For those people who have been following us for a long time, you may remember that at Novarise we have had some problems for a few months because there are many scammers who are creating fake channels to confuse our viewers on Youtube.
In December 2020 a video was created to inform all of our followers what was happening and how some imposters were stealing money from our subscribers.
We created that video to inform you, but at the end of the day it was decided that it was better to promote that video through commercials to make sure that everyone who might have skipped that video could see it, so that you know , and not only protect yourself, but you have to help others.
That problem got worse, because as a result we implemented several filters, several steps, to prevent those comments from entering.
We blocked comments that had the word WhatsApp, that had phone numbers and phrases like “contact me”, or that had some type of email.
We are realizing that now those imposters have changed their technique. Instead of posting a new comment, what they are doing now is that they are commenting on the comments that already exist from our followers.
To all of our new YouTube followers: Alert!
There are other people who are still relatively new, they are coming to the channel for the first time and when they see a comment from some impostor, acting like they are part of our staff, people unfortunately fall, they really think it is Novarise responding to them.
We realized that there is a youtuber, much bigger than Novarise, his name is Graham Stephan and he has a channel that has millions of subscribers. We realized that if a channel the size of Graham’s channel can have that problem, imagine a small channel with just 200,000 subscribers like Novarise.
Probably 200,000 subscribers sounds very big for everyone, but on the scale, compared to Graham’s channel which has millions of subscribers, we are relatively small. This is a wake-up call, not only for subscribers, but also for YouTube.
We have an audience that follows us around the world, who go to our channel with the purpose of educating themselves and looking for quality information. We cannot allow those imposters, who are acting as part of the Novarise brand, to be extorting money from those people who are trying to learn in order to have a better future.
What is happening with our Youtube channel?
There are some imposters who are impersonating our brand and creating fake channels with the same name: Novarise. They use the same logo and just pretend to be us.
Every time they comment on our channel, our team has a series of procedures to protect our users. Some of those steps are: Blocking that channel. Blocking that channel to not allow them to come to us and continue stealing money from our subscribers and not to create spam on our channel.
What’s going on? Every time that the fake channel is blocked, the YouTube algorithm does not take it very well, because all it sees is that, “Novarise is creating spam content” or “it is stealing from people.”
That automatically locks out the original channel. The YouTube algorithm does not have the ability to solve this problem yet, we believe that it cannot distinguish between a real channel and a fake channel or the legitimate channel.
For a year now we have been blocking these scammers. We want to express and share with you, our readers, our concern, because we have dedicated more than two years to creating this quality content for all of you.
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Some solutions
Let’s move on to the solutions part. The second part of the solution is going to be for other people and other content creators to be on the lookout and know what they can do and how they can identify messages that are fake.
- The first solution: Having a check mark. This would confirm that we are a legitimate channel.
In order to obtain that check mark, a channel must have a minimum of 100,000 subscribers. For other channels like Novarise Invest it is a bit more difficult to get it because it only has about 50,000 subscribers. That means you can’t earn that check mark yet. A solution could be to lower that limit.
- The second solution: When a channel is locked, don’t lock the channel at the name level.
Every time a fake channel is blocked, we are automatically blocking ourselves too, inadvertently. The best way to solve it is that every time we press the “Block that channel” button, we block it at an email level.
Why? The way a channel is created is an email and below that email you can create several channels. If this channel is blocked, the best way to block it is to block it at the email level, because if we block this channel itself, the imposter can create another channel with the same name and then create another channel with the same name and it will be an endless problem.
- The third solution: Do not allow them to create a channel using a name that already exists.
No one should have the power, authority or ability to create a channel using the same name, because it can create confusion. Also, in our case we have already been working with that name for years, so why could someone else copy that? Facebook and Instagram realized this and have already taken action on this matter.
Facebook and Instagram do not allow you to take a name that already exists, and in fact, every time you block a comment Facebook and Instagram do it at the email level, they do not do it at the name level, that already eliminates the problem from the root .
- Solution number four: Creating a filter for content creators to block a channel that has the same name as us, but not just block it at the name level but block it at the channel identification number level.
Every time a channel is created that channel is assigned an identification number such as in the United States they give us a Social Security number or in our countries they give us a card, or in the state they do not give a license or license number. State ID, it’s the same with a YouTube channel.
As content creators we should have the right to block any comment that comes from a channel that has the exact same name as us. If solution three is implemented there would be no need to do this, but it is better to have several ways to ensure that we have that possibility to block those imposters.
As users we must be aware of what is happening and know where we have a presence and rights in social networks. The Novarise brand itself has a presence on just four platforms, the first is YouTube, the second is on Facebook, the third is on Instagram, and the fourth is on LinkedIn.
We don’t do anything for WhatsApp, we don’t have a WhatsApp chat group. We also have nothing on Telegram.
Tips to avoid scams with fake profiles
The recommendation for our readers and followers is that when they receive a message from an impostor posing as our brand, they take into account several things:
1. First, open that channel and try to check how many subscribers it has.
If you open that channel and you only see about 50 subscribed people that gives a lot to say. That is one of the red flags. It is an imposter and you should not trust that person.
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Check since when they are publishing content. Novarise was created in 2018.
Review the type of interaction that the impostors have in the videos, if they have a channel of 1,000 subscribers (for example) let’s suppose that the impostor really put energy into it and wanted to work hard and they got about four, five or even 10 videos published you can easily make a copy of the videos and send it to us. Try to see what the interaction is in this video.
Our videos have thousands of views and some even have millions of views, that gives a lot to say about who is the legitimate person or what is the legitimate channel and who is the imposter.
On behalf of our platform we would like to inform you that we have a team of several people checking those comments behind the screen every day sometimes including weekends, and even with this, sometimes they manage to comment because they are very fast.
At Novarise we do our best to check for new comments and from time to time we monitor the comments of the people who are participating.
For those people who have doubts, we do not make inquiry sessions, our time is reserved for students and that is very time consuming. We do not do one-to-one consultation, we have only one product and that product can be found on our website and it is a course.
2. Another tip that we can present is: Pay attention to the format of the message.
People who are dedicated to stealing from people, to scam, typing messages like “Text me on WhatsApp”, but instead of typing the word WhatsApp they type: “W. HE HAS.” and then the phone numbers with spaces: “+1. 3. 4. 7… ”
3. The next tip would be: Do not add personal information in the messages.
Sometimes we have to delete messages in the comments section because many people have left their phone number, many have left their contact via email, and what do these scammers do? They go and contact you pretending to be us and they will try to steal your money.
4. The last point is: Ignore users posing as people who are pretending to have a conversation.
They comment things like, “Oh, I invested with this person and this person made me earn millions of dollars,” then the other person could say, “Oh yeah, this person helped me earn millions of dollars.” They create a kind of thread of testimonials.
All of those testimonials are false, and believe it or not we are also actively working to remove that from our social media platforms.
We need your help so that together we can avoid scams, and that we as content creators can continue to survive, to be able to fight against these thieves and be able to continue to create quality content.
We will take care of letting YouTube know, to negotiate with YouTube to see what can be done from the platform in order to create a community.
In this way it will be possible to create an environment in which everyone can feel safe and sound, come to our channel and be able to continue learning and we, on our side, can focus our attention on creating quality content.
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