In a group chat I’m in, the following was said (details modified/removed to protect anonymity):
I haven’t searched for topic in Google. I searched on a privacy-protecting search engine. I talked about it with a coworker on an internal chat tool. And now, on my personal device, YouTube is showing me a video explaining topic.
Android devices in particular do listen to you1 and send data to various companies. While Google claims to only listen when directed and with permission, they are often caught listening without explicit permission. They have a strong incentive to collect as much data as they can, but I don’t think this is the cause.
Shadow profiles are like accounts, but created without permission for tracking purposes. They do not always uniquely identify a person, but they usually do. I am confident YouTube builds these and tracks connections between users (signed in or not), and tests their presumptions about identity by showing videos recently watched by someone related to you. It confirms these relationships by your interactions.2
That may also not be the cause, because ultimately, YouTube’s algorithms are a pattern-matching machine sifting through a hoard of data. Relatedness can be found in unknowable ways. It’s spooky to us because we cannot imagine how these connections are made, but they are nonetheless real – or made real by the machine.
They are definitely doing shady tracking because suggestions are too precise to only be accounted for by spurious connectivity.
Have you ever looked into browser fingerprinting?
It’s shockingly easy to identify users3 from standard data available to anyone. You as an individual can’t fight it because when you genericize your data using privacy protection features, you are put in a group of similar users so small that the remaining traces (like loading times) become enough to uniquely identify you anyhow.
As an individual4, use privacy protecting features whenever you can, because they only work when we all use them, but know that we must also fight back as a culture. We need systematic change to regain privacy, and that only happens with laws and social movements.
Lobbying is evil, but necessary in the world we live in. There are many organizations that call themselves privacy advocates, but most of these are actually fronts for business interests. Startpage’s Privacy Organizations You Should Follow is a list of organizations actually interested in preserving privacy instead of controlling access to privacy.
you keep saying “privacy protection features” like I know what that is
The easiest first step is to use a browser that protects you by default, like Vivaldi or LibreWolf5. Conversely, Chrome is the worst browser to use – it’s the most popular because of a concerted data collection effort by Google. Brave has a number of issues6, but is likewise strongly marketed as privacy-focused. All warfare marketing is based on deception.
Another easy step is to install a VPN. Use Private Internet Access, as they are the only VPN to consistently be proven by legal actions to not collect user data. (They’re also the cheapest!) Despite popular VPNs claiming to offer full privacy just by being installed, VPNs only hide one small part of how you are tracked online. They are a good tool, but do not offer that much protection, and they do slow your connection somewhat.
If you want to go all-in, I’ve stumbled across A Comprehensive Guide To Protecting Your Digital Privacy by Thessy Emmanuel. Even by a glance, I can tell it’s a pretty good resource, and it even covers things you may not expect like how cities track you.
Footnotes
- MSN is trying to block archival, but I managed to get a copy here, and made my own.
- I say this from personal experience. I have used a wide variety of devices in a variety of locations with different levels of privacy protection enabled. Across all of this, YouTube is able to accurately associate video recommendations with either no data – the first time YouTube is loaded – or very little, such as after watching a single video.
- The title of this article is misleading, but it is very thorough.
- I really need to write something about how and why individualism is a poisonous concept (archived copy). Ever heard of “divide and conquer”? That is the reason why most articles present options to you as an individual person, and frame things as your responsibility. By focusing on your choices, we absolve the guilt of those truly responsible for societal problems – companies, institutions, organizations.
- LibreWolf is superior in terms of privacy protection, but does have minor usability issues as a result, and I do not recommend it unless you are already comfortable dealing with minor technical issues from time to time.
- You’ll notice quote the rebuttal to the claims made at the top of this forum thread. Some of these are accurate, some may not be. I chose this as my source to highlight these issues because to me, it is more important to acknowledge that Brave has regularly made bad decisions and then reversed them, while Vivaldi and LibreWolf have not made these blunders in the first-place. A team truly devoted to making the best browser for you does not keep making these kinds of mistakes and having to error-correct, they make good decisions from the start.
Updated 2025-06-23: Well, this is unexpectedly timely.. here’s a video talking about VPNs specifically, and how they don’t protect you nearly as much as VPN companies pretend they do:
That is called the Nirvana Fallacy. So you know from the start that you have NO protection, and you need something that does not rely on the fallacy as the building block, say like Tor or Session. Sure, those projects might have their shortcomings, but at lest do not build on sand.
I meant to add an aside about Tor, but completely forgot because it took me longer than I expected just to go this far. xD
The biggest problem is that no one should have to go through any of this.