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While many people use it to search for cute kitten videos, how-to videos, and videos showing dumb people doing dumb stuff, a recent report suggests that YouTube – the third most visited website in the world – is being used as a black market to sell stolen credit cards, passports and other illicit items.
Not only that, but Google – as the owner of YouTube – has been accused of profiting from it.
According a report by internet-safety research group Digital Citizens Alliance, YouTube has thousands of videos promoting the sale of stolen credit card information, many with advertisements for legitimate credit card companies and other businesses running alongside.
“It’s troubling to see criminals infest YouTube in this way,” said Tom Galvin, executive director of the Digital Citizens Alliance. “It’s equally troubling to see Google profit from that via ads, because it speaks to whether or not Google has an incentive to take this stuff down.”
So, how does Google profit from these videos? Google makes its money through its advertisers. On YouTube, that means making money from ads that run alongside videos, ad banners embedded within videos, and ads that run before videos play.
If a video reaches a certain number of views, the poster of that video and Google earn advertising revenue from that advertiser. If that video happens to be promoting the sale of illicit goods, such as stolen credit card details, it means that both the person who posted the video and Google stand to profit from illegal activity.
According to Javelin Strategy & Research Inc., cybercrime is a thriving industry, with US$18 billion stolen by hackers last year through identify theft and account fraud. But it seems that it’s not just cybercriminals who profit from this.
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The Digital Citizens Alliance report quoted the evaluation of Harvard Business School Professor Ben Edelman, who had estimated that Google’s revenue from the illegal activities of others exceeded US$1 billion dollars.
“The unholy alliance between hackers stealing credit card numbers and online markets advertising stolen and bogus credit cards has existed right under our noses,” the report said. “Hackers have been promoting the sale of stolen or bogus credit cards on online markets for years, including on some of our most popular online websites such as YouTube.”
The new Silk Road?
The report compared YouTube with notorious “dark web” site Silk Road, an anonymous marketplace that facilitates the sale of black market items, saying “there isn’t that big of a difference” between the two sites.
“That’s a scary thing,” Galvin said. “Silk Road is viewed as nefarious and the dark web, and YouTube is viewed as a kind of a playground for everyone from preteens to adults.”
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In its defence, YouTube released the following statement:
“Our Guidelines prohibit any content encouraging illegal activities, including videos promoting the sale of illegal goods. YouTube’s review teams respond to videos flagged for our attention around the clock, removing millions of videos each year that violate our policies. We also have stringent advertising guidelines, and work to prevent ads appearing against any video, channel or page once we determine that the content is not appropriate for our advertising partners.”
While the Digital Citizens Alliance acknowledged that YouTube had a tough job policing the millions of hours of video uploaded each day, Galvin said the site should be doing more, by taking a more proactive approach to flagging objectionable videos.
“If they took a dozen or so search terms and just took the time to create a review process around it, they could do a lot of good work,” Galvin said. “We’re not suggesting their going to take onerous task of reviewing every video. That would be unrealistic, but they could isolate certain search terms.”
He said that the issue “is not being solved from a systemic standpoint. Adding, “We’ve kind of made it a cause to keep pushing on Google to clean that up. I think we’ve only had moderate success on that front.”
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