Malwarebytes Warns of YouTube SMS Porn Scam

LOS ANGELES—Jerome Segura posted to the Malwarebytes blog yesterday warning about spammers who are “beating YouTube’s filters to upload pornographic images and tricking people into following a hyperlink to view more.” It gets worse. “There is a catch,” writes Segura, “and it comes as a premium-rate SMS, asking for age confirmation when it really is about charging you an expensive fee to view the material.” He adds the SMS scam has “been reported already for fraud, but they keep on going nonetheless. Typically, one text message can cost you several dollars, while regular text messages are normally free or only a few cents.” The scam appears to be targeting Russians, which he adds is “perhaps the reason why they have not been identified and taken out right away by YouTube.” He mapped the traffic flow from one of the YouTube videos, most of which, he said, “were updated within the past few hours from accounts created on the same day or accounts that were dormant (possibly hacked). Some of the redirects used on the journey to the traffic's final destination, youxxtubes.org, are known and blacklisted disseminators of “malware and fraud in general.” Segura, despite his obvious dim view of porn in general, sagely advises people to “never send out a text message to someone you do not know simply because it is such an easy way to extort money from someone,” and, “If you must send out an SMS, it’s a good idea to Google the short code (number), as you may find scam reports posted by other users.” As far as YouTube goes, Segura says they need to tighten up their filtering, which somehow allowed very graphic videos to escape detection even with its highest filter.   “YouTube does have a ‘Safety Mode’ feature, which normally blocks inappropriate content quite well,” said Segura, “but it was not enabled by default, and even when I did turn it on, the offensive videos kept playing.”