The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) is a data privacy law that was passed in California in November 2020 as an extension and expansion of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
The CPRA introduces new privacy rights for consumers and additional obligations for businesses. The law is expected to go into effect on January 1, 2023.
Why Do We Need CPRA?
The CPRA came about to address some of the shortcomings of the CCPA and to provide Californians with more control over their personal data.
It aims to bring California’s data protection regulations more in line with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
CPRA strengthens the rights of consumers and introduces stricter obligations for businesses in handling personal data, thereby improving overall data protection.
How Does CPRA Affect Me?
If you’re a California resident, the CPRA offers you extended data protection rights. These include the right to correct inaccurate personal data, the right to opt out of automated decision-making technology in certain cases, and stronger protections for sensitive personal information.
If you’re a business that collects, processes, or sells the personal data of California residents and meets certain thresholds, you need to comply with the CPRA. It’s important to note that these obligations apply regardless of where your business is located, so long as you handle the data of California residents.
How Can I Stay Safe and Compliant?
If you’re a California resident, you should familiarize yourself with the new rights introduced by the CPRA. Ensure you exercise your data protection rights and be careful when providing personal data online.
If you’re a business, here are the steps you need to take to comply with the CPRA:
Understand the scope of the CPRA: The CPRA introduces several new rights and obligations, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with them.
Review and update your privacy policy: Make sure your privacy policy is up-to-date and clearly explains how you collect, use, and share personal data.
Implement secure data practices: The CPRA requires businesses to implement reasonable security procedures and practices to protect personal data.
Develop a process to respond to consumer rights requests: The CPRA strengthens consumer rights, including the right to access, delete, and correct their data. Businesses must be able to efficiently and effectively respond to these requests.
Stay updated: The CPRA also establishes a new enforcement agency, the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA). Businesses should monitor updates from the CPPA for any changes to the regulations.
In Conclusion
The CPRA represents a significant step forward in the protection of consumer data rights in the United States. Whether you’re a consumer seeking to protect your personal data or a business needing to comply with these new regulations, understanding the CPRA and its implications is crucial.
CPRA FAQs for Beginners
Q: Who does CPRA apply to?A: The CPRA applies to for-profit businesses that collect and process personal data of California residents and meet certain thresholds. This includes businesses with gross revenues over $25 million, those that buy, sell or share the personal information of 100,000 or more California residents or households, and those that derive 50% or more of their annual revenue from selling or sharing consumers’ personal information.
Q: What types of personal data does CPRA protect?A: The CPRA protects personal information which is defined as information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household.
Q: What are the penalties for non-compliance with CPRA?A: Under the CPRA, fines for violations involving minors under the age of 16 are tripled. For other violations, the California Attorney General can impose penalties up to $7,500 per violation.
Q: What’s new in CPRA compared to CCPA?A: The CPRA introduces several new provisions, such as the creation of a dedicated enforcement agency (the CPPA), rights to correction, stronger rights to opt out of targeted advertising, and stricter consent requirements for sensitive personal information.
Q: When does CPRA go into effect?A: The CPRA is expected to go into effect on January 1, 2023.
The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is a law that originated in the European Union (EU) and took effect on May 25, 2018.
It was designed to harmonize data privacy laws across all EU member states and to reshape how organizations worldwide approach data privacy.
The GDPR replaced the previous EU Data Protection Directive of 1995.
The key element of the GDPR is that it is built around the principle of privacy by default and by design. It requires organizations to handle personal data responsibly and transparently, providing individuals with significant control over their own information.
The GDPR applies to any business or organization worldwide that processes the personal data of EU residents.
Why Do We Need GDPR?
Before the GDPR, there was a patchwork of data protection laws across the EU, each with its own interpretations and implementations. These discrepancies made it difficult for companies to comply and for citizens to understand their rights.
The GDPR sought to provide a uniform set of rules to simplify the regulatory environment and bolster data protection.
With the advent of technology and the internet, our lives have increasingly moved online. This digital shift has allowed organizations to gather vast amounts of data about us. Such data, when mishandled or misused, can lead to significant privacy breaches.
The GDPR aims to protect against such threats by empowering individuals to control how their personal data is used.
How Does GDPR Affect Me?
If you’re an individual residing in the EU, the GDPR provides you with several rights:
Right to be Informed: Organizations must tell you what data is being collected, how it’s being used, how long it will be kept, and whether it will be shared with any third parties.
Right to Access: You have the right to request access to the data collected from you.
