this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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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
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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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[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I had something crazy like this happen recently. A friend of mine sent me a photo to my personal phone of an expensive liquor. The very next day on my work computer, on my work network, YouTube suggested a short video about the same expensive liquor that I had never looked anything up about previously.

How the hell a photo from on device managed to track me like that was impressive. The algorithm is watching us.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My best guess would be your friend is being thoroughly tracked and they know who he semt the data to and they have a basic mapping of you.

[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Still impressive, I only use YouTube for music at work, be pretty hard in my mind to link my Google account to my work computer that is on a corporate VPN that is out of a data center like 500 miles away.

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Are you using the same account for youtube on your work and phone?

[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No, I can’t sign in on my work computer.

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

So YouTube/Google has somehow linked your personal phone activity to your YouTube at work even though work YouTube has no sign in?

[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

It would appear so. Again, it was the most dramatic case of random coincidence or incredibly good association algorithm.

This is the photo sent to me

This is what YouTube suggested to me the very next day

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

Perhaps you have a 'leak' in your isolation methods. Might also be happening to me but I so rarely use YouTube (signed in or otherwise) I can't see m share relevant experiences.