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I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile
- keyle 6y agoI find this partially interesting but mostly lucky. I don't see this hack raking a lot of dollaroos. "stealing" someone's account would be far more dangerous. That said I'm surprised that Patreon will just let people recycle accounts like this without even a second step. This is no different than DNS parking after a domain fell off the wagon, only with direct revenues.
- qwantim1 6y agoNot lucky- just deceptive. Deception is what scammers do, and they do it because it’s guaranteed to make money, not because they hope to get lucky. I’m not advocating this. Doing this was wrong, and it’s not some black hat exploit. It was a scam; pretending to be someone to make money off of an unwitting victim.
- rriepe 6y agoI'm not a lawyer but I got lawyer-nervous reading this post.
- ObsoleteNerd 6y agoThat’s because it’s fraud.
- pmiller2 6y agoNah. It's not fraud if they don't get any benefit from it. Since they refunded the single, solitary person who pledged $3/month, then shut it all down, it's all good from the fraud angle.
- cecja 6y agoIt's identity theft.
- icefrakker 6y agoYeah and if I steal 100 bucks from you then give it back is that fine too? Honestly why do you write something that a child could read and instantly know it's nonsense?
- Dylan16807 6y agoA dead comment asked if stealing 100 dollars if fine if you give it back. So I'll chip in that for basic theft, one of the core elements is intent to permanently deprive the original owner. So if someone steals money, changes their mind, and then returns it, that's still theft. And taking money to spend, with a promise of returning money later, still counts as theft. But if the intent all along was to return it the next day, stored safely the entire time, that's not theft. Obviously intent is hard to prove, so don't try to pull that off without a lot of evidence and/or a very understanding target.
- Hnrobert42 6y agoHow was this fraud? He simply created a Patreon account. Yes, it happened to be used by someone else previously, but how is that his fault?
- Dylan16807 6y agoWhy are you asking me?
- bestnameever 6y agoDidn't he also use images from the youtube channel to make the patreon account look like it belonged to the youtube user?
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago> Yes, it happened to be used by someone else previously, but how is that his fault? Fraud is deception with the intent of personal gain. He wrote and published an entire blog article entitled "How I exploited existing youtube videos with a fake Patreon profile" in which he describes how he registered a Patreon account with the expectation of deceiving users into sending him money.
- braddx 6y agoit's called "responsible disclosure" though this is not 100% responsible. lol
- cecja 6y agoThis is just fraud nothing more or less. It's not even that interesting of an exploit and especially not worthy 689 words.
- braddx 6y agoplease submit this to HITB white papers - https://twitter.com/HITBMedia/status/1359324451976843267 https://twitter.com/HITBMedia/status/1359324451976843267
- hi5eyes 6y agois this an exploit I remember there was an "exploit" that reregistered the urls from old tweets of celebs or verified users that had used now expired link shorteners
- tehwebguy 6y agoInteresting! Lot’s of more active scams like this happening in merchandising. I started doing merch for YouTubers back in maybe 2007 and in the last 3-4 years the scams have really picked up. For some time the most well known youtubers would receive spam replies on all of their tweets with links to counterfeit merch sites. If you search for the the top handful of YT creator names on Amazon or eBay you’ll find loads of bootleg merch (sometimes with hundreds of reviews!)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nexthash 6y agoNot related to the subject of the post, but for anyone interested OP seems to run a stock portfolio tracker for dividend investors, which he mentioned briefly (his blog mostly concerns his investing endeavors). It seemed pretty cool to me and is in need of support, so I'll leave the link here: https://www.digrin.com/ https://www.digrin.com/
- vladmk 6y agoLove this, I run a 500k a year company gonna do 1 million this year (with our run rate) hmu and let’s collaborate/let me help you for free
- tekromancr 6y ago"I discovered this neat new hack called 'fraud'"
- cmeacham98 6y agoThis post is wild. The author does not seem to realize they are confessing to a relatively serious crime, and even calls it a "profitable business"!
- CyanDeparture 6y agoThe writer at the end refunds the money and messages Patreon to fix the issue, I think that would go massively in his favour in the rare change it ended up in front of a judge.
- cmeacham98 6y agoLegal consequences aren't the only form of consequences. In this post the author mentions their (legitimate) business. If I was a potential customer looking into said business and found this post I would be very offput by the lack of morals. The strongest condemnation we receive for literal theft is they "didn't want to", the author barely even seems to understand why their behavior is immoral.
- boudin 6y agoDid you read the post to the very end? I don't see anything immoral, he just spotted a weakness in Patreon, warned Patreon and wrote a blog post about it. Nothing wrong here.
- cmeacham98 6y agoYes, I did read the post until the end. The author makes no mention of warning Patreon about this weakness, unless you're counting this blog post as the warning. They clearly attempted to impersonate the original owner of the page, using a description and artwork suggesting they were the original owner. The second to last paragraph features the author fantasizing about how much money they could make by defrauding people. Quote: "This plan could be pretty profitable!" Like yeah, in the end they took down the page and refunded the patron. But the author made the wrong choice at essentially every step prior to that moment. The author didn't just "spot a weakness in patreon", they attempted to (and managed to) commit wire fraud. The fact they had little success and later returned what they stole is relatively little consolation.
- EE84M3i 6y agoThe technical summary here seems to be: patreon shouldn't allow usernames/url slugs to be reused.
- IndySun 6y agoDigital locksmiths here are generally applauded as ingenious. This tale is not at all surprising except that the OP fessed up in the end. The morality aspect is moribund, in an ocean of tracking, data mining, fake accounts, yes fraud, and the general disregard for other peoples hard work (those you don't see, you don't feel for).
- Ice_cream_suit 6y agoWire fraud attracts fairly stiff penalties....
- the0k0 6y agobest marketing strategy ever however, what you are doing is illegal...