YouTube runs experiment addressing users with ad blocker

[Karel]

I agree about the free ones being shady. I would never use them or recommend them.
But I thought that was obvious. Apparently not...

[NiHaoMike]

I agree about the free ones being shady. I would never use them or recommend them.
But I thought that was obvious. Apparently not...

If used as a UDP over Tor gateway, I don't see that as a problem. They never get your actual IP and there's also no payment details that would considerably simplify tracing down. You obviously don't want to give them any personal data (e.g. by logging into one of your accounts through the tunnel) but that's true of any anonymizing service.

[ve7xen]

And yet you are happy to pronounce on other companies that you also don't know anything about.

I'm simply pointing out that (many) shady examples exist and that I think it is foolish to trust any such company by default, which is what you seem to be suggesting by saying 'name the bad ones'. You should be suspicious by default of some random company on the Internet that sells VPN services. At least your local ISP will be a known quantity; they are subject to the same data protection rights you have with any other company you do business with in your country (or possibly more, in some places where common-carrier communications have special protections), they're probably subject to some scrutiny about such matters, you have a legal agreement with them that presumably comes with some legal rights, and you likely have some practical legal recourse if they violate it.

You seem to be missing the point here. When you use one of these services, you are choosing to shovel all kinds of personal data to them willingly. If you care about privacy, you should probably think about what that company might do or want to do with access to that data. You may conclude the answer is 'less than my ISP' or 'less than my government', and that's great, just don't think that shipping your data securely to someone else is automatically going to improve your privacy or security posture, all it does is change who you are trusting with it.

Perhaps you could share the names of the companies you do know about?

The highest profile scandal is probably around Kape Technologies (owners of ExpressVPN, PIA and others, including VPN 'review' sites). See plenty of reporting on them, but basically this company has connections to the UAE intelligence apparatus, previously was heavily invested in developing browser-based private data collection software and spyware, and the owner himself has a pretty shady past. For example https://gizmodo.com/you-should-probably-stop-using-expressvpn-1847739547

SuperVPN (and related companies) has a pretty serious compromise. NordVPN leaked some key back in the day that would've allowed an adversary to spin up a server impersonating them.

Folks need to decide for themselves whether they trust or don't trust these companies, based on their own situation and needs.

[SiliconWizard]

You can't trust any company anyway. Certainly never use a VPN that you don't fully control if you need to fully *trust* it.
After that the question is whether you prefer a random company somewhere in the world to potentially leak your data rather than your ISP directly doing it. It's all a matter of use case and context, there is no single general answer to what people should or should not do.

[Bicurico]

Interestingly I have had no ads, pop-ups or other inconviniences when using Youtube for the last days (week?).

I did not change anything in my browser or habits, all I did was to click the [X] on the pop-up windows. This showed for 2-3 days and then was gone.

I am not sure if this was just a test, if they tried to convert the easily impressable or if they got some pressure for spying without consent on installed plugins, which is illegal in the EU.

Curious to see what is going to happen next.

[tom66]

Indeed, I noticed it has stopped.

I read somewhere that the adblock detection was fooled by being in incognito mode, so an easy enough way to defeat it would be to require Google do not store that kind of information (because you did not consent to it.)   Whether that can be distinguished from normal account data (e.g. being logged in) I don't know.

[PlainName]

If incognito mode trends then Google could easily require a login to enable access, thus tracking and all that via the username rather than cookies/fingerprint/etc. Musk has just shown that requiring login to access a service doesn't have a big downside.

[rdl]

I haven't seen any difference in the last few weeks as compared to the previous many years. I watch YouTube videos regularly and usually a couple or three nights a week I watch for hours at a stretch. No ads ever. I really wouldn't be hugely against paying, say $5 a month, but then I'm pretty sure they'd end up knowing way, way more about me than they do now.

[Karel]

I really wouldn't be hugely against paying, say $5 a month, but then I'm pretty sure they'd end up knowing way, way more about me than they do now.

This.

[hovadmartin]

I'm pretty sure they'd end up knowing way, way more about gemini pet peeves than they do now.

What did you mean by that? That they would collect your personal data (which they do anyway) if you pay a monthly fee? 

[tom66]

I'm pretty sure they'd end up knowing way, way more about me than they do now.

What did you mean by that? That they would collect your personal data (which they do anyway) if you pay a monthly fee?

Well, for one, they'd have a credit/bank card linked to your account.  Which would give them legal name, postal address, and a way to tie your identity up with other purchases and services via companies Google has ownership of.

[Karel]

The Windows Phone returns from grave as an anti-ad-blocker blocker on YouTube

https://www.techspot.com/news/100583-windows-phone-returns-grave-anti-ad-blocker-blocker.html

[wilfred]

I tried installing "user agent switcher" extension into Edge and it worked for me selecting Windows phone. I finally hit a brick wall where it was a choice of allow ads or buy premium. I may eventually buy premium but not just yet. It works on a per Tab basis so it is not disruptive for other tabs.

