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Kapuso actress and Sparkle artist Mikee Quintos just got back access to her YouTube channel after someone hacked her email and gained access to it.

In a video posted on her now recovered account, Mikee detailed how her Ate Denise informed her that all of her videos are now gone from the video-sharing site and that she can't search for her channel anymore.

“S'yempre wala 'yun, minamaliit ko pa nung una. Pero pag open ko ng phone ko, doon ko na nakita na even my calendar, my Google calendar, can't access. My email mismo, naka log-out sa lahat ng devices ko na. That's when I stood up and went straight to my PC,” the actress said.

She then detailed how she received a phishing email disguised as one of the usual sponsorship deals she constantly receives and clicked on the attached file. While her Mac laptop did not allow her to open the file, since it did not give any warnings, she tried to open it on her Windows PC.

“'Yun, dun siya naging successful,” she added.

She then showed a video of her initial reaction to what happened, “As you can see, grabe 'yung panic ng boses ko, nanginginig ako, naiinis ako sa mundo. Parang at the same time, nafi-feel ko rin na hate ko yung sarili ko, na ba't ko hinayaan na mangyari 'to.”

Aside from the email itself, the hacker also gained access to the recovery email and was able to disable security features such as the 2-factor authenticator and One Time Password (OTP) codes. When Mikee tried to recover the account on her own, the hacker had already added a security key that needed a physical USB to regain access.

Mikee said that it was Patrick Domagoso who gave her the contact information of the YouTube Partner Head who helped her with recovering her channel. She was also able to contact Google to regain access to her email address itself.

“Basically after a week or so, I was able to get it together na, my channel. Naayos ko na and medyo it took a while for my team to adjust to it,” she said.

She added that she and her team, including her YouTube managers, talked about implementing better security to her accounts to avoid a repeat of what happened in the future.

She then thanked both the Google support team and the YouTube Partner Head for their help.

“Without you guys, I think my case was a hopeless case na so thank you so much for helping me out, helping me get my email back. It was a nerve-wracking experience going through it,” she said.

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