Google has had its fair share of privacy issues, and I don’t think there could be a better time to recap their past incidents. So here is a quick list of the things that have happened in the past related to Google’s privacy (oldest first):
- Picasa’s private albums available to the public
- Blogger feeds available for private blogs
- Gmail flaw shows anyone your contact list
- Google Street View had some interesting images, and getting yourself removed from there was a pain
- Google Docs doesn’t make your images private
And now there is a new one to chalk up on the list: private YouTube videos can be downloaded by anyone. I guess their help section doesn’t tell the whole truth:
When you make a video private, you have the option of sharing it with a select number of people from any of the lists you’ve created (you have two default lists, "Friends" and "Family"). If you don’t select a list, your private video can only be viewed by your account. If you share it with members on a list, it will only be viewable by those select members on that list.
So how can you get your hands on a private video? All you need is the ID of the YouTube video, and then you paste it onto the end of this URL:
cache.googlevideo.com/get_video?video_id=
Using this private video as an example, here is what the URL would look like:
cache.googlevideo.com/get_video?video_id=lyOBg3w5vHc
That URL will prompt you to download the video in FLV format, which can easily be played from your own computer. I know that manually entering in that URL can be a pain, so I’ve put together a bookmarklet that will prompt you for the ID of the YouTube video. After it’s entered in the download will immediately begin. To use the bookmarklet just right click on this link and bookmark it:
Google’s security woes continue to haunt them, but I hope they continue to get better as time goes on. Is it that they’re rushing products out the door without testing them thoroughly?
Source: Googlefied
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Tags: Google, Web Sites, Bookmark, Videos, YouTube
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Hmmm…definitely some privacy issues here:
http://streetviewgallery.corank.com
Google Street View is capturing a lot of peoplw in comprmising situations.
The message I get from YouTube is, “This is a private video. If you have been sent this video, please make sure you accept the sender’s friend request.”
Meh…I don’t really care.
4. The city I live in isn’t included in the streets
1. Picasa web albums- don’t use
2. Blogger- mine’s public to begin with
3. Gmail- ok…possibly bad regarding spam, but it’s not my mailbox it’ll get sent to
5. whatever…
6. I don’t put images in my google docs
7. I don’t have any videos on youtube that I don’t want the public to see.
All in all, I find it pretty dumb to put anything out on the net and expect it to be perfectly private….except for email, that I expect to be private.
Wow, you basically showed them how to do it. Why would you do that
Everyone will see that message, but using that bookmarklet you should be able to enter in the ID of the video and download it to your computer.
I feel the same way as you…I’ve been reluctant to use many of these services because I fear what the privacy reprecussions will be.
It was already out there…I was just restating it. Not only that but sometimes it takes making these things public before companies will make it a priority to fix the issue.
I’m sure will all of the attention this has gotten, it’ll be fixed pretty quickly.