Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

If you go to youtube while using a google apps account it specifically warns you that everything you do can be monitored by your company.


sort by: page size:

Your school or company knowing exactly what you're doing on youtube is more than just annoying. It can be extremely harmful.

You still have to remember not to use YouTube while signed into Google as yourself.

> Gmail account.

You don't need an account for youtube. I have a Google account for gmail, and since I use Android I unavoidably have a Google account because of it, but there's no reason to use that account for youtube. In fact, there is (or, at least, there used to be) a good reason to never use a Google account for youtube: they have (or, at least, used to have) a "real name" policy for youtube, so if they for some reason decide that your real name is not your real name, you could lose access to your whole Google account, including more important services like Google Talk. Therefore, whenever I watch any video on youtube, I very carefully make sure that the browser is not logged into the Google account, and watch it anonymously.


Very interesting. I wonder what the intended purpose of the message is.

It seems like Google might let employees see private YouTube user videos in their search results, but warns them not to share them.


Considering this might very well end up you losing your google account, it is a very necessary warning.

If anything, the author should be more clear about what happens if youtube gets mad: you might lose your google account along with access to mail, drive, photos etc


The app is great, but wasn't google recently banning user accounts for it? Youtube account and google account is same thing, so this app is useful only for othwerwise ungoogled users

That doesn’t help with the nightmare scenario of Google’s systems deciding I’m a threat because I never post YouTube comments or something, and shutting off the account. That’s the thing I’m worried about.

Are you logged in to a Google/YouTube account?

If you want to be careful, you should use a seperate google account for your Youtubing. Problem solved!

Google tried to get users to link their gmail accounts and youtube accounts. Thus, if someone sent you a youtube link in gmail and you clicked it - you would be logged into youtube already/automatically so that they can track your viewing behavior.

Yes, for now. It does nothing to prevent Google from seeing what you do on their servers of linking that to what you do elsewhere, and your activity tells anyone who makes videos that the place their stuff will be watched is YouTube.

What threat do they pose...

It's Google, so they'll probably force you to create a YouTube account to watch videos recorded by your security system, put adverts for private security services over the top, share what time you're usually out of the house with third parties, and then shut down the service after a couple of years.


So if you want to use ad-blockers, I guess it's important to use Youtube only while not logged in. Keep your GMail and Youtube use independent from each other.

What, so Google can track me better? I hate YouTube's recommendation system and only watch videos in a Private browsing window. I would happily pay for YouTube if they wouldn't track me, shovel shit in my face, or otherwise misuse my data.

Yep, I was looking in YouTube settings instead. I wouldn't have thought to leave YouTube to change a setting that affects YouTube, but it's a reasonable-in-hindsight design decision to collect all the privacy stuff for various google apps in one place.

Make sure you don’t use any of the other services: don’t post to YouTube from that account, don’t share Google Docs, files etc.

YouTube hell gets even better if you signed up for Google Apps in a country where YouTube isn't officially "launched" (what does that even mean?), like Austria.

My google apps account currently has a YouTube account associated with it that causes an error message to replace the current page if I do anything on that site while logged in as that apps account. Like a video, get redirected to a white page saying something went wrong. My solution now is to only log into google apps via Fluid/Mailplane or anonymous Chrome windows.

Whoever engineered this mess should go take a swim in a volcano.


Nope. Google "reads" all your data and saves it to push ads & suggested content to you.

I know this because Google read my emails (AFAIK there's no toggle to disable tracking on this product) and suggested me a video based on the contents of one of my emails. Mind you, I wasn't even logged in on YouTube at the time.


Which is great until you post a video on YouTube with copyrighted music in the background, and the algorithm decides to lock you out of all your Google accounts.
next

Legal | privacy