YouTube launches tool to recover hacked accounts
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YouTube has released a new AI troubleshooting tool to help users recover their accounts after they’ve been hacked.
The AI chatbot “support assistant” will act as a guide for users to resecure their login and recover their account after its been hacked.
Eligible users will be able to access the tool in the YouTube Help Center by clicking the “chat with our hacked channel assistant” button.
When the option is selected, the chatbot will ask the user a series of questions about them and their account to both secure their Google login and to undo any changes the hacker has made to the channel.
The tool will then encourage the user to strengthen their account security to reduce the risk of being hacked in the future.
The new tool is currently only available in English, and certain troubleshooting features within the tool are only available for “certain users.” However, YouTube, owned by Google, plans to make the feature accessible to all users in the future.
The AI chatbot is designed to speed up and simplify the YouTube account recovery process.
Recovering a hacked social media account, including YouTube, can be a long process and potentially result in a significant loss of income for users such as influencers and other content creators.
Every YouTube channel is associated with at least one Google Account, meaning that when a YouTube channel is hacked, at least one of the Google Accounts associated with the channel is also compromised.
Cyber threat actors target social media accounts for a variety of reasons, including to launch phishing attacks and spread malware.
In early 2024, a number of high-profile social media accounts, including Certik and Mandiant, were hijacked by scammers to share links to malicious websites.
In January 2024, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s X (formerly Twitter) account was compromised, with the hackers posting a fake announcement regarding the approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on security exchanges.
There have also been a number of social media hacking incidents in which accounts are flooded with indecent or offensive content, which have no apparent financial motivation.