YouTube – Was it Hacked?

[Chris CrewParticipant @chriscrew66644]

Yesterday, or the day before, the suggestions that YouTube presents which its algorithm thinks may be of interest to me suddenly showed a lot of videos with Chinese young ladies provocatively displaying their lingerie. I had no idea why these items should have been presented on my account as at my age I have no interest whatsoever in this sort of thing and certainly have never sought it out on YouTube. The videos seemed to be captioned in Chinese symbols and there was no way of getting rid of them which was not only annoying but also took some explaining to SWMBO! Today, they seem to have all disappeared and the usual selection of American railroad history, workshop videos and jazz music items etc. are again being offered. So, was YouTube hacked by the Chinese, was it just me or has anyone else had this happen to them? It would be interesting to know and may finally satisfy SWMBO that I really am the innocent party here. (BTW, I have a YouTube premium account because I couldn’t take the adverts any more if this makes any difference).

PS. I have now activated ‘restricted mode’ in my YouTube account which will hopefully now prevent any more of this distasteful garbage being offered to me.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Another possibility is not a hack but internal, by YouTube itself using a routine so broad and clumsy that it uses anything that seems to match something, to offer you anything it “thinks” may interest you.

Where might that be?

I’d suspect the jazz music – something in one of those, not obvious to you but soon spotted by the interrogation. The material it gave you might have been a lingerie catalogue, if the images were static poses.

What makes me think that is the way that searching for anything can fill the screen with all manner of links to commercial outfits having no clear connection to what you are really looking for.

I encountered this only yesterday when looking for the location of a church, to attend a funeral. I typed the official name of the church, but it was about a dozen items down the list, with nothing else the least bit relevant despite putting that name on the link it was displaying.

I am not certain what my computer uses and I do not deliberately use Google; but isn’t YouTube owned by the same shower that owns Google? They are all one huge cartel of just a very few US companies.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Apart from a little bit of motorsport, I do not watch TV. Youtube now mainly. Yes there are some weird things at work.

A friend is in a gun club & at the Motorcycle cafe the other night he wass talking to one of the other guys on our table. When I got home & switched the PC on & Youtube. Wallah. Lots of gun stuff down the panel side.

This is not the 1st time similar things have happened. I guess certain cookies on your phone listen to conversations.

I cannot say I am bothered too much but it’s happening now all over the place. We are not alone as they say.

Steve.

[Steve FParticipant @stevef]

Youtube bases the video’s on stuff it finds in your history. I watched 1 video about a 3d printed sock knitting machine and the next time i logged in there were loads on my pages. So go to the history page and remove it and they all disappear.

I had problems with the autoplay feature ages ago. When you hover the mouse over a video it would start playing. That got recorded in the history. That would then have a effect on the login page.

So click on the menu bar top left hand side and select history. See whats in there. Remove any unwanted stuff and see what happens

regards

Steve

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Most likely a google youtube account was hacked – the bit of the system used to publish content.   There are many reports of this happening and it’s common enough for Google explain how to ‘Recover a hacked YouTube channel’.

As for who did it, this graph shows the top ten countries who originate hacks:

Chinese Lady content suggests the baddy was Chinese, but could be in the USA, or someone in the USA seeking to embarrass China, or someone in Holland trying to embarrass China and the US!

Is Britain’s failure to make the top ten because our criminals are computer illiterate, or because we’re just too honest!

Dave

 

 

 

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Chris had same thing happen to me !

H

[Chris CrewParticipant @chriscrew66644]

H, many thanks, SWMBO now believes me, lol!

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Interesting graph: China and America being the top two is no surprise, but I thought Russia would be much higher, and North Korea in there somewhere.

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

Interesting graph: China and America being the top two is no surprise, but I thought Russia would be much higher, and North Korea in there somewhere.

China has tons of money, North Korea doesn’t…they’re probably trying to hack with a Sinclair ZX81 and a 300 baud modem.

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

Interesting graph: China and America being the top two is no surprise, but I thought Russia would be much higher, and North Korea in there somewhere.

The graph (which is for 2021), logs number of incidents rather than their effectiveness.   Russian criminals may not be as active as the Chinese, but what they do is sophisticated and profitable.   A low-end hack might result in a shower of unwelcome but mostly harmless adverts, whilst a high-end hack harvests seriously big money, for example by encrypting an organisation’s data and insisting on a large payment for the key that unlocks it.

A cyber attack originating from somewhere like North Korea is likely to be state-sponsored, organised by well-funded experts, for some political purpose ranging from espionage to cyber-warfare.  Quite different from a Nigerian Prince trying to get into your bank account, or  spotty youth pushing against authority.

It’s all very murky!  Best thing we can do is keep our guard up.

Dave

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Anyone who has Alexa and her friends enabled on their phone or computer is just asking for Mr Gates and his cronies to listen in.

[mark costello 1Participant @markcostello1]

I have Alexa, Cortana,  google assistant and everything else supposedly turned off that I can find. The same stuff happens to Me. Just try talking about something obscure and watch what turns up.

MIL died in a nursing home way out in the country 50 miles from Her specialist Doctors. As soon as the nursing home reported Her deceased all Her files and future appointments were wiped from the books. I called the Doctors too cancel appointments and it took several Doctors before Someone told Me what had happened. Talk about Government over reach!

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

That sounds like the system where you “report once” and it tells everyone who needs to know. Seemed like a good idea to me when my in laws died, it was optional, I could have done it the hard way, but as you have to tell these people you might as well let the system do it for you. I’ve actually found UK govt websites to be very good, if a bit slow and pedantic, but then they are catering for people who are even less computer literate than me

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