Is Browsing Really Secure?

[snoring_cat]

I just ran a test with fresh vanilla installs of Vivaldi, Firefox and Palemoo (no saved profiles, cached data, cookies or savefiles) to see what Youtube videos would show up on their landing page at https://youtube.com. All 3 browsers showed similar video results. However, I also saw videos referencing an obscure search I did a while back when using savefiles, profiles and cookies.

Next, I then tried using a VPN and restarting the results above. This time I did not see any results from previous searches I had done. I'm going to do some more tests to see if I can reproduce the results, and will also use different access points, like WIFI hotspots at restaurants and libraries.

Is anyone else interested in doing these types of tests, please share your results? Also, are there other links I should try other than https://youtube.com?

Note that Tor browser was not used since Youtube fails to load with Tor, stating:

• Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later.

Oh the joy of exit nodes.

[williwaw]

All 3 browsers showed similar video results. However, I also saw videos referencing an obscure search I did a while back when using savefiles, profiles and cookies.

Next, I then tried using a VPN and restarting the results above. This time I did not see any results from previous searches I had done.

Delivering suggestions based on IP address? possible if your router has not been rebooted lately.

I have vanilla copies of seamonkey and chromium. (no modified configs extensions or saved data) that untar into their vanilla state each time they are launched.

I made a specific search on youtube and closed the browser. relaunched immediately in the same x session and could find no hint of an association to my previous browser launch and search.

maybe when you did your previous obscure search, there were enough browser fingerprintable anomalies worth associating with your IP adress, whereas a vanilla browser instance has less value to youtube.

[snoring_cat]

I did some more tests, and am starting to lean more toward Youtube not using my specific ISP provided IP information. Regardless of if I used a remote VPN or not, I was getting the same pseudo-random results for all testing browsers (each having new blank profiles just created). Also, I did not log into Youtube.

A case in point of seeing the same video links is the attached image below. I had researched the Antarctic snow cruiser over a month ago and thought it too obscure to randomly make it to Youtube's landing page. No matter which browser I used, about every 3rd refresh or fresh startup, I was getting this as a video result.

I noticed this for about 3 rather obscure topic videos that I had searched on in the past. I'm thinking now that I was researching topics that were so ahead of their time, that Youtube is just starting to catch up to my cool search subjects. To verify this, does anyone else see the image below on their Youtube homepage? You might have to refresh the page a couple of times. For me, this image appeared about 10 rows down.

youtube_ip_test.jpg (17.8 KiB) Viewed 167 times