CONFIDENCIAL’s YouTube Channel is temporarily suspended, we'll be back soon!

Dear audience, on November 13, at approximately 4:30 in the afternoon we were alerted about a phishing scam against our YouTube channel, Confidencial Nica, where we have more than 398 000 subscribers. During the unauthorized access, they changed our name to “Tesla Live”, replaced our logo, removed our description, and started the live transmission of a video that uses the image of technology magnate Elon Musk, starring in an international scam with alleged cryptocurrencies.

The CONFIDENCIAL team stopped the transmission immediately, and with access to our accounts, we restored our information and more than 7000 videos that were hidden during the impersonation scam. In addition, at 10:30 p.m. we broadcasted our Esta Semana broadcast, originally scheduled for 8:00 p.m.

However, the YouTube team informed us that our channel is temporarily suspended as part of their protocol for this type of impersonation. We are taking all the corresponding actions and our channel case is already under review. We are confident that we will soon resume our transmissions.

The scam using Elon Musk's image with alleged cryptocurrencies is a modus operandi that has affected several accounts around the world, especially in the last six months. Musk has already denounced the use of his image in this type of scam. And the YouTube team reviews on a case-by-case basis each of these incidents that are reported following its mechanisms.

CONFIDENCIAL, with its YouTube channel, is a Nicaraguan media outlet run by journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, who is a victim of press freedom censorship in Nicaragua. In 2019, the Government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo censored our broadcasts on open television and our YouTube channel is one of the last spaces in defense of democracy, with independent and verified information on the situation in Nicaragua, mired in a crisis of violation of human rights and public freedoms that has worsened since the massacre against the citizen protests of the April Rebellion of 2018.

Between April and September 2018, more than 300 Nicaraguans were killed by the regime, and thousands of others were injured. In addition, more than a thousand citizens have been imprisoned for their ideas and the exercise and defense of their rights, with more than 200 political prisoners still in prison or under house arrest. Hundreds of thousands of others have been forced into exile due to political persecution, including our director and our journalistic team. However, we continue to report on what is happening in Nicaragua and will soon resume our broadcasts on our YouTube channel.

We thank you for your trust and solidarity and invite you to remain attentive to our social networks on Facebook and Twitter and our website Confidencial.digital, where we will inform you of everything related to this issue.

If you have experienced any problem in relation to this issue, please write to us at [email protected]

This article was originally published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff.