#188 - I Got Hacked (And This Is What Happened)

0:00I pull my YouTube channel up around 12 30 on Sunday and I see that my channel is live streaming. But it ain't me. It's some red, garling house, ripple bull run with a crypto thing, QR code sitting there, asking people for money and talking all about crypto. If you guys know anything about my channel, I don't talk about crypto. I have never talked about crypto once in my entire life. The channel name was changed to the ripple foundation. There's a different icon. My name was no longer there. There was a bunch of different videos with crypto playlists. So let's back up. I'll tell you the story about how I got there, how if this is happening to you, what to do, how to never get back there in the first place and the lessons that I learned. So within the last week or so, I had been in communication with the brand what I thought was better help help therapy. Usually they wanted to go on to my video, have an integration in there. They wanted me to try it out for a little bit, integrate themselves into a commercial

1:02basically in the middle of one of my videos. The email was totally legit. They reached out. There was a little contact card in the bottom with the woman's picture, better help, blah, blah, blah. I thought the email address did look a little bit weird, but that's not totally uncommon for some of these brand deals, especially if they're like, somebody is managing their stuff from overseas. We were planning on what the video would be about to integrate them in, what would be the most natural integration as well as what I was going to say, talking points and things like that. They sent a link, they said, hey, you just need to put your stuff in here, log in through YouTube so we can see your analytics or you can share your data with us. Now this is not something that's uncommon with brands. I've done this all the time. They wanted me to go onto a platform called Impact Radius to do this, which is actually an affiliate website, which is what I kind of thought was a little bit weird because I actually have an Impact Radius account. But I was like, okay, so I go and I click the link that they want me to do it.

2:05Impact Radius comes up. I recognize it as a real brand. I go and I log in with my YouTube credentials, which is essentially logging in with Google. I have to log into Google to get into my YouTube. This is something that's going to come up. The rest of this podcast is how much your Google is tied to getting you into different places for things online. I go on there. I can't remember my password, which again is not uncommon for me. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to click for God Password. So I create a new password, reset it. Okay, nothing happens. Still can't log into it. And I can't share the data. So I'm like, well, this is stupid, trying to do it again. Melk doesn't work. Doesn't work. Nothing visibly happens afterwards. There's no confirmation that I got in, nothing. And so I'm like, okay, well, that's weird. I guess it just doesn't really work. I don't know. Well, I go back to doing my thing. And then I see that I'm logged out of my Gmail immediately after I answer this in. No problem. I know my new password. I'm just going to answer in my new password that I just created. It's probably because I had to change the password as I logged out is what I'm thinking.

3:08So I go in there, try to do it. Password incorrect. It was changed less than an hour ago. I'm like, yeah, dude, I know. I just changed it. Enter it again. Password incorrect. Change less than an hour ago. Now I'm sitting there thinking, genuinely believing I just locked myself out somehow by trying to change my password. Again, not uncommon for me. I lock myself out a lot of times because I forget frickin passwords. So I'm not thinking there's anything malicious at this point. So what I end up doing is I just go to my Instagram. I post something that says I got locked out of my Google account. Does anybody know anybody at Google to help me basically get back in? One of my buddies responds literally right away, hey, I have some contacts at Google. I can help you. But this is a holiday weekend. This is over Labor Day weekend. It's a Sunday. They're probably not going to be in office until Tuesday. And I'm like, God, that's a great point. He says, but I'll reach out to him. Yeah, I hit up a few more contacts. One gentleman I know at YouTube. Great guy. Shout out, you know, who you are. Ask him. He's probably on vacation too. But he's like, yeah, I know some people.

4:09But again, they're probably not going to be in office till Tuesday. Hit up another one of my buddies that knows everybody on the planet. He goes, yes, I sent my buddy a contact. So I have like three contacts out. And that is one thing that I have a privilege of is having a network of folks to to reach out to other people. Because in my mind, what I had to find was just one person that could help me unlock this at this point is what I'm thinking, which this is going to be a tip for people at the end. I have no idea. Again, I just think that I'm locked out at this point. I don't even, I try to go into my YouTube, can't sign into it. Basically, I'm locked out of everything that you would use Google to sign in for. And now if you think about this, you, I at least use Google. I always hit signing with Google. I like fricking everything because I hate sitting there, remembering passwords or logging passwords down or whatever. It's just so much easier for me to just go sign in with Google, right? So think about everything that you've done that with. I am now locked out of all of that stuff.

