YouTube accounts hacked: Prominent YouTubers with millions of followers lose content [details]

The accounts of popular YouTubers Tanmay Bhat, Aishwarya Mohanraj and former 'Bigg Boss' contestant Abdu Rozik have come under cyberattack. Similarly, Barkha Dutt's Mojo Story was also hacked and the entire content, including 11,000 videos, was deleted.

Tanmay, whose Gmail account too was hacked, features US automotive company Tesla's picture on his YouTube page, the channel even live streamed the company's event. His channel still had 473 videos. The channel, which has over 4 million subscribers, has no content on its page now.

Tanmay has claimed the two-factor authentication was breached in his case.

Mojo Story's content was deleted despite "hours of urging YouTube to act" and being assured that "action is being taken", Dutt said. "This could have been stopped... now, it's gone."

"After hours of urging @TeamYouTube to act & being assured action is being taken, I woke up to find @themojostory channel content ALL DELETED by the hackers- four years of blood, toil, sweat, tears, 11 thousand videos, COVID work of 3 years, ALL GONE. I am heartbroken," Barkha Dutt said on Twitter.

Similarly, Aishwarya Mohanraj's channel which has more than 70,000 subscribers features Tesla's picture with 2 live streams of a Tesla event.

Given Elon Musk's online popularity, hackers have impersonated him in the past to perpetrate various types of scams. Even posing as a business account of Musk-owned Tesla isn't entirely new. The live streams being run by these hackers carry superimposed messages that aggressively nudge users to scan a QR code on the screen.

Abdu, who has over 1 million subscribers on YouTube also faced the attack from hackers. His channel too has been flooded with videos of tutorials on crack software.

These series of incidents have left content creators in shock. Many have tried to ensure their backup was ready and well organised if their accounts were met with similar fate.