u-tube music, virus magnet?

[swissie]

Looking/listening to free musical contributions on "you tube" is one of the best ways to catch all kinds of viruses.

TRUE / FALSE ?
Thx.

[maxpower]

Clean screen and headphones with wipes before watching or listening.

 

[RichCor]

15 hours ago, swissie said:

on "you tube"

Why did you put quotes around YouTube?  

Was doing that supposed to mean something?

 

[swissie]

8 hours ago, RichCor said:

Why did you put quotes around YouTube?  

Was doing that supposed to mean something?

 

Strictly free you tube music. Not referring to free you porn.

Cheers.

[RichCor]

On 9/10/2017 at 11:21 PM, swissie said:

Looking/listening to free musical contributions on "you tube" is one of the best ways to catch all kinds of viruses.

TRUE / FALSE ?
Thx.

 

As YouTube is a Google provided service that only allows standardized 'streams' to be uploaded/created for distribution, this would be FALSE. It wouldn't be the 'best' way so send or catch all kinds of viruses.

 

The YouTube app or YouTube web app only plays back the datastream (Audio, Video, Closed Captions, Annotations and Clickable Links).

 

Now, that said, if someone found a vulnerability in how the application, browser, javascript, video or audio driver handled that datastream then it's entirely possible they could cause issues just by playing their file.  A similar method was used to 'jailbreak' apple iOS products in 2011 by simply going to a web page and downloading a 'broken' .pdf file.  This might be difficult to do on YouTube as Google 'transcodes' the stream when people upload it (so you can't upload a specific stream of 'code' and expect it to stay intact).

 

People would have an easier/quicker time catching all kinds of viruses downloading movies and music off websites or using torrent or other P2P applications.

[onthesoi]

Flashplayer does have security issues, but I wouldnt say its the best way to catch a virus.

 

Torrents are safe as long as you know what you're doing.

[bendejo]

Anything "google" is going to be exposed to all google-world in one way or another.  I would suggest not being logged into your google account when accessing youtube, as there will probably be an entry about it somewhere.  I'm not saying something nefarious will come of it, but I personally believe the less data about me out there the better; some people couldn't care less about this sort of thing, up to you.  But don't be surprised to get an email from youtube or some other google service saying "hey, you seem to like the Beatles, check out these new vids that were just posted!" a few days after watching Beatles stuff.

If you want to take steps to secure yourself in this regard, do a search on "google tracking" and the like.  But try it on a search engine other than google

Not being kept track of by google is more complicated (perhaps impossible?) when using the Chrome browser (on any platform) or using Android.

 

Ad blockers, script blockers, plug-in controllers and the like are all necessities, IMO.

 

 

Edited September 11, 2017 by bendejo

[RichCor]

12 hours ago, onthesoi said:

Flashplayer does have security issues, but I wouldnt say its the best way to catch a virus.

You still use Flash on YouTube??  

Adobe is killing the Flash product off in 2020.

[onthesoi]

7 hours ago, RichCor said:

You still use Flash on YouTube??  

Adobe is killing the Flash product off in 2020.

 

I dont have flash installed for the reasons already given, I was simply answering the OP's question.

 

It's html5 or nothing at all.

Edited September 12, 2017 by onthesoi