YouTube Gaming's Most-Watched Videos Are Dominated by Scams and Cheats

Found on Wired on Wednesday, 19 February 2020
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In January, all seven of the most-watched YouTube Gaming channels weren’t run by happy gamers livestreaming the game du jour. They were instead recorded, autoplaying videos advertising videogame cheats and hacks, sometimes attached to sketchy, credential-vacuuming websites, according to one analytics firm. The trend has continued into this month, with five of the top seven most-watched YouTube Gaming channels last weekend advertising cheats.

Queen PSH, has been active since October 2016, and appears to engage in a common form of scamming, says Zack Allen, director of threat intelligence at security firm ZeroFox. After you fill in your personal information—anything from your address to your credit card number—these types of sites will often turn around and sell it. Other times, sites that promise cheats or in-game money will download malware onto your computer.

It really looks like the younger generation, those so-called "digital natives" are much easier to scam than older people. So much for the theory that growing up with a new technology makes you better at handling it.