Right to Rectification: You can request to have inaccurate data amended.
Right to Erasure (or ‘Right to be Forgotten’): In certain circumstances, you can request for your data to be deleted.
Right to Restrict Processing: You can ask to restrict the processing of your data.
Right to Data Portability: You can ask for your data to be transferred to another organization or to you directly.
Right to Object: You can object to the processing of your data for certain purposes, such as direct marketing.
Rights Related to Automated Decision Making and Profiling: You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling.
If you’re a business, especially one operating within the EU or dealing with the personal data of EU citizens, you need to comply with these regulations or risk severe penalties. Businesses need to ensure they have adequate data handling and data protection measures in place.
Table: GDPR Fines by Year (up to 2021)
Year
Number of Fines
Total Value of Fines (€)
2018
12
460,000
2019
190
417,000,000
2020
331
171,320,000
2021*
265
273,830,000
*Data for 2021 is up to September.
Top 5 Countries by GDPR Fines (up to 2021)
Country
Number of Fines
Total Value of Fines (€)
Italy
68
69,328,716
Germany
61
69,080,000
France
23
54,431,300
Spain
172
29,521,400
UK
23
44,221,000
Top 5 Violations Resulting in Fines (up to 2021)
Violation Type
Number of Fines
Non-compliance with data subject rights
281
Insufficient legal basis for data processing
215
Insufficient technical and organizational measures to ensure data security
145
Non-compliance with general data processing principles
105
Data breach notification obligations
94
Please note that the numbers and fines are indicative and vary greatly by case. Also, the categories of violation types may differ slightly among sources.
How Can I Stay Safe and Compliant?
If you’re an individual, the key to staying safe is understanding your rights under GDPR and being proactive. Carefully read privacy policies and terms of service before sharing your personal data. Use the rights granted to you by the GDPR, such as the right to access, rectify, or erase your data.
If you’re a business, here are some steps you can take to comply with GDPR:
Understand the Law: This might seem obvious, but understanding the nuances of the GDPR is crucial. Not all businesses are affected equally.
Hire a Data Protection Officer (DPO): If you’re a public authority, or if your core activities require large-scale monitoring or processing of sensitive data, GDPR mandates the appointment of a DPO.
Implement Data Protection by Design and Default: Incorporate data protection measures from the start of any system design, not as an addition.
Conduct Data Protection Impact Assessments: If your business is involved in high-risk processing, you’re required to conduct a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA).
Maintain Documentation: Record your processing activities and maintain a clear policy on data retention periods.
Be Prepared for Data Breaches: You must notify the appropriate supervisory authority of a data breach within 72 hours of becoming aware of it.
Respect User Rights: Make sure systems are in place to respect the new user rights under GDPR, including the right to be forgotten and the right to data portability.
In Conclusion
The GDPR is not just another regulation. It represents a shift in how we view and handle data privacy.
By understanding the principles behind it and your rights and responsibilities under it, you can make the most of this law, whether you’re an individual wanting to protect your personal information or a business seeking to respect and protect your customers’ data.
Q: What types of personal data does the GDPR protect?A: The GDPR protects any information that can be used to directly or indirectly identify a person. This can range from names and email addresses to more complex data like IP addresses, genetic data, or even mental, economic, cultural, or social identity information.
Q: Who does GDPR apply to?A: The GDPR applies to all EU-based organizations, whether commercial business, charity, or public authority, that collect, store, or process the data of EU residents. It also applies to non-EU organizations that offer goods or services to, or monitor the behavior of, EU residents.
Q: What is ‘processing’ in the context of GDPR?A: ‘Processing’ refers to any operation performed on personal data. It includes collection, recording, organization, structuring, storage, adaptation, alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure, dissemination, alignment, combination, restriction, erasure, or destruction.
Q: What is the role of a Data Protection Officer (DPO)?A: A DPO ensures that an organization processes the personal data of its staff, customers, providers, or any other individuals (also referred to as data subjects) in compliance with the GDPR. Their tasks include informing and advising the organization and its employees about their obligations, monitoring compliance, providing advice regarding data protection impact assessments, and cooperating with supervisory authorities.
Q: What happens if a company doesn’t comply with the GDPR?A: Organizations can face hefty fines for GDPR non-compliance. These fines can be up to €20 million, or 4% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue from the preceding financial year, whichever is higher.
Q: How does the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ work?A: The ‘Right to be Forgotten’ or the ‘Right to Erasure’ means that the data subject can request the deletion of their personal data from an organization’s records. The organization must comply unless there’s a legitimate reason for retaining the data, such as for compliance with a legal obligation or for reasons of public interest.
