Barkha Dutt revealed Monday that her YouTube account for digital news, The Mojo Story, was hacked and all its content was lost.
“We take account security very seriously. After being alerted by The Mojo Story of their account being compromised due to unauthorized activity, our teams investigated the case and we worked closely with The Mojo Story to secure and restore the account,” a YouTube spokesperson told Moneycontrol.
Earlier, Dutt said that she had alerted YouTube about the incident.
“After hours of urging @TeamYouTube to act and being assured action is being taken, I woke up to find @themojostory channel content all deleted by the hackers – four years of blood, toil, sweat, tears, 11 thousand videos, COVID work of 3 years, all gone. I am heartbroken,” Dutt tweeted on Monday, tagging Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Indian-origin CEO.
According to reports, hackers renamed the news platform’s YouTube account as “@teslanewstar05” and deleted all videos. A video featuring billionaire Elon Musk was also uploaded.
“I don’t know how many times we urged @YouTube to freeze the platform so that the hackers could not alter it. But we kept being told “process of investigation has to be followed” – and now it’s gone,” Barkha Dutt tweeted.
What is The Mojo Story?
“Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation has engaged Mojo Story for the purpose of reporting and publishing stories of public interest. IPSMF does not take any legal or moral responsibility whatsoever for the content published by Mojo Story on their website on any of its other platforms,” a quote on the official website of Mojo Story, which has over 630,000 subscribers states.
At the time of the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Dutt and her team traveled to 14 states across India and brought news while being on the road for four months.