Cryptocurrency criminals are lurking on YouTube, a recent lawsuit filed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak claims.
Most of the schemes involve scams that purport to be giving bitcoins away but in fact are designed to steal the virtual money, along with other types of cryptocurrency, from users of the popular streaming video site. Wozniak’s complaint alleges YouTube has hosted videos that use footage of him without his permission to pull off the bitcoin scams.
A July study by analytics firm Whale Alert found that YouTube users had lost $24 million in bitcoin and related scams in the first six months of 2020. That’s up from $14 million over the prior three and a half years combined.
A spokesperson for Alphabet-owned YouTube told CBS MoneyWatch it removed 2.3 million videos and closed 1.7 million accounts in the first three months of the year in connection with scams and other deceptive practices on its platform. YouTube did not confirm how many of those scams included cryptocurrencies, but the spokesperson denied that bitcoin-related fraud is a major problem for the site.
The number of videos YouTube has taken down that were tied to scams has dropped dramatically this year. A YouTube spokesperson attributed that decline to factors that include its evolving enforcement practices. According to YouTube’s enforcement page, the site has been relying more heavily on technology to police its platform this year, in part because of staffing issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of the 6 million videos that YouTube removed over the first three months of 2020, about 400,000 were taken down because of a user complaint or because of detection by YouTube’s human enforcement team. That was down from nearly 2 million in the same period in 2019.
New coin, old pitch: You’ll double your money back
Perhaps the most common type of cryptocurrency scam on YouTube features a famous person, often a technology entrepreneur like Wozniak, discussing bitcoin at a conference or other public venue. The videos promise users that if they send bitcoin to an electronic wallet named in the segment before it ends, they will get double that amount back. The videos appear to be livestreams of events, but are not.
Myreille Philistein, a market researcher in Brooklyn, New York, who is also suing YouTube in connection with one of the scams, said she was on the site’s homepage on May 15 when an ad popped up for a live event featuring Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell. According to the suit, Philistein believed the video that she was watching was live and that thousands of other viewers were also watching. Neither was true. Philistein claims she sent $800 in bitcoin and lost her money.
A keyword search “bitcoin giveaway” this week by CBS MoneyWatch did not find any videos on…
Read more:YouTube has a bitcoin scam problem, too, lawsuit alleges