Q: What is a Data Processing Agreement (DPA)?A: A DPA is a legally binding contract that states the rights and obligations of the data controller (the entity determining the purposes and means of processing data) and the data processor (the entity processing data on behalf of the controller) in terms of data processing. The GDPR requires a DPA whenever a data controller outsources data processing to an external data processor.
Q: How does GDPR affect businesses outside of the EU?A: GDPR has a global reach. It applies to any organization, regardless of its location, that processes the personal data of EU residents. This means businesses outside the EU must also comply with GDPR if they offer goods or services to, or monitor the behavior of, EU residents.
I hope this deep-dive Q&A helps further your understanding of the GDPR.
Privacy on the Internet is one of our bigger concerns in today’s interconnected world, and YouTube is not exempt from those concerns. Given the sheer volume of YouTube videos that are watched at any given time, and especially by any individual person, there is a wealth of information that can be gleaned from knowing someone’s YouTube viewing history.
Unfortunately, the answer to “can YouTube history be tracked?” is a resounding yes, it most certainly can… assuming you are using YouTube as a logged-in user. YouTube will still track your usage when you are not logged in, of course, but there this data will be anonymised. This is not to say it’s not tracking you in a way, but more on that shortly.
YouTube Viewing History
The first thing to be aware of when considering YouTube’s tracking abilities is that it is baked into the platform. YouTube makes its money through advertising, and the biggest selling point for online advertisers is the fact that ads can be targeted to very specific demographics because of all the information YouTube has. YouTube knows your age, gender, geographical region, interests, and more, allowing advertisers to make sure their ads are being shown to people who are likely to be interested. Naturally, that system doesn’t work if YouTube doesn’t collect information about you.
Your viewing history is the most obvious thing, of course. You yourself can view your viewing history if you wish, a particularly useful tool for finding videos you’ve enjoyed in the past but can’t find now. Of course, in order for this feature to be available, YouTube needs to keep a record of what you have watched.
Your YouTube viewing history is private, and cannot be viewed by anyone else. If you don’t want certain videos logged to your viewing history, you can always log out of YouTube before viewing them. There are some limitations to this method, however. For example, YouTube will not allow you to watch videos it has deemed inappropriate for younger viewers unless you are logged in. This is mostly to prevent children from getting around content restrictions by using YouTube logged out.
You can also clear your viewing history if you’re worried about someone using your computer and stumbling across your obsession with videos of capybara playing with dogs, but that will only affect the viewing history you see—the data that YouTube uses to decide what to recommend to you will still be there.
Non-YouTube Tracking
It is possible for your YouTube history to be tracked by non-YouTube parties, but in the vast majority of cases, this would require you to have either agreed to something or been hacked by someone.
For example, if you are using YouTube through a device that has been opted into something like Nielson tracking, all of your online activity will be tracked, including your YouTube use, but this is something you will have actively sought out and agreed to beforehand.
It is also possible for your device to become infected with malicious software that will monitor your YouTube usage, but you should be able to avoid this with common sense security measures, such as having up to date anti-virus software and not clicking on untrustworthy links.
There are also perfectly legitimate (in the legal sense, not necessarily the moral one) ways to track your usage, such as Facebook’s “Off-Facebook Activity” settings. These can be disabled by you, but if they are not, Facebook can track a number of things you might be getting up to online.
Your Online “Fingerprint”
We often worry about our identity being out there because all of the scariest sounding forms of hacking and online fraud involve stealing our identities for something. It is possible to track you without your identity, however.
When you use the Internet, including websites like YouTube, there is a wealth of information that those remote servers have access to. These include things like the operating system your device is using, the browser, what screen resolution you have, even what fonts are installed.
While none of these things inherently give away your identity, there are sufficient variables to reliably identify a returning anonymous user. In this manner, a remote server can build up a tracking history for a user, even if that user never logs in or gives their name or any other personally identifiable information. Essentially, they can create a “digital fingerprint” corresponds to you and you alone, even if they don’t know who you are.
Now, if YouTube uses this method, nobody is being particularly open about it. However, we do know that they use browser cookies to keep track of what you’ve been watching.
Browser Cookies
Browser cookies are essentially little packets of information that are stored on your hard drive. The next time you visit YouTube anonymously, YouTube can check these cookies and see what you were looking at the last time you were there.