5:11Every app, obviously Google calendars gone, my drives gone, Gmail's gone, YouTube's gone, Claude is gone, AI's gone, everything is gone. Okay, well, I'm thinking this is annoying, but okay, I'll try, I'm trying to just lock that so I gotta just be patient, whatever. So I go to Getsoo around noon and all this occurred around 9.30 a.m. When noon comes, I go to Getsoo and it's open map, which is simply means we're sparring with other people. And I'm sparring, I'm kind of talking about this, I'm kind of annoyed, whatever. But it's not extremely urgent, I'm thinking I'm gonna get everything back. Well, after I get done rolling, I go on my phone, I pull up, okay, weird, I'm signed out on my phone too. Of course. Okay, well, I'm gonna go to my channel, just see what's happening on there. Type in my name, Chad Lubinsky. Chad Lubinsky comes up, but Chad Lubinsky doesn't look like he no longer owns a channel. It has now changed the channel name. It's still at Chad Lubinsky, the user name handle. But now it has turned into a named ripple foundation with a different icon, the uploader

6:12different logo got rid of my picture, and now they're live streaming on my channel. It's literally say, said it's going live. Now I'm like, holy shit, I got hacked. Look at my playlist, they have a bunch of new videos uploaded that says they even uploaded them from two years ago. It's all about crypto. It's all about bull runs and stock market and scan the QR code here. And I'm just like, oh my god. And one of my buddy pulls it up and he goes, do this is bad. So I'm sitting there thinking my entire channel is drawn. I'm screwed. And obviously this is the exact moment where I'm thinking, okay, this went from being locked out to now I'm actually hacked. Now your brain goes to what else are they in? Are they into my bank accounts? Are they into, are they stealing stuff out of my Google drive? Is this just a YouTube thing? What is actually happening to me? Scary thing about this was is I knew immediately where it was from. It was definitely in one of my buddies told me he said, he said, hey, tweet at team on

7:14Twitter and see if they can do anything about it. And I'm like, what? They have like 2.1 million followers. How are they even going to see my tweet? And I barely use Twitter anyway. I probably look like a hacker tweeting at them. But that's kind of the only thing that I could do at this point because I did, I started researching other things, what to do. Bo, bo, so I tweet at team YouTube. They actually get back to me within less than an hour saying and said something back. But then basically the conversation went nowhere. What I actually ended up doing was I finally went to this, this form on YouTube. Basically, I think I typed in like YouTube hacking, whatever. And I went to this chat bot to report it. And what ended up happening then was the next day I wake up. And I got an actual email and they said, okay, enter in like your channel name, what it is that you think you got hacked, try and log in, blah, blah, blah. So they sent me this email the next day and I sent them all my stuff and they said, we'll get back to you within 72 hours or something like that.

8:15So the next day I kind of is quiet. I don't really hear anything. And I remember I'm driving on the highway, picking up my daughter or my girlfriend's daughter. We're just driving to late at night and I'm just thinking, oh my God, what happens if I don't get this back? What happens if nothing comes back? Because I'm obviously my YouTube channel still up. My videos are still there. But what happens if I get terminated because I didn't do these community guidelines? I'm selling a crypto scam apparently on this thing. What happens then? And all these things are going through my head and I'm like, man, I've really taken for granted what I have going on YouTube and stuff. And the next day I wake up and look on YouTube, I Google my name, channels gone, terminated, violating community guidelines. And I'm thinking, oh gosh, this could be a good sign though because they actually kicked the person out because I don't know what's worse. Having your YouTube channel terminated or having a live stream on there when it's clearly fricking not you and having everything renamed and them trying to scam your audience out

9:18of God knows what. Both are just terrible, but I almost felt relief when my YouTube channel was actually terminated. Well I go through the next day and I think it's maybe it's the day after that or something like that. I get another email from YouTube. They confirm, hey, we've seen some suspicious activity on your account and we're going to shut it down. We terminated it again, providing a little more information about your account. They sent me this form. I filled it out as best as I could. They gave them the whole synopsis. It was only 800 letters is what I could type in, but I gave them the whole synopsis of basically what I told you and they're like, okay, well, we'll look in. Give me 72 hours we'll look into it. Next day comes and all of a sudden I get an email from, hey, click here to reset your Google. I do it. Do a new password. I redo to, I redo my recovery emails. I download an authenticator app. I do everything. Bang, I get back into my Gmail. Get back into my drive. I have to sign back in everything. Whatever doesn't matter. Go to my YouTube. Still not working. I hit sign in with them. Again, suspicious activity.

10:20Give us 72 hours. We'll look into it. And within that day, actually, the end of the day, I ended up getting my freaking YouTube back. So everything was back within a span of, I would say. So Sunday when it happened, definitely not Monday. Definitely. It was, I think around, I think it was actually Tuesday when everything got reinstated. So it was about three days to where I was, I was stressing out pretty bad, which I feel very grateful for because some people on here that I've watched, man, they've went 12 days, two weeks, three weeks. And the worst thing is when you're reading on Reddit, when people are like, dude, just give up. Don't even, don't even go in there. Don't even try. Don't even email them. They are going to do anything. So don't read stuff and read it. Read the positive videos because if you read the stuff and read it, it's just like when I had my back pain, man, you are just going to feel dejected. You're not, you're going to, you're going to lose hope and you cannot lose hope with this. And I was telling Cassie, I said, look, I am not going to stop until I get this channel back. I don't care. I'm going to get this channel back no matter what.

