YouTube Video History Monitor and Notifier for Chrome
With so many YouTube extensions available for all web browsers, it is hard to come by an original add-on that brings something to the table that the majority of extensions do not offer. Video History for YouTube is such an add-on. The Google Chrome extension combines several features under its hood, of which the video history monitor is without doubt the most interesting.
Once you have installed the extension it adds an icon to Chrome's address bar. Part of the extension's functionality works right after installation. Whenever you visit a page with a YouTube video, it will automatically be added to the extension's video history listing. The author has designed the extension to pick up embedded or playing videos automatically when the pages they are embedded on are accessed. This works well for some websites, like the YouTube website, and not at all on others unfortunately were embedded videos, even if you start playing them, are not picked up by the extension at all.
Video History for YouTube
But saving the videos that you come upon on the Internet is just one of the features of the extension. While you could keep it at that, you could also enter your YouTube username, or the username of a user you follow, in the setup tab of the extension. It will then pull subscription information, and a list of videos that have been uploaded by the user, and display those information under the subscriptions tab. New videos uploaded to subscribed channels are then highlighted by the extension, just like new videos that were added to the viewing history.
The Chrome extension lastly displays popular videos on the video hosting site as well sorted into weekly, monthly and all time listings.
The two core features, the monitoring of videos that you watch or encounter on the Internet, and information about new videos posted to subscribed channels, make the YouTube video history an interesting extension for YouTube die hards. The developer needs to work on the video detection routine though, as it is currently missing quite a few embedded videos.
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I guess Softonic is also getting money from Google.
Wait till Shaun discovers chrome://flags/ and then the real how-to chrome article flooding will start…
I don’t think so. The real summary. If you need to use Chrome use it in Incognito Mode because it keeps track of your browsing history. Use Edge for your normal browsing. Edge keeps track of your browsing history for saving puppies:) Typical tricks, badmouthing the main competitor.
Really Shaun your writing “The Dark Web Awaits!” is the dark mode the same as the dark web?
Maybe dark mode was a better title?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_web
Or Brave shortcut with “-tor” parameter at the end.
The problem, is that I’m not sure which is less dangerous – Chrome or Tor?
Question marks after a declarative sentence is bad Grammer. See the headline. To use a question mark simply change the wording to a sentence, such as “How do you……”
@Shaun thanks for the articles!
“One of the best things about using Google Chrome is it keeps track of your browsing history.”
Considering the article topic I assume you mean browsing history in a broader sense, including things like tracking storage. Well even if that comment was restricted to browsing history only, not only it’s not Chrome specific but rather universal among browsers, but Chrome would instead be specific in making keeping history the worst possible feature among browsers. Because while most of the browsers (Chrome and Firefox for instance) misuse browsing history by exploiting it commercially for things like personalized advertising, so the more is kept the better for them, Chrome excels at it by uploading it unencrypted to Google servers often without the user even knowing.
“This mode disables local storage of site data, cookies, and browsing history.”
This is false. You are still being tracked by web sites (by local storage, cookies…) during your private browsing session, it just ends at the end of the session by a wiping of the tracking storage. Firefox has the same issue, and both by design. From:
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/7440301
“Cookies and site data are remembered while you’re browsing, but deleted when you exit Incognito mode.”
In fact, if it works like in Firefox, the tracking storage is even hidden to the user in the UI during private browsing but still here, creating the illusion that it is actually disabled, and even technical users often fall for this. The ability to limit, clean, auto-clean tracking storage, for instance with extensions, may also be limited in this mode. Personally I do not use it because it’s not private enough for this reason, giving up control on cookies ; I use normal mode with privacy tweaks.
A consequence is that browsers like Tor Browser that use mandatory permanent private browsing mode suffer from the same problem. In fact some update went further and totally removed the ability to block cookies and other tracking storage in the UI, while it’s still possible in Firefox in private browsing.
In private browsing modes a bit like in Tor Browser it seems that there is an underlying philosophy that it doesn’t matter that you every tiniest action is being scrutinized, analyzed, and used back against you by evil actors as long as there isn’t your real life name attached to the process. Personally, I disagree. This “loophole” is being heavily abused by surveillance capitalists in many other ways currently.
“One misconception people have is their data is kept private when using incognito mode. You should know that you can still be tracked and attacked by third parties. Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) can track your browsing history and block local websites according to your geography.”
I don’t think that the most common misconception about private browsing is that it would act like an antivirus and block attacks that target vulnerabilities.
What’s often misunderstood is rather that a lot of this mode aims at protecting from other users of the same computer, being a sort of “porn mode” for example. From the same Google reference:
“When you browse privately, other people who use the device won’t see your history.”
A typical example being the browsing history wipe, while such history is not accessible to web sites anyway, but could be to other local users. (well as discussed above it’s also accessible to browser companies while it shouldn’t be, and additionally for anti-user purposes, but that’s another issue). Or the cookies being stored in memory instead of on disk, which may address yet other privacy issues due to local attacks.
However it is also useful to partly limit web tracking (I would not call this “third party” as the author writes because this obviously also includes first party ie the browsed site) in addition to protecting from other local users, by wiping tracking storage at the end of the session. With the caveat above that during the session itself, tracking storage is not disabled. There are also typically other measures that are directed against tracking by web sites exclusively, that are enforced in private browsing mode.
And finally there is all the tracking by sites that happens without using the tracking storage itself, such as through fingerprinting or the IP address ; wiping storage at the end of the session won’t help with that, unless using Tor Browser.
Why use an incognito mode when you can use browsers with a pre-installed web proxy. The UtopiaP2P ecosystem browser is the best way for me to surf the web anonymously. If, like me, you value your anonymity and privacy, then I recommend using this browser.