I thought this was common knowledge but everyone was surprised. All you need to share a YouTube link is the white part. Everything else is tracking.
Some browsers/extensions also provide a clean URL that strips it.
I thought this was common knowledge but everyone was surprised. All you need to share a YouTube link is the white part. Everything else is tracking.
Some browsers/extensions also provide a clean URL that strips it.
The tracking is used to identify the source user who shared the link - that is connected in the DB to the user who received and used the link. That connects their two digital footprints as far as the website is concerned. It’s one element that leads to strangely tenuous “people you may know” style lists. If you and the person you share with have totally separate online lives. The moment you share that link - everything YouTube (Google) knows about both of you is connected. If one of you has shared your contact lists, your phone number, address etc is potentially now connected to you even if you’ve never posted it to anything online. It doesn’t take much for someone to be linked to 1000’s of people in a chain reaction of connections started by a single shared link that hasn’t been anonymised.