How bots use YT comments to find private info

YouTubers may inadvertently dox themselves if they put their real full name in YT's "Blocked Words". This is why we can't have nice things.

[HGModernism]

Just want to address some confusion in the comments:

-- My theory is that the bots naively try this tactic on any channel regardless of if the YouTuber is small or well known, or uses their full real name, or has blocked words. It's all automated so they are likely crawling through channels just posting everywhere. That is the strength of bots after all... brute force

-- While YouTubers may have a set of personal "blocked words", YouTube also has filters that can remove comments for various reasons, so a removed comment could be from either process. YouTube also likely "fuzzes" the time the comment is made visible so you wouldn't be able to tell if the comment was blocked and then manually approved or just artificially delayed. 

-- If a comment has a word on the YouTuber's "blocked words" list, it isn't automatically deleted, it goes to a queue for the YouTuber to review and post if they decide it is not a problem. For example, if the YouTuber's name is Jessica so she has that in the block list, but someone makes a comment like "You sound like Jessica Alba", that comment can be approved

[deadhouse]

Leonardo Michaelangelo Donatello Raphael.

[MechMK]

In security, this is known as an "oracle attack", where some process unknowingly gives "yes/no" answers about some hidden information.

[nielskeller]

Ever seen the "the birth name of your mother is your disney princess name" style posts on facebook? They are exactly this - provocing you to put out private information so it can be gathered.

[ABPoolsTO]

Damn, a youtube channel that actually gave us useful information in a video with less than 3 minutes and no ads... wow... just... wow.

[CiRdy]

having bots that brute-forcingly search for banned names to dox people on youtube is so dystopian to me. i still remember when the most annoying bot related issues were iPhone X scam comments back in 2017 and the "wanna be friends" comments like 4 years ago

[worldlinezero]

Wow, that's really creepy. Hope lots of creators see this video.

[ActuallyNeptune]

FINALLY someone made a video about this!!! i noticed this happening since 2 months ago and i thought it was like someone spamming celebrities names but i tried to google them and nothing shows up. And as time went on, every time i watch a video i always go to the comment section and to "newer" to see if theyre on every video, turns out they are. Thank you so much for explaining :)

[jakko_]

Meanwhile at YouTube:
“Let’s remove this random useful feature for no reason!”

[aumpauskar]

This video is awesome ~3 mins in length, no beating around the bush, no midrolls, no sponsorships, kinda reminds me of the old YouTube tho

[LiraScarlet]

Recently D'Angelo released a video talking about how prevalent and malicious the bot problem is getting in youtube. He mentioned the "name spam" bots but yours is the first good theory about why they exist that I've seen. Great info and great channel, I just suscribed yesterday after watching the narwhal video.

[BenSolo]

Bop it, Twist it, Shake it, Move it, Spin it.

[zelda_smile]

They're trying to find Obama's last name.

[Freddisred]

Watch closely now as YT team does nothing about it until something unforgivable and inevitable happens. This is alarming, thank you.

[lemonlordminecraft]

Robot Android Cyborg Automaton Mechanism Computer

[ukrmessi]

I’ve seen many comments like those except sometimes they also include numbers, street names and I even found one that had the name of an elementary school, that’s just creepy af 💀

[literallyafrog]

Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way

[SOOKIE]

At least the solution is fairly easy and obvious: just add a bunch of random first and last names of all genders and ethnicities to fuzz up the results.

[Gee]

Yes I think that's exactly what's happening, I was approached as a programmer to write software that detects when a comment is deleted/blocked based on keywords (under the guise of youtube SERPS/SEO) but when I saw they're pretty much only posting names, I limited the number of named to two and they initially just posted a lot more comments per video, and then I limited comments per video to two threads and no consecutive comments they got quite annoyed with me. As I was hosting the project there wasn't much they could do about it and they didn't make the final payment - or get the source code.
Another client approached me about a similar sounding project but I didn't accept it or get into the weeds of it.

Essentially they're either a) attempting to confirm a youtuber blocks specific names (most likely), b) looking for specific people over a list of channels, c) covering their tracks from more targeted campaigns (if you post a load on one channel and not on others it's more likely to be seen as spam - so they post in a load of random places), or d) actually performing some kind of wide-net market research / deducing algorithmic traits to bypass content filters.

[nicolask.]

Oh my God I just saw this yesterday when sorting some video's comments by "Newest". Just dozens and dozens of these "five names" comments. Unsettling.