YouTube adds tracking parameters to shared URLs that can be traced back to individual Google accounts
https://nitter.net/OldRowSwig/status/1732112446943269347
https://nitter.net/OldRowSwig/status/1732112446943269347
!privacy
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
An added benefit of the share button is that it generates a minified link – "https://youtu.be/abcde" instead of "https://youtube.com/watch?v=abcde". I find it neater.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=abcde
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
That's the problem, though. The long link is the same for everyone. The shortened is unique to an account.
I always assume shortened links are viruses, at least that's what got ingrained in me from the yearly security IT lectures
That is 100% wrong. Did you read the tweets or even look at a single YouTube URL?
youtube.com/watch?v=FOO&si=BAR would be shortened to just youtu.be/FOO?si=BAR
The link to other people’s account is in the &si=BAR part. Probably standing for “share ID” or “source ID”or something. The shortened link is just the same as the long one with watch?v=FOO being included in the URL instead of the parameters.
I've seen it happen personally when sharing shortened YouTube links in the past.
Maybe they just changed how it worked, or I was on the other side of an A/B test.