If you’re not comfortable with this, there are two options. You can either regularly clear your cookies so that there is no record, or you can browse YouTube in incognito/privacy mode. With cookies being stored on your computer, you are in complete control of whether they stay or go, as long as you know how to do it.
Final Thoughts
Your YouTube history can certainly be tracked, but, for the most part, the entity doing the tracking is YouTube. It is possible for nefarious parties to get into a position to track your viewing history, but in most cases, if they are in that position, your viewing history will be the least of your worries.
It should also be noted that, from a privacy standpoint, YouTube is a very different platform for children. COPPA regulations mean that YouTube cannot track nearly as much data on underage viewers as they can with adults.
For the most part, however, protecting your privacy and identity on YouTube requires the same common-sense approach that should be used whenever you are browsing the Internet or using connected apps.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.
4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube
I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.
I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.
That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.
5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
Whether you have a pressing reason to use a VPN for YouTube or you just like to maintain your privacy, you’ll want to make sure you have the best VPN for the job… or at least a VPN that’s up to the job.
This isn’t as straightforward as you might think (for reasons we’ll get into below), so it can help to know what you’re looking for. We’ll explain a little about why it matters which VPN you choose before getting into our top picks.
Why Your Choice of VPN Matters
We won’t spend valuable characters explaining how a VPN (virtual private network) works as you can easily find that information (including on this very site!), but you do need to know that a natural and unavoidable consequence of the way VPNs work is a certain degradation of things like latency and speed.
When your connection is being routed through several other locations before reaching its destination, it’s going to cause a bit of a slow down. Video is a bandwidth-hungry medium, and the slower your connection, the poorer your video-watching experience is going to be.
Latency can also be an issue if you are trying to watch live streams, as you can quickly find yourself out of sync with the video feed, meaning you are essentially not watching the stream live any more.
Now, if you are using a free or cheap VPN, you can be almost guaranteed to not get the kind of service you need to have an enjoyable YouTube watching experience. Of course, if you are going to be paying for your VPN service, you want it to be sure it’s going to deliver on what you need.
With that in mind, let’s get into our best VPN YouTube picks!
Best VPNs For YouTube
Before get into, it’s worth noting that any prices we mention are the best-case prices, which are typically the effective monthly cost when you pay for a full year up front. For example, our first suggestion, SurfShark, is $2.50 a month but only if you pay for 24 months at once. If you want to pay monthly, you’re going to be looking at $12.95 per month. Something to bear in mind. Now, in no particular order, here are our picks;
Surfshark
SurfShark is the first suggestion we’re going to offer, largely because it is the most affordable. At $2.50 per month, SurfShark is almost free, yet still offers the speeds necessary to stream video. Of course, you can’t expect something for nothing, and there are certainly areas where SurfShark is going to fall flat compared to the other VPNs on this list, but purely for use with YouTube, this is as good as you need.
It allows for unlimited connections, meaning you only need the one account for all your devices, even if you have a lot of devices. You get full AES-256 encryption, however there are question marks over the security, as SurfShark has not performed an external audit of its servers and clients, only the browser extensions running on the VPN. It should be fine for getting around content restrictions on YouTube, but we would probably use a different VPN for anything involving sensitive information.
NordVPN
If you’ve been on YouTube at all over the last few years—and we’re pretty sure that includes anyone reading this blog—you’ve probably seen or heard an ad for NordVPN. This VPN has been the subject of a mammoth advertising campaign.
ExpressVPN is seen by many as the top option when it comes to the quality of service. You don’t have quite as many servers to choose from as NordVPN, but you do get strong encryption, a wide variety of protocols to choose from, and amazing reliability and speeds.
Probably the biggest con for ExpressVPN to your average YouTuber is their device limit. You can only get five simultaneous devices running on a single ExpressVPN account, so if you have a lot of devices, one of the other VPNs may be a better option.
Hotspot Shield
HotSpot Shield is the very definition of a single-purpose VPN. You don’t get much in the way of features, but you do get lightning fast (in VPN terms) speeds. If all you want to do is stream video, Hotspot Shield is likely the best choice for performance, with over 400mbps speeds. In reality, most users will be bottlenecked by their own connection rather than the VPN.
It is a very straightforward VPN to use, largely owed to the fact that there aren’t many options to mess around with. There are also some concerns about how secure it is, so you might want to keep your sensitive information off for now.
CyberGhost
While not as fast as Hotspot Shield, CyberGhost is still a very fast VPN, and with over 6,000 servers, you can be sure of a satisfying experience using this VPN for YouTube.
