Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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How am I being tracked by Youtube? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by zerozaku@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

49 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have been finding more and more videos being recommended on my homepage which I search about even though my privacy paths I follow seem good enough. So this is how it goes:

I come across a term I don't know on a Lemmy post.
I open my browser, Cromite which has been set to priv.au, a searx instance, as the default search engine.
Search the word and don't even open any links to know, just reading the meaning of this term out from the subtexts present on search results.
And then I open YouTube and scroll a bit on homepage to find a video on that term.

This has happened to me twice in past few days and I am not understanding which service of mine is giving it away. To add more about my setup, I'm on mobile btw, using FUTO keyboard and using Duckduckgo VPN which blocks cross-app tracking. My mobile lemmy client is Voyager. I don't even interact with the post containing that term. I just open it up, read the post and the comments. No upvoting no commenting.

Who's the culprit here?

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[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Android running coloros

[–] nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

AI-Powered Mobile OS

bruh

[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Huh? It's not? I don't use any ai features. Infact, I have uninstalled Google app using Shizuku.

[–] nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 15 points 3 days ago

The ai features are using you!

In all seriousness, I would be slightly suspicious about any closed source OS's privacy, doubly so if they aggressively advertise AI. But we can't know for sure, it might very respect your privacy in this situation.

[–] girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I would say it's likely related to ColorOS or Play Services (or both) tracking something behind the scenes and feeding it to your ad profile. You've done a lot to try to reduce your fingerprint but it sounds like it could be something harder to track down.

Have you considered switching to another version of Android that uses microG to reduce Play Service permissions or another phone with GrapheneOS? That may be the next option unfortunately.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Are you logged into YouTube?

Is YouTube opened in the browser or the app?

[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes I'm logged into Youtube using mircog

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In the browser or the app

[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

App. I don't have any Google account signed in my browsers.