YouTube Email Scam

Scammers do not rest on Christmas. People who are amoral and online criminals do not really observe holidays. Notice the time stamp of the below scam email. Ok... do not notice the time stamp of my posting of this scam email to alert others. They won't let it rest, neither will I.

So here is one example of how a scam fake youtube notification email looks. I used a screen shot so you can see how they set it up to look like the email is coming from youtube to tell you your video has been approved. As I have not uploaded any videos to youtube, I'm clearly not their target, but they send out millions of these emails, knowing that lots of people DO upload videos to youtube and certainly some percentage of them will think this is a real notification and click on one of those darn links in the fake email.

The message for the link of the supposed video says this: "The link for the video says: There was a problem connecting to YouTube. This video may not exist or it may only play on YouTube. Try going to their website: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEaaDkFzYw0a&feature=topvideos_mp"

An unsuspecting user will then think, oh I have to click on one of these other links to go see my video - and *all* the other links in the scam email actually redirect the user to a clearly bogus and probably malicious website: http://hasret.ekarakus.com/deliriously.html [I put the link here but DON'T go to it, I wouldn't even risk what would happen, especially since many of these malicious pages can just begin downloading spyware to your computer so they can track your keystrokes, seeking out your passwords. So don't try that link.]

The header of the email looked like this:
From:    YouTube Service (lwong@50.22.132.48-static.reverse.softlayer.com)
Return-Path: lwong@50.22.132.48-static.reverse.softlayer.com
Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2012 03:33:07 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: YouTube Service has sent you a personal message: Your video has been approved‏

and below is an image of the bogus email content, designed to look as if youtube was actually notifying you of your upload. Remember, none of the links actually go to youtube, they all go to a fake page that probably looks like youtube if you are not paying attention to the actual destination of the url and not just the blue underlined label you see in the email.

Give me a Christmas gift and do NOT fall for this scam. Let the scammer go empty-handed this time. Make my day.