CyberGhost even includes a data compression tool to reduce the amount of bandwidth being used, making VPN’ing on the go a feasible option. It’s also P2P-optimised, so if you do a lot of torrenting, this could be a good option for you.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, the the speed of your chosen VPN will be the primary concern if you want to use it with YouTube. This does not mean you should disregard other concerns, however. For example, if you are going to be using the VPN for sensitive tasks, you should make sure the security is up to scratch, even if that means sacrificing some of the speed that a less secure VPN offers.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.
4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube
I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.
I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.
That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.
5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
It seems we can’t go anywhere on the Internet without worrying about being tracked by someone. Online security is a more pressing matter than ever, with so much of our lives being online, it makes sense that we’d all be more concerned about keeping our privacy private.
Being a Google company, there won’t be many people out there who are naive enough to think that YouTube doesn’t engage in a little tracking of its own, but there are levels to that tracking. So, if you’re looking for a short answer to the question posed in this post’s title, yes, YouTube can and does track you, but if you’d like to know a bit more about what that tracking entails, keep reading.
Logged In Vs Anonymous
The first distinction to make here is the difference between a YouTube user who is logged in and one who is not. Obviously, when you are logged in, YouTube knows a great deal about you and is able to explicitly keep a detailed log of your activities. Indeed, their tracking in this respect is a feature of the platform. YouTube can’t make recommendations based on your interests and viewing history if they do not keep track of what that viewing history is! This, unfortunately, is an unavoidable aspect of using the platform. There is no way to opt out of being tracked in this regard, even if you pay for YouTube Premium to get rid of ads. Ads are, ultimately, the reason for tracking you in the first place, since advertisers want to serve you the most relevant ads possible.
But YouTube can’t be sure that you won’t cancel your Premium subscription in the future, and if and when that happens, they want to have all their data on you for the ads they’re going to start serving you again.
Of course, anonymous users are not exempt from being tracked on YouTube, but they have a little more privacy than their logged in counterparts. For one thing, YouTube does not have the user data that you enter when you sign up for an account, such as your date of birth, gender, and other information of that nature.
Still, YouTube (and any other platform for that matter) can keep personalised records for anonymous users thanks to their “digital fingerprint”. This is a swath of data that they can read about you, such as the device you are using to view YouTube, your IP address, what operating system you have… even what fonts you have installed! All of this information makes combines to paint a picture almost as unique as a fingerprint, and certainly unique enough for YouTube to keep tabs on you.
Again, this is all for the purpose of advertising. YouTube will try to build as accurate a picture of you as possible so that they can serve the most relevant ads. The more relevant the ads, the higher the chance that you’ll click them, and the more you click those ads, the better the perceived performance of YouTube as an advertising platform resulting in more advertisers being willing to put their money into YouTube.
Is Being Tracked by YouTube Bad?
People have varying opinions about the ethics of companies like YouTube tracking your online activities but it’s worth remembering that YouTube is a service that—if you’re not paying for YouTube Premium—is free, but being free to you does not mean YouTube do not still have monumental bills to pay from all the bandwidth and employees and more.
Tracking the people who use their service is part of the mechanism by which YouTube makes money, which is an integral part of them being able to provide the service at all. At the end of the day, you are choosing to use YouTube, and in doing so, you agree to the way they run the platform, which includes tracking you. If you are not comfortable with the tracking, you don’t have to use YouTube.
This may seem like an impractical alternative since YouTube is pretty much the only game in town for a certain kind of content creator, but it is, ethically speaking, the only alternative to accepting the tracking you will face if you use their platform.
Can I Avoid Being Tracked by YouTube?
With that being said, what if you still want to circumvent YouTube’s tracking? Well, the first thing to note is that it is impossible if you are logged in. Logged in users will always have their viewing history and viewing habits logged.
If you are prepared to use YouTube without being logged in, you can get around YouTube’s anonymous tracking to a degree by doing things like using different devices and proxy servers. Of course, most of us only have access to a limited number of devices, which makes this a rather limited solution, but there are also virtual machines as an option.
Deleting YouTube History
You can’t control everything YouTube stores about you, but if you are a logged-in user, you can choose to erase your viewing history, which constitutes a significant part of the data YouTube keeps on its users.
To do this, head over to the Watch History on YouTube and click “See All”, where you will find a variety of controls at your disposal These include the ability to clear all of your watch history, pause your watch history (so views won’t be recorded to your watch history), as well as controls relating to search history and comments. You can also remove individual videos from your watch history from within the video page itself.
