Need help with Youtube watch history ( Security and Privacy )

Tech News Security and Privacy
1

So I was checking my youtube watch history to find a particular video I watched and to my suprise I saw many videos I never opened . These videos are more than my own watch history and it is actively showing up on the list .

Their was many videos in my history but I never watched them , I never used this gmail account on any other device so this is very weird .

Should I change my password and other stuff .

Is my account compromised?

Anyone else encountered this .

2

Three scenarios -

  1. Account is compromised, most likely
  2. YouTube recommendations made their way into your watch list somehow, assuming they are related
  3. You forgot that one day you added so many entries to your watch list.

I have my watch history as paused.

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3

The thing is , for example -

I am watching a video right now and then after 2 - 3 videos I go to check my youtube watch history and what I see is some random kids videos are also being watched simultaneously.

And these are mostly videos from rural areas and kids cartoon in Hindi .

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4

Then your account is most likely compromised. Try pausing your watch history and re-enabling it again to see if this behaviour continues.

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5

I also feel same now because this is very frequent .

Going to reset everything and change password and recovery emails .

Thanks for helping :smiling_face: .

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6

If you are not using 2FA on your frequently used gmail/google acc then it is just a matter of time before the acc is compromised.

7

I have it enabled

8

After this issue, right?

9

No I always had 2FA enabled

10

Then you have much more serious issue (security/privacy). Either someone you know is using your acc or your 2FA device is seriously compromised.

11

Could there be some other device which has your account in your house or some place else ?
A friend’s computer, shared devices or when you were too drunk to even remember at your girlfriend’s device (she secretly might have kids) you might logged into

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12

Best comment till now in this thread. :laughing:

13

Do you have your account logged in on your TV? You say no other account, but how have you logged in on your TV?

14

What might be happening is, when the video plays in the thumbnail, when you hover the pointer over it, that also gets added to your watch history.

Similarly on TV if you have logged in to youtube, while browsing if any video played itself in the thumbnail, it gets added to your watch history.

Because technically it played doesn’t matter how.

Just turn off this feature in the settings.

15

TIL there is such a feature.

16

I was wondering the same thing, the user can check if the autoplay functionality is on or not in playback settings.

17

Lol! and I daily watch hovering over video thumbnails before I decide to click them and watch fully but never ever have such videos got added to my/history.

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18

Happened to me. It’s a known issue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/12lnno9/stop_thumbnail_playback_from_showing_in_watch/

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