me think. Maybe people are just getting so stir crazy from being quarantined that they are looking for any kind of distraction?

[Art Blade]

careful with those. best go to your youtube studio - comments  - and report as spam.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Thanks for that, interesting. I know I had a comment by that "Logan" person too, but I can't find it now, I think youtube deleted it on their end. The latest one I had was from a person named "Bruce Wayne" so I reported that as spam, it was the same wording almost exactly, which is why it made me think something was weird. "In before ### subs, want to be friends?"

I think I'll check my youtube and google logins and maybe change the passwords, just in case.

Here's the screenshot of the notifications drop down, they still exist there, but not on the video page

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The Steven Smith one I deleted right away, should have reported it I guess, the rest I just thought were an over enthusiastic young person. Thing is, I knew a person with Logan in their youtube channel name a while ago, he used to play on the Minecraft server I ran, I thought it was him but when I went to the channel I saw it was just trash videos.

[Art Blade]

I had that "Tom" guy and others, I reported them and their posts are gone, too

[BinnZ]

That is really strange indeed. My guess it's empty shells all to gain influential accounts, just in case there's something to manipulate. Like, 2020 elections for instance?
Better keep those away from you indeed. I don't do much social media stuff, hardly ever upload videos, but I do have a LinkedIn page. And there I also had someone contact me, pretending to be a colleague. At my w0#k they found out he was actually a fake account, likely run by a friend of one of the inmates. Since then I double check each connection request before accepting. I also went through my entire list of contacts, but the only other weird thing I encountered was a pretty African student whose account didn't look all that businessy

Edit: Deleted that one too, of course

[LowPolyOWG]

It's a good way to get your account compromised or used as a part of a botnet. I got spam attacked on Facebook once, by simply connecting to the municipal network at our LAN last year. No malware was installed on my computer, I ran a full scan with Malwarebytes and changed passwords on some of my accounts. Later, my mom told me that the municipal ICT department had to clean up that network.

I have also gotten friend requests from those spammers, but I always decline and report them to Facebook. Not all accounts are shutdown, sometimes, the bastards use actual people's name. Which means Facebook do not see anything offensive or problematic  However, when I try to look up that spam account, it's not listed. I guess they either deleted it from early reports or their bot system is broken. I read an article where VG or NRK had "accepted" on a dummy account. They got all kind of weird links posted on their fake profile.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Must be the Russians again .....

[BinnZ]

Might as well be Chinese, or Iranians... or who knows Republicans 

[PZ]

Sucks that there are so many people out to harm/cheat people.

[Art Blade]

I keep saying, "it's a bloody zoo out there" (on the net)

[fragger]

True. And it's a zoo full of freaks of nature.

I love the internet as a source of information, and to a lesser extent entertainment (like You Tube, although I don't spend a lot of time there), but stuff like you guys are talking about is why I avoid any kind of social interaction on it - except for OWG, of course

[Dweller_Benthos]

Had another strange occurrence, this time a forced subscription to a channel. I go to look at my new videos page for channels I'm subscribed to and there's one from a channel called James_Logan about a cheat code or something for hacking a game. Of course I never subscribed to that channel, never heard of it before, but there's that Logan name again. Anyway, I go to the channel and it says I'm subscribed, so I hit the unsubscribe button and the video goes away off my feed list.

This is getting a bit annoying. Now I'm wondering if just going to that channel somehow puts me on a hacker's radar to send me more *bleep*, and now I also wonder if there's a way to unsubscribe from a channel without actually visiting the channel page?

[Art Blade]

yes, there is a way.

Just go to your own channel's front page, look at the menu where there is "home," "videos," "playlists" and "channels" which is what you're looking for.. you click on "channels." There you'll see all the channels you're subscribed to. If you click on the "subscribed" below any channel's avatar there, a dialogue will pop up to unsubscribe or cancel.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Ah, thanks, that's not obvious, is it? I never go to my own home page, or very rarely. Looked over the channels there and nothing suspicious now, so I guess we'll wait and see if another hacker pops up.

[Art Blade]

yeah, it's really not obvious that there's the only option to do just that, that way.

Although I'm frequently busy with my own channel, I had to actively look for that option so I could tell you. Meaning, I didn't know about that before, either.