Final Thoughts
Tracking is, unfortunately, an unavoidable reality of the modern Internet. Privacy is an understandable hot-button issue, but the fact is many web services and online platforms we rely on would not be able to deliver the services they do if they couldn’t track their users in this manner.
That being said, you are not completely powerless. If this is an important thing for you, you can try using YouTube logged out and through a proxy.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.
4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube
I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.
I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.
That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.
5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
It’s only natural in today’s data-saturated world to assume that content creators have access to a vast wealth of information about their viewers. And that assumption would be correct; YouTubers can see a great deal of information about the people who watch their content.
YouTubers cannot see who is watching their videos. Most YouTubers would LOVE to see who watched their videos, but this is not possible.
There are many data points for YouTubers to explore, but those data points stop short of telling you things like who is watching, liking, and sharing your content.
Can YouTubers See Who Viewed Their Video?
Of course, when we say YouTubers can’t see who has viewed their video, we just mean that there is no stat or dashboard panel that will show you your recent views, nor is there a link you can click on for a given video that will take you to a list of viewers. There are ways to infer some of your viewers, however.
For example, it is safe to assume that anyone who has commented on a video (and is not obviously spamming) has watched it. It’s not exactly of practical use from a data analysis point of view, but it may be useful in some cases.
What Can YouTubers See?
In terms of names, there are only two significant situations in which a YouTuber can see the who, and those are comments and subscribers.
Comments are a given, as every comment has a username attached to it. Not only that, you can click on them to head of to that user’s YouTube page. If they are also a YouTuber, this is a nice, easy way of getting to their channel if you want to check something out. It’s also sometimes abused by people posting all manner of attention grabbing comments in the sole hope that you will click on their name.
Subscribers are a little more complicated. YouTubers can see who has subscribed to their channel if the user in question has that feature enabled. Users can choose to keep their subscriptions private, which prevents them from showing up in the YouTuber’s subscriber list. They still count towards the total subscribers figure, of course, there’s just no way of knowing who they are.
Analytics
If there is one thing that Google is known for… after search… and AdSense… and a veritable graveyard of projects… it’s analytics. Google collects an immense amount of data about the people using its various platforms, and for the people who make Google money, Google likes to make life as easy as possible for them by giving them access to as much of that vast treasure trove of data as possible.
Can YouTubers see who viewed their video? No. But can they see what percentage of their viewers were white men in their mid-thirties residing in England? Absolutely.
A big part of Google’s data collection is anonymisation. Google themselves might not have opted to do things this way if they’d had the choice… but they didn’t have the choice.
So YouTubers can see a great deal of information that gives them insight into the type of person that is watching their video. Essentially, they can see demographics. They can see if the majority of their viewers are male or female, or if they are in the United States, even what device they are watching the videos on.
What the YouTubers do with that information is their own business, but if you are a viewer worrying about what your favourite YouTuber might be able to see about you; don’t worry, there’s no way for them to link any of the data they can see to you.
Why Would YouTubers Need to See Who is Viewing Their Videos?
The truth is; they don’t. This may go a long way to explaining why YouTube don’t let YouTubers see who is viewing their videos, but there really isn’t much benefit, and some of the ways YouTubers might use this information are even negative.
For example, if a YouTuber has been targeting another YouTuber with less-than-friendly behaviour, and finds that their victim has been watching their videos, it could add more fuel to their unsavoury fire.
On the flip side, there is no added value to being able to put usernames and accounts to the analytical data YouTube provides. Knowing that a specific person is watching your content doesn’t give you any significant insight into your channel’s performance, so why bother?
What Else Does YouTube Hide?
The names of viewers isn’t the only thing YouTube keeps from its content creators. YouTubers also can’t see the names of people who have liked or disliked their videos. In fact, the only time YouTube is explicit about a like is when the YouTuber themselves clicks the little heart on a comment for their video.
It is also not possible to directly tell who has shared your videos, though this particular metric is quite easy to find through other means, as it involves essentially just searching for links to your video.
Final Thoughts
In today’s privacy-concerned world, where huge corporations are routinely harvesting and selling our data, it’s understandable to be concerned about what information about you is being passed around behind the scenes.
It’s important to remember that, just because YouTube aren’t making your account name available to the YouTubers you watch, they are still collecting vast amounts of data about you, and you have to be comfortable with that if you want to use the platform as a logged-in user.
