Securing your YouTube account helps prevent your account from being hacked, hijacked, or compromised.
Note: If you think your account has been hacked, follow these steps to secure it.
Secure Your YouTube Account
Create a strong password & keep it safe
Create a strong password
A strong password helps you keep your personal information safe and prevents someone else from getting into your account.
Create a strong and complex password: Use 8 characters or more. It can be any combination of letters, numbers, and symbols.
Make your password unique: Do not use your YouTube account password on other sites. If another site gets hacked, the password could be used to enter your YouTube account.
Avoid personal information and common words: Do not use personal information like your birthdays, common words like “password,” or common patterns like “1234.”
Protect your password from hackers
Manage your passwords
Tip: To find out if any passwords saved in your Google Account may be exposed, are weak, or are reused for multiple accounts, use Password Checkup.
Never share your login info
Do a regular security checkup
Go to the Security Checkup page to get personalized security recommendations for your account and follow these tips to make your account more secure.
Add or update account recovery options
- Block someone from using your account without your permission
- Alert you if there’s suspicious activity on your account
- Recover your account if you’re ever locked out
Turn on 2-Step Verification
- Security keys (Most secure verification step)
- Google Prompts (More secure than text message codes)
- Google Authenticator Application (Receive codes without internet or mobile data)
Remove suspicious people from your account
- Change or remove access from your YouTube Account
- Change or remove access from your Brand Account
Remove sites and apps you don’t need
Update your software and backup your account
Protect against suspicious messages & content
Phishing is when a hacker disguises themself as someone trustworthy to take personal information, like financial data, a national ID/social security number, or credit card numbers.
Hackers may pretend to be institutions, family members, or colleagues by using emails, text messages, web pages, and more.
YouTube will never ask you for your password, email address, or other account information. Don't be fooled if someone contacts you pretending to be from YouTube.
Avoid suspicious requests
- Don’t reply to suspicious emails, texts, instant messages, webpages, or phone calls that ask for your personal or financial info.
- Don’t click links in emails, messages, webpages, or pop-ups from untrustworthy websites or senders.
- YouTube emails only come from @youtube.com or @google.com addresses.
An example of a suspicious phishing email
Avoid suspicious web pages
Report spam or phishing
Set & check permissions on your channel
If you’re a creator, you can invite someone else to manage your YouTube channel without giving access to your Google Account. Invite someone to access their channel as a:
- Manager: Can add or remove others and edit channel details.
- Editor: Can edit all channel details.
- Viewer: Can view (but not edit) all channel details.
- Viewer (limited): Can view (but not edit) all channel details except revenue information.
Learn how to set and check your channel permissions.
Note: If you have a Brand account, you can invite someone to manage your Google account and your YouTube channel. Learn to see if you have a Brand account and learn how to manage Brand account permissions.