I and 103045 people like the video that I did not watch


    I want to talk about the story that happened to me recently. I am not an expert on Internet security, and may have made the wrong conclusions, I hope in this case they will correct me.

    I don’t use YouTube too often and I like it less often. Therefore, when in my story several records suddenly appeared that I liked some videos, I immediately noticed this. Frustrated, without even paying particular attention to what kind of videos they were, he decided that this was a YouTube glitch, removed the likes and forgot. But later it turned out that not only likes appeared in history.

    It turned out that at about the same time I was “watching” other videos. The content was such that I immediately realized that I couldn’t watch it, not like putting likes, and of course the first thing I thought about was viruses, where I used my gmail to register and what could cause a password leak.

    In principle, there was nothing terrible among the “watched” ones: a music video, a review of a car, obscure events, and something else political. However, neither I, nor any of those who theoretically could use my computer, in theory, should not have watched it.

    I checked that the password works, it means the account was not stolen, but somehow I watched and liked the account due to me. I decided to look, maybe some data leak or vulnerability in YouTube? First of all, there were several messages like this on the hub:YouTube blocked the account

    User ivakin discovered that a series was posted from his account and it was blocked. All attempts to clarify the situation failed, so he decided that robots were sitting there and it was impossible to prove anything to them.

    From the found correspondence with YouTube support, it became clear that, according to them, it’s not robots, but people who analyze such cases, and for the only reason they know, they decide whether the user has really been hacked or if he is cheating and has maliciously violated copyright, for which subject to perpetual expulsion from YouTube.

    From this, it didn’t feel at all easier for me: for now, instead of me, only videos are watched and likes are put, and what if this is just the beginning? Why would someone upload movies and TV shows through stolen accounts when they are quickly blocked anyway? Content terrorists? Trying to draw attention to the injustices of life by banning the innocent?

    I began to search further and found the next entertaining thread on Google forums. Here is a translation of some messages from there:

    It happens to me too. What kind of videos do you have? I have heavy rock and metal, I never listen to such music.
    Here it is again (this time the videos were more decent, but I still didn’t watch them). I do not understand what is happening.
    I have the same problem! I have disgusting porn in my browsing history !!! My children of 7 and 8 years old use my account to watch something childish, this error needs to be fixed urgently !!! Thank God, children haven’t visited YouTube recently. Wth ???
    Thanks for this thread. I just scolded my son, because I noticed in the history of viewing adult videos, he almost in tears swore that he did not watch anything like that.
    Why is Google not responding to this issue? I have only children’s videos, and my girlfriend’s porn is wrong ... and if suddenly a pedo or terrorist videos and everyone thinks I did it ... it becomes damn dangerous.
    Just looked at my story. Tons of porn ... What the hell ?!

    In the thread there are reports of similar problems and requests to sort it out from 2011 to April 2013 and all to no avail. They are advised to change the password, they ask if anyone else could log in from their computer, or maybe they went to YouTube somewhere at work and did not log out. Users respond that they didn’t forget anything, they didn’t give the password to anyone, after changing the symptoms they changed the passwords and nothing helps - the videos that they didn’t watch and the likes that they don’t put in the story continue to appear.

    Glad that such a problem was not only mine, I continued to search and soon the answer was found. Everything turned out to be unexpectedly simple. My case had nothing to do with hijacking accounts. It’s just that on some sites there are scripts for cheating YouTube views and likes. At the same time, the theme of the site itself is not necessarily at least somewhat related to the theme of the videos that are being wound up. But if the user is logged in to YouTube, the script uses this data to covertly launch the video. However, they do not recognize the password, so there is no harm, except that in the recommendations for viewing you will soon see very unexpected things.

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