That being said, the typically unpopular part of this kind of data collection is less about personal safety—after all, your data is anonymised—and more about the fact that the company—YouTube in this case—is profiting from your data. The counter to this, of course, is that you agree to YouTube’s terms of service when you use their platform, and all of this is covered in those terms.
Regardless of the reason for your interest in this topic, we can say confidently that YouTubers cannot see who has viewed their videos.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!
2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos
I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
Doing anything online these carries with it an inherent amount of risk, whether it is risk in the form of identity theft or risk in the form of abuse and harassment.
YouTube is a fantastic platform, but it is not exempt from these dangers.
Indeed, anyone who has spent enough time in a YouTube comments section could be forgiven for feeling that YouTube might be one of the worst examples of online dangers. At least when it comes to abuse and harassment.
The dangers a platform like YouTube poses are not only varied by their intent, but also by the person using YouTube. For example, an eleven-year-old child faces a largely different set of risks compared to an adult.
Is it dangerous to be a YouTuber? As with many things on the Internet, all but the most sinister of dangers can be mitigated by or avoided entirely by your behaviour. To borrow an example from email etiquette—you can’t get a virus from an unknown link if you don’t click on unknown links.
In this post, we’re going to look at the various ways in which YouTube can be dangerous, explore what YouTube do to prevent this, and look at how you can keep yourself and your loved ones safe.
Is it Dangerous to be a Child YouTuber?
We’re starting with children because, despite the sensitive nature of online safety for children, this is actually the most straightforward aspect of this topic to cover.
Firstly, children under the age of thirteen are not allowed to have a regular YouTube account under YouTube’s terms of service.
The only way a young child could be a YouTuber (without breaking the rules) is if they are YouTubing with an adult, such as their parent.
The child could appear in the adult’s videos, or the child could entirely run the channel while the adult manages things from behind the scenes. Either way, there will be an adult there who can guide the child through various Internet pitfalls they might otherwise have fallen down. Most social media platforms have similar rules regarding age, meaning you shouldn’t have to worry about your child being exposed to the less savoury denizens of the web.
They could lie about their age, of course. Sites like Twitter don’t have any kind of age verification, how you handle that will be down to your own parenting style.
Once your children are older than thirteen, however, they are allowed to sign up for a wide range of platforms, like YouTube and Facebook. However, they will still be a minor under your care, and you would still be legally within your rights to prevent them from doing so.
If you choose to allow your child onto the Internet, you must prepare them for what they may find. Have a real conversation with them about the risks, and about how people on the Internet can be less than pleasant sometimes.
Give them a thorough grounding in the basics, such as not giving usernames and passwords out, and how to spot a shady site. These are all things that your child will need to learn regardless, so getting a head start can’t hurt.
Is it Dangerous to be an Adult YouTuber?
The dangers of being a YouTuber as an adult are not much different from the general dangers of being on the Internet. Things like identity theft, fraud, and general mental well-being are all things to look out for.
If, however, you become a famous YouTuber, you should be prepared for the responsibility that brings. A person with a few thousand subscribers can make an ill-advised statement or be rude to someone, or let a bit of personal information slip out, and the world will keep turning.
A YouTuber with perhaps a few hundred thousand subscribers may see significant consequences from such behaviour. And a YouTuber with a few million subscribers could make mainstream media headlines from it.
While we understand the desire to rush to success, building a following as you would have with a successful YouTube channel is best done slowly for several reasons, not least of which is it gives you time to grow and adapt to your newfound popularity.
Another way in which being a YouTuber can be dangerous is in the real world implications of your content.
Granted, this probably won’t affect someone who is making inoffensive life hack videos, but if you have opinions of a controversial nature, and you are voicing them in your videos, it could have harmful side effects. In today’s reactionary world, your job could literally be at stake. And, while we might all have the dream of going full time with our YouTube channel, most of us still have to work a day job in the beginning.
What Can YouTubers do to Keep the Negativity Away?
Beyond simply ignoring negative comments, there are things you can do as a YouTuber to keep yourself, your channel, and your community as safe as possible.
Obviously, shutting down comments entirely and not having a presence on other social media platforms will all but eliminate the opportunity for bad faith actors; however, it will also hamper your ability to grow as a channel since community involvement is crucial in the early stages of your YouTube adventure.
So, with that in mind, we’re going to assume that you don’t plan to lock your channel and social media down altogether.
Set the Tone From the Start
Think of unwanted audience behaviour like a bad habit. It is much easier to cut it off at the start than it is to deal with once it has had time to take root and become ingrained. If you make it clear from the beginning that particular behaviour will not be tolerated, and enforce those standards wherever you can, it will be far less likely that you will have a problematic audience when you start to grow as a channel.
