Availability of hidden and private YouTube videos for subscribers
The imperfection of the subscription system on YouTube provides all channel subscribers with access to hidden and private videos uploaded by the user.
For a start, a quick introduction on what types of videos can be found on YouTube.
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Public is a regular video, available to everyone from the search, from subscriptions, from the channel page, from related.
Unlisted - available to anyone, but only for a direct link; excluded from the search.
Private - available only to certain users.
Of course, the video with the Unlisted and Private privacy settings are not displayed in the subscriptions and on the channel of the user who downloaded them. However, YouTube’s subscription alert system is not perfect and, thanks to it, in certain cases, channel subscribers get access to these videos.
Here we must make a small digression and say that very often these two privacy options are used by popular users to upload new videos. Initially, such a video is filled with the Unlisted or Private flag, after which the author waits for its complete processing (by default, the video becomes available to users even before YouTube has created several quality options), perhaps adds annotations and only after that makes it Public. The imperfection of the YouTube alert system is that it helpfully reports that the user has uploaded a new video, despite the fact that he has the Unlisted or Private flag:
From the screenshot, this may not be entirely clear, but this list shows several videos uploaded a long time ago (much earlier 9 hours ago), while downloading a new video, according to YouTube, took place 9 hours ago. The bug that leads to this is as follows: regardless of what privacy setting the user has chosen, his channel automatically rises in the list of all subscribers with a notification that the user has downloaded a new video. Setting privacy only affects whether the video is shown in the accompanying list. In this example, 9 hours ago, the user uploaded a new Private video, and all his subscribers were immediately notified about this (although they did not get access to the video itself).
In principle, this story could end on this, because subscribers could not watch a private video. However, the YouTube notification system is not limited to site boundaries — at will, an email with the same content comes every week. Opening it, we see:
Despite the privacy settings, YouTube notified subscribers about the uploaded video, showed it on the list and helpfully provided a link to watch. If this video is Unlisted, then anyone who has a direct link can watch it. In this case, this video turned out to be Private, so when viewing it, instead of video, we get this:
In this case, the potential damage from this is small: this video is just another part of the video passage of the game with comments, temporarily hidden by the author due to the fact that it is still being processed. However, in the same notification letter I also found much more personal videos that were already hidden for the very reason that they were not for prying eyes:
Unlike the one mentioned above, these videos were with the flag Unlisted, not Private, and were available for viewing by the link from the letter. For ethical reasons, proof-screenshots of these videos do not cite here.
A notification email arrives once a week (to all appearances, on Mondays) and tells you about all uploaded videos for the past week. Includes personal and hidden from video of the honeymoon or wedding. Tells all subscribers.
For a start, a quick introduction on what types of videos can be found on YouTube.
')
Public is a regular video, available to everyone from the search, from subscriptions, from the channel page, from related.
Unlisted - available to anyone, but only for a direct link; excluded from the search.
Private - available only to certain users.
Of course, the video with the Unlisted and Private privacy settings are not displayed in the subscriptions and on the channel of the user who downloaded them. However, YouTube’s subscription alert system is not perfect and, thanks to it, in certain cases, channel subscribers get access to these videos.
Here we must make a small digression and say that very often these two privacy options are used by popular users to upload new videos. Initially, such a video is filled with the Unlisted or Private flag, after which the author waits for its complete processing (by default, the video becomes available to users even before YouTube has created several quality options), perhaps adds annotations and only after that makes it Public. The imperfection of the YouTube alert system is that it helpfully reports that the user has uploaded a new video, despite the fact that he has the Unlisted or Private flag:
From the screenshot, this may not be entirely clear, but this list shows several videos uploaded a long time ago (much earlier 9 hours ago), while downloading a new video, according to YouTube, took place 9 hours ago. The bug that leads to this is as follows: regardless of what privacy setting the user has chosen, his channel automatically rises in the list of all subscribers with a notification that the user has downloaded a new video. Setting privacy only affects whether the video is shown in the accompanying list. In this example, 9 hours ago, the user uploaded a new Private video, and all his subscribers were immediately notified about this (although they did not get access to the video itself).
In principle, this story could end on this, because subscribers could not watch a private video. However, the YouTube notification system is not limited to site boundaries — at will, an email with the same content comes every week. Opening it, we see:
Despite the privacy settings, YouTube notified subscribers about the uploaded video, showed it on the list and helpfully provided a link to watch. If this video is Unlisted, then anyone who has a direct link can watch it. In this case, this video turned out to be Private, so when viewing it, instead of video, we get this:
In this case, the potential damage from this is small: this video is just another part of the video passage of the game with comments, temporarily hidden by the author due to the fact that it is still being processed. However, in the same notification letter I also found much more personal videos that were already hidden for the very reason that they were not for prying eyes:
Unlike the one mentioned above, these videos were with the flag Unlisted, not Private, and were available for viewing by the link from the letter. For ethical reasons, proof-screenshots of these videos do not cite here.
A notification email arrives once a week (to all appearances, on Mondays) and tells you about all uploaded videos for the past week. Includes personal and hidden from video of the honeymoon or wedding. Tells all subscribers.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/127782/
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