I have an Android media box with an app (not from the playstore) that allows me to watch on the couch without ads.
For now this agent switch works so I'll let it play out.
And I can download videos if I know I want to watch the whole thing.

I found Windows Phone on WIN10 and Edge will play the video but I get nothing else. No comments, description, subscribed channels nothing. Just the video. So I may tire of the switching back and forth.

I did try switching the user agent to an older firefox string that immediately got a message screen saying that browser version was out of date  and that did give me a more normal looking youtube screen. remember I'm still on Edge browser it is just sending a string telling YT I'm using Firefox, or Windows Phone.

My actual Windows Phone is pretty useless these days for watching YT. And it dies in 7 months when the 3G network dies. Ironically it does show Youtube ads.


I'm still hoping to wean myself off a lot of the YT channels I watch too much of, so some self flagellation is in order.

So there is something to try until you get sick of it and buy a subscription.

[MT]

I found out that if you hover with mouse over "videos containers" and let them start playing in the box for 30 sec or so and then select the video to watch in larger screen format
 there is no anti ad blocking popping up............so far it works for the last week. Im using Vivaldi browser for this experiment.

[Karel]

Privacy advocate challenges YouTube's ad blocking detection scripts under EU law

Last week, privacy advocate Alexander Hanff filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC)
decrying YouTube's deployment of JavaScript code to detect the use of ad blocking extensions by website visitors.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/26/privacy_advocate_challenges_youtube/

[CJay]

So the uBlock scripts have now stopped working here and I'm seeing ads again.

Which have revealed yet another reason why YT is evil, adverts for dodgy as hell investment schemes (scams) featuring deepfakes of people like Musk (As if a deepfake ad could trash his reputation further) yet there's no way to report these obvious scams and fakes.

Sick of it, everyone wants to take my money for 'premium' services and yet still monetise my personal info, browsing data etc. and there's no escape from the bullshit.

[madires]

Yep, ad-blockers help to protect you from malicious ads. It's not just about scam ads on YouTube. You'll see them also on websites of well known newspapers, for example. Therefore even the German BSI (federal office for information security) recommends to use an ad-blocker: https://www.bsi.bund.de/EN/Themen/Verbraucherinnen-und-Verbraucher/Informationen-und-Empfehlungen/Cyber-Sicherheitsempfehlungen/Updates-Browser-Open-Source-Software/Der-Browser/Adblocker-Tracking/adblocker-tracking_node.html. It's self-defence!

[magic]

That's what Google used to be, 15 years ago

[wofritz]

Is the "experiment" still running? I do not get the pop up anymore with ublock active (and no ads). Only thing that may be different now is that some videos stop playing after some seconds and need another click on the play button to resume.

 

[Shonky]

I am still seeing the "permanent block". Initially disabling uBlock Origin got it going again but it's back to being blocked with that disabled and just a pihole running DNS.

[Bicurico]

Today I opened Youtube on my second PC, which has not been used for a few weeks.

Got the Youtube warning in a more agressive form: it said I could only watch 3 videos and there was a timer to close the window. Clicking refresh got rid of it and the video played.

On my main computer, I am not getting any warnings anymore.

[NiHaoMike]

I wonder how difficult it would be to just generate lots (hundreds to thousands per minute) of fake ad views using a script. Would be fun to run that on a CGNAT address, then they can't just filter by IP address without losing legitimate views.

[Shonky]

I wonder how difficult it would be to just generate lots (hundreds to thousands per minute) of fake ad views using a script. Would be fun to run that on a CGNAT address, then they can't just filter by IP address without losing legitimate views.

Sounds like a fun way to get your IMEI banned.

What? IMEI has nothing to do with anything.

[coppercone2]

youtube wants me to get hard in 8 seconds according to the advertisement 

[Shonky]

I wonder how difficult it would be to just generate lots (hundreds to thousands per minute) of fake ad views using a script. Would be fun to run that on a CGNAT address, then they can't just filter by IP address without losing legitimate views.

Sounds like a fun way to get your IMEI banned.

What? IMEI has nothing to do with anything.

• You're rapidly connecting-disconnecting to carrier's network to obtain different IPs - it might get detected as suspicious activity.
• You're rapidly opening a lot of connections to a remote server - it might get detected as DoS attempt or malware-infected device.
• Google might find out and send abuse notice for your ISP to investigate.

Years ago I made that mistake when testing failover code in an IoT embedded system. Luckily this was before SIM cards had to be registered with identity document. Only casualty was $30 Huawei modem which got permabanned from the network. Swapping SIMs didn't help so the most reasonable explaination is it got its IMEI blocked.

None of what you're saying was being suggested.