Of course, what one channel considers unacceptable may be fine for another channel. Swearing is an example of something that can be fine depending on the channel and the community.
The point is that by setting the tone early on, you’ll have less to deal with as you grow. You may even reach a point where your community polices itself.
If it is established that you do not allow profanity in your comments section, your audience will likely start letting newcomers know when they are behaving in a manner that is not in keeping with your community.
This also applies to behaviour that, while perhaps not offensive in nature, is nonetheless a bad precedent to set. For example, while getting involved with your community is a great way to grow your audience early on, it’s important to establish boundaries.
If you make yourself too available—beyond any reasonable expectation your viewers should have—you set the expectation that you will be similarly available in the future. And, as your audience grows, it will become more challenging to devote enough time to these kinds of interactions. This can lead to a negative reaction from your viewers, who feel they are being snubbed.
Separate Your Online Life From Your Real Life
Being a YouTuber can sometimes lead to problems in your real life. Those problems may be small, such as mild embarrassment over a family member seeing one of your videos, or very serious, such as your employer seeing you say or do something controversial that leads to your firing.
You may not feel like you have anything to hide from your real life, and you may be entirely correct. However, it can still sometimes be good practice to separate your YouTube personality from real life if possible. You can do this using a pseudonym, or being virtually faceless on your channel (though this can have longer-term branding implications).
You can also keep the two separate by not sharing YouTube things on your personal accounts, and not linking personal things to your YouTube account. A common practice is to have a private Facebook page where you can communicate with friends and family online, reserving places like Twitter for your “YouTube persona”.
Take Extra Care With Your Personal Data
There is a myriad of ways in which sensitive personal data can find its way into the public domain. For example, did you know that when you register a domain name, the details of the owner are publicly available unless you pay extra to keep them private? What’s worse is this data typically includes your address.
Another example would be giving out your address to receive packages from viewers, or sending a package to a viewer and having your home as the return address.
It is also worth putting a little extra effort into making sure your videos are free from any sensitive information. For example, if you do an unboxing video, make sure the packing label is removed or covered up before you start filming.
Preparing Yourself Mentally
While the material risks of being a YouTuber are very real, many dangers are less obvious and can creep up on you if you are not prepared for them.
Lack of Privacy
It may seem silly to think that a lack of privacy could be an issue for someone who chooses to put themselves online in a very public way, but as we mentioned above, there should be boundaries.
Still, even with firm boundaries in place, you are putting yourself out there, and there is an unavoidable degree of vulnerability about that.
Criticism
Following directly on from that, there is the criticism. There will always be a negative contingent online who are looking to say unhelpful and hurtful things. As a YouTuber, you need to become proficient at recognising the line between criticism and insults.
Legitimate criticism should be taken on board, as it can help your channel grow, whereas insults and general hurtful behaviour serve no purpose. If a person is looking to hurt you and nothing more, you won’t gain anything by attempting to mollify them, and their words should be dismissed as they have no objective merit.
Or, to put it another way, you wouldn’t ask a friend who hates Chinese food for recommendations on where to get Chinese, so why would you listen to opinions about your YouTube channel from someone who just doesn’t like your channel.
Lack of Understanding
While YouTube has become huge over the last decade or so, and made many people very rich and very famous, it is still covered by the shadow of scepticism when it comes to people who do not spend much time on the Internet. Unfortunately, for many of us, our families and friends will include a certain number of these sceptics.
Explaining what you do and gaining the understanding of people like this can be difficult. This is especially the case if you are hoping for a supportive reaction from your friends and family if you decide to move into YouTubing full time.
The best you can do in these situations is explain things as honestly as you can, let them know how important it is to you, and then try to move past it if they refuse to take it seriously. Try not to hold grudges—YouTube is relatively new, and the idea of a YouTube career is even newer. It’s not entirely unreasonable of them to have a little skepticism about it.
Lack of Patience
Unlike the last one, this one is on you. Succeeding on YouTube takes time. Attempts to cheat the system and speed things along usually end in YouTube redressing the balance—sometimes by deleting your subscribers—so there is no quick fix to success.
If you do not have the patience for the YouTube long haul, there is a very real danger that you will run out of steam and quit.
It can help to visualise your goals, but never be anything less than brutally honest with yourself about the rate of growth you can expect. That way, you won’t be disappointed when you aren’t an overnight success.
