MrBeast has around 170 million subscribers on YouTube, and regularly gives away money to guests who overcome challenges in his videos.
Read on to learn more about how these scam ads work and how to report them.
Outsmart the scammersMrBeast giveaway scam
Fraudsters are copying MrBeast’s branding to convince viewers they’re part of his team on dodgy YouTube adverts. These ads promise huge giveaways, making claims such as ‘I’m giving away $1,000 to everyone who visits this page’.
If you click on one of these ads you’ll be taken to a phishing website. The website will invite you to ‘claim your reward’ before asking you to complete various tasks. In the course of doing so you’ll need to provide personal information, which may be used to scam you at a later date.
In another dodgy ad imitating MrBeast, victims are taken to a malicious website to receive their ‘prize’. The site then downloads malware to their device before asking for the email address associated with their PayPal account.
Dodgy cryptocurrency ads on YouTube
As part of our research, we clicked on an advert promoting cryptocurrency investments in the top-left hand corner of the YouTube homepage.
Initially, we were redirected to a video claiming Elon Musk had opened a new investment platform.
We were then shown a fake website imitating The Daily Mirror newspaper, before being directed to a website called ‘Quantum AI’, where we were asked for our details to 'start trading'. Quantum AI is a fake cryptocurrency firm that is regularly touted in ads containing fake endorsements from MoneySavingExpert’s Martin Lewis.
We shared these ads with YouTube and they were removed. A spokesperson told us: 'Protecting users is our top priority and we have strict ads policies that govern the types of ads and advertisers we allow on our platforms.
'We enforce our policies vigorously, and if we find ads that are in violation we remove them. We continue to invest significant resources to stop bad actors and we are constantly evaluating and updating our policies and improving our technology to keep our users safe.'
How to avoid and report dodgy YouTube ads
To report scam content on YouTube, select the three dots under a video and tap ‘report’.
If you’ve entered your email address on a dodgy site, change your password straight away.
There are various free ad blockers you can download to stop ads on YouTube. The video platform also offers YouTube Premium, which provides ad-free viewing for £11.99 a month.
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/watch-out-for-dodgy-ads-on-youtube-promising-cash-giveaways-a4Le52l6SSkV