Beware of emails pretending to be from YouTube. I’ve received a few variations notifying me that my video has been approved or that I’ve received a personal message. It includes a link to your new video or a link to what looks like your inbox but it is in fact a third party website.
Contents of the email pretending to come from YouTube
The thing that raised alarm bells in my mind was that it was sent to one of my email addresses that doesn’t have a YouTube account associated with it.
Hovering over the link shows it is not from YouTube
The easiest way to tell if emails like these are authentic is to hover your cursor over a link in the email and look at the address that pops up. Eg: hovering over what looked like a link to my inbox was in fact a masked link to the spammer’s own website.
As a general rule, you should never click on URLs in emails from anyone other than your trusted friends.
Hey mate
great post.
cheers Brad
Thanks. It’s fairly obvious to most people but can still trip up an experienced user. Especially when you’re in the habit of receiving emails from YouTube, you get a bit more relaxed about clicking on links contained in them. That’s what makes it so cunning.