11:21So yeah, I got everything resolved. Obviously I'm back on my YouTube. I deleted those playlists that they had. I changed everything back. And now it's kind of like, okay, what did I learn from this experience? Boy, I have got to say, this really made me feel grateful for what I have going here on YouTube and in my audience and in my Spotify. I couldn't even get into my Spotify podcast for creators. I couldn't upload podcasts there either because I had log in with freaking Google. Okay. So it was the gratitude that I experienced after getting my channel back was very much needed for me where I'm at because you get too used to something that's good and you just take it for granted. This is with anything. This is with relationships. This is with your parents. This is with business. And I was getting a little bit too comfortable. And so I'm grateful that this happened and that it really, yes, it caused me a lot of stress in the moment.

12:21But other than that, really what it gave me was gratitude and a lot of lessons learned going forward to protect the stuff that I have online. So what I would tell creators are just people in general drawing forward. So this doesn't happen to you. Boy, make sure. Like run the email through your AI, clog whatever to make sure that this is not a fishing attempt that and it's something that I experienced. When I look back at my emails, actually, I had an email a few weeks before better health from Red Bull in quotes, say, oh, it was a very similar type of email message. It looked legit person, whatever. And Red Bull wanted me to join their thing, whatever. They wanted me to sign up on a page just like this one. And the thing was is I didn't click it because and I just left it sitting in my email because I don't know. I just had a weird feeling about it. It was like, why does Red Bull want to, I don't know, it just, it didn't seem legit with better health. It seemed legit because I thought that they had seen my video about the mountains won't

13:22solve her problems before. And I thought, and I put two and two together and I thought, oh, they probably want to sponsor some kind of new video where I'm talking about mountains and how it can be a therapy. It can be something where it could be your therapy. And we actually had, we're brainstorming back and forth about what to do and how to integrate it, which I was going to do a tier ranking system where I ranked things people say on the mountains or things people believe about hiking. One of them was going to be, this is cheaper than therapy. And I was going to actually relate it back into better health. Anyway, besides the point because we're not going to get there anymore. But so make sure that those are legit. What I did was I actually downloaded a free like malware virus scanner thing called, what the heck is it called? Avast one. So it's totally free. Scans all your files. It's, yeah, it's supposed to scan for malicious emails and things like that. So if Google doesn't pick it up when you get the email, hopefully this will.

14:23The next thing that I did was obviously I did 2FA everywhere and I also downloaded 10s different security codes. I printed them off and then I also put a legit recovery email in there as well. And I also, I think I'm going to start writing down my passwords versus keeping them in my phone or something like that. Like I think physically just storing your passwords is a pain in the ass. Excuse me, but it's going to get you past what happens here to where if you forget your password, although the thing was is that I don't know if any of these things would have really actually saved me from where I was at. Unless I had an authentication token, which is a physical token. This is me just in layman's terms of how I believe this works. It's like a physical token that you can have that you can key in a password that's like on your keychain or something physically. This is something that I'm going to get. I don't know if any of that would have helped me because I think once I gave them, I

15:24clicked and I gave them access to my YouTube, I think they changed everything. So maybe the only thing that would have worked and saved me is the physical code. I don't really know. Obviously, the thing that would have saved me is not clicking in the fricking first place, right? But another thing is do not assume that you're the one that screwed it up. If you start getting locked out of things, my brain now is going to go straight to a hack. It's not going to be, oh, I just randomly locked myself out of Google or whatever. No, there might be something else fishy going on. Additionally, think about how many times we're referred to this early in the podcast, but you use Google to sign in for something. It's going to be all your apps. So I'm considering it's so easy to do it. Oh, maybe I didn't learn my lesson, but I'm probably going to still use Google to sign in. But the point is that I'm going to make it a lot harder to break into my Google in the first place than it was before. But if you are really, really, really wigged out about this, the prudent thing would be to just create your own email and password for the specific site. So you can still get in there.

16:24And that's probably what I will actually end up doing going forward now, but I'm saying it all on all. I mean, I had a full recovery from this, but holy cow, was it scary? And just how easy it is for somebody to just gain access to everything that you've worked for the whole time I'm thinking my entire, I mean, I built this channel for seven years. It's going to be all gone. I did it for nothing. And then I'm thinking about, oh my God, trying to restart everything to get to almost 17,000 subscribers. I mean, I have worked my butt off to get to this place and how unfair it is. And so I am so thankful to God and all of my buddies. I don't know if some of the buddies that I had reaching out to people, if that helped escalate the thing, I was just trying to get as many things going in my direction as possible. And that's what I would really recommend for anybody that's going through this is, is not only tweeting at T. YouTube, but also I also posted on the some kind of Google chat group about it. Some guy got back to me there.

17:26T. YouTube got back to me. I had my buddies. I was emailing YouTube. Like, if you are truly wanting your channel back, you need to do anything and everything. I mean, I, there was two days, I mean, it was Sunday and then Monday where I, all I didn't do any, any work. It was literally just trying to figure out how to get back into my YouTube. And I was not going to let these guys win. And so that would be my advice, best advice for most people that are going to be going through this. So leave a comment down below if this is happening to you or if this happened to you. And if not, hopefully this helps you guys going forward. We'll see you for the next video.