Research Outline

Consumer Platforms and Privacy Research

Goals

To understand the top 10 settings that users should adjust to maintain privacy on the top 30 consumer platforms, including YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon.

Early Findings

YouTube

  • YouTube is governed by Google's Privacy Policy. As such, the company collects massive amounts of data about its users in order to use that data to sell ads. Google also puts the onus on users to make changes to their privacy features, and the company does not necessarily make it easy.
  • (1) On the video upload page, choose the dropdown menu and choose "private" to make it so only the people you give access to can see the video. This is limited to 25 people.
  • (2) On the video upload page, choose the dropdown menu and choose "unlisted" to make it so videos do not show up in search results and only people with the direct link can see the video. There is no limit to how many people can view the video.
  • (3) Be careful of what you share in your videos. Be sure that information on where you live, things you own, or who your family is, is not given away by your videos.
  • (4) Settings--->Account--->Edit on Google (next to channel name/profile picture) to control what information people see about you.
  • (5) Settings--->Privacy--->check to make likes and subscriptions private.
  • (6) Account icon--->Creator Studio--->Community--->Community Settings--->Hold all comments for review to ensure that no inappropriate comments are posted without your knowledge.