When at Youtube via normal window, I copy a video clip’s link address to cliboard and paste it to a ‘private window with TOR’ to watch.
Later when I go back to my normal [non-private] window and refresh the Youtube link, somehow Youtube knows what I watched in the ‘private window with TOR’.
This indicates Brave is somehow communicating to Youtube the link address I copied/pasted so that Youtube knows what to recommend subsequently.
How ‘private’ is that!!! >8( BTW… this is over VPN.
@attilathebun you likely answered your own question.
So you were in a normal window and visited a video. It then showed up in your history and/or YouTube made recommendations on it.
Going and visiting a second time on a Private with Tor window doesn’t remove what you did in your normal window.
If you open Private with Tor and make sure you’re not signed into anything Google on that session (including using any Google extensions), then you won’t have any issues based on anything you search.
No. I did NOT visit the video clip in normal window. I only copied the link address which I later pasted into a newly opened ‘new private window with TOR’.
@attilathebun to be clear, the reason I’m asking where you copied and what was done is because a lot of people don’t pay a lot of attention. When you go to YouTube it often auto plays videos even in the thumbnails. When it plays those thumbnails, it shows up in your YouTube history and all.
For example, I just went to YouTube and this one is playing:
I never clicked to open that. All I did was visit the main YouTube page and it played that thumbnail in the background as I moused over things and all. But just in that preview, it now shows:
While at Youtube’s home site in normal window, I hover over a video clip to copy link address. I then open ‘new window with TOR’ and past URL from clipboard to ‘new window with TOR’. Somehow that is communicated back to Youtube which show up as recommendations in my normal window.
Yeah, so that likely did what I mentioned above. If you have time, try to go experiment with it. As you are hovering over the clip to copy it, most likely it is doing the autoplay. Then it shows up in your “Watched” history on YouTube even though you didn’t really watch any of it.
I’ve never stopped to test how long it has to “play” to show up. But do know that if it’s more than just a couple seconds it will, kind of like how I showed in the dumb Trump video screenshots.
I did the same as you - I hovered over a clip what showed snippets too. But then when I went to my Youtube history, the clip I hovered over does not show up in my viewing history.
No, but if you watched any of it or had your mouse hovering longer than you think, especially while looking elsewhere.
But if you go open a Private With Tor window right now and then put something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFk8V7mU0Wo into it, you won’t see anything related to it in your normal window unless you go logging into Google stuff or have authorized a Google extension to work in your Private with Tor window.
With the link I provided, don’t open it in your normal window or it eliminates the purpose of what I’m saying.
NOTE
Also part of where I learned this and am pointing out is because there was a time YouTube started showing recommendations for things I wasn’t interested in. When I went to History I saw it show a lot of videos I never watched. Heck, I don’t even remember seeing the thumbnails or anything. It just registered mouseovers at some point. Since then I’ve been more mindful of things.
Stephen - I am 100% convinced that I am right - “private viewing” information is DEFINITELY leaking from Brave browser to social media company(~ies). Users beware.
I did watch that clip earlier today BUT I made sure to watch it in ‘private window with TOR’ only where I did NOT log into Youtube. I never searched, hovered or opened that clip from my normal browser window. The clip is not in my watch history.
Yet few hours after watching it… there it is being recommended by Youtube in my normal Browser window. This is no coincidence.
This is very concerning to discover ‘private’ information is not safeguarded or respected by Brave Software Inc
IMO Brave Software Inc needs to address this asap…
I hear you @attilathebun. I will tag in @Evan123 and @Mattches from Brave just to bring their attention back to it. I’m sure they and others at Brave will do some testing just to see if they can find any issues.
There is definitely something else going on here. There is quite literally no way for this to happen. Both Private windows and Private w/tor do not pull in cookies or account data when you use them — its kind of their whole purpose.
It is highly like that the “issue” occurs due to the fact that you are copying the link from your logged in profile. Otherwise, you could reproduce this issue by doing the following:
Open a Private w/Tor window and visit Youtube.com there (ensuring that you do not log in)3.
Watch a video on Youtube in the Private w/tor window
If what you are describing was true, you would expect to see whatever video you watched from the Private window appear in your watch history — but I suspect if you run this test that it doesn’t. I’m inclined to think that it does have something to do with the autoplay feature that occurs when hovering in the normal window or as @Mastermind007 suggested, there is something in the link that Youtube inserts that allows that view to be tracked (you can test this one easily by using the Copy clean link option from the context menu).
I would be very interested in seeing a recording of this behavior so that I can fully understand what the steps to reproduce the issue are and see if I can spot where the confusion occurs.
For example, here is me trying to reproduce this. In the recording, I’ve used the following steps:
