Fighting Scams Based on Impersonation
Observing that scams based on impersonation are getting popular, YouTube is enforcing a new rule that’d limit the users’ ability to pick special characters for their channel name. This should make the formation of an impersonating name harder for the crooks, who’d otherwise make a name that’s close to popular accounts.
With the addition of Unicode characters into the available characters for naming something, scammers are leveraging this to exploit popular accounts and lure unsuspecting people to their scams. We’ve seen most happening in the cryptocurrency space, where scammers post an external link that may run a fake contest or bluntly ask users for sensitive data.
