Thousands of people are currently watching scam instructional Ledger videos on YouTube, trying to trick them into handing over Bitcoin.

The highly polished Ledger Web Wallet videos are faking a live stream and are still running despite Ledger reporting them to YouTube as a phishing attempt on January 27.

Around 5000 users were watching three ‘live streams’ when Micky checked in this morning.

The ‘Ledger’ YouTube channel has 107,000 subscribers.

Ledger said YouTuber accounts had been hacked, but it’s unclear of whose.

The account was created in mid 2018 and account names are easily changed, with the large number of subscribers lending credibility.

Too good to be true

The phishing attempt is fairly transparent. Users are promised bonuses of up to 3000 Bitcoin for opening the Ledger Web Wallet and entering their 24 word recovery phrase.

“Wait for activation. Within 5 minutes you will receive bonuses’.

“For every $500 on your balance you will receive 0.02 BTC to your cryptocurrency wallet The larger the balance the more you will get.”

The videos purport to have the endorsement of Fabrice Dautriat, the Coin Integration manager at Ledger, and Benjamin Arama, the Ledger Live Product Manager among others.

Ledger warns users

Ledger distanced itself from the videos, tweeting a screenshot and a warning:

“We’re facing phishing attacks using hacked YouTube accounts.

Ledger isn’t affiliated to this and we reported these accounts @YouTube

.

We encourage impacted users to report those and contact local police if needed.

Remember: Never share your 24-words.”

Ledger said users were constantly targeted by phishing attacks on social media, search engines and via email, with attackers throwing up perfect imitations of the website to lure users into entering their 24-word recovery phrase.

“Please be very cautious. If you’re asked to provide your recovery phrase OR to send crypto assets, it’s a malicious attack.

“Ledger will never ask you for your 24-word recovery phrase.”

“Never enter your 24-word recovery phrase anywhere else than on your Ledger device.

Scammers increasingly targeting YouTube accounts

Micky reported earlier this month about a Chrome extension called ‘Ledger Secure’ that was actually malware sending users seed phrase back to the cybercriminals. One man lost 600 SEC worth about $16,000.

Hackers have been increasingly targeting YouTubers with large followings to run cryptocurrency scams and phishing attempts.

Hackers broke into the account of Czech gaming YouTuber Adam Jicha to leverage his 300,000 subscribers in a scam to run fake Binance givewaways. The account ended up being sold for half a Bitcoin on the darknet.

Other hacked YouTube accounts have purported to be Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse for ‘XRP giveaways’.

A scammer earned 309 BTC while posing as the Litecoin Foundation.