In an alarming cyber-attack, famous the YouTube channels of popular YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia were hacked on Wednesday night. Cyber attackers renamed his channels, including Beer Biceps, as “Tesla”. This incident comes a few days after the YouTube channel of the Supreme Court of India was hacked. The hackers renamed Ranveer’s Beer Biceps channel to “@Elon.trump.tesla_live2024,” while they changed his personal channel’s name to “@Tesla.event.trump_2024.” Moreover, all his videos, including podcasts and interviews, were also deleted and were replaced with Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s events streams.
With the rising cases of cyber-attacks, hacking of someone’s accounts can be stressful and creates a panic situation for the person who invested a lot of time and hard work creating content. As soon as any such attack happens, the question that immediately pops up is – ‘Can my account be recovered?’ Well, the answer is ‘Yes’. As per Google, a hacked YouTube account can be recovered. Here’s what you should do when your channel is hacked:
What to Do if Your YouTube Channel is Hacked?
First of all, you need to double check and look for signs that your channel is hacked. YouTube channels are always associate to at least one Google Account. If your channel is hacked, one of the Google Accounts linked to the channel is also compromised.
Signs Your Channel Is Hacked
- If you notice your profile picture, email settings, descriptions, AdSense for YouTube, or sent messages are changed and you did not made those changes.
- You will receive email notifications or penalties or strikes if some videos have been posted as your Google Account but you realize that those videos are not yours.
How To Recover Your Hacked YouTube Account?
You should never share your email address and password with anyone if you want to keep your account safe. Also, never download files or software from a source you don’t trust.
First of all, it’s important to recover the hacked Google account linked with the YouTube channel in order to recover a hacked YouTube channel. Below are the steps to recover your YouTube channel:
Step 1: First of all, secure your hacked Google Account linked to your YouTube channel
Step 2: To avoid Community Guidelines breach or copyright strikes, immediately revert unwanted changes on your channel.
Step 3: Use security best practices with all channel users to cut the risk of unauthorized access to your Google Account.
How To Recover your Google Account?
If you can still sign in to your Google Account, immediately change your password and secure your account and move to the next step.
In case you are unable to sign in to your Google Account, you can follow these steps to recover your Gmail:
- To confirm it’s your account, you will have to answer some questions.
- If you are still having trouble logging to your account, you can try the tips to complete account recovery steps.
- When prompted, reset your password. Make sure you select a strong password you haven’t used previously with this account.
- Your channel managers/owners must also follow the same steps to secure their Google Account.
How To Restore Your Channel To Its Pre-Hacked State?
A hacker can make several changes to your account after gaining control of it. Thoroughly review of your channel and account and identify unauthorized changes. After you have recovered your channel, you can clean it up and restore it to its pre-hacked state with these steps:
- First, remove unknown and unwanted users from your channel or account.
- Change your channel’s basic info and branding as it was previously.
- Delete all videos uploaded by hackers
- Update your video privacy settings
- Check unauthorised access
What to Do if Your Channel Was Terminated After Hacking?
If your channel was terminated after your Google Account was hacked, you must ensure that you have recovered your account and after that you can look for an email which will carry details about how to appeal channel termination in your inbox. You can appeal with this form after recovering your hacked Google Account. If your account recovery is incomplete, you appeal may be rejected.
In case your appeal is rejected, you can get additional help from YouTube. You can contact YouTube Creator Support team for help provided your channel is eligible and you have recovered your Google Account.
However, if not eligible for Creator Support, you can get help from @TeamYouTube on Twitter.
