YouTube Privacy Notice
Updated as of July 21, 2008
The Google Privacy Policy describes how Google and its subsidiaries treat personal information when you use Google services, including information provided when you use YouTube. In addition, the following describes privacy practices specific to YouTube. To understand how we treat the information you give us as you use YouTube, you should read this policy and the Google Privacy Policy.
Personal Information
- Non-Account Activity. You can watch videos on YouTube without having a YouTube Account or a Google Account. You can also contact us about a particular video without having a YouTube Account or a Google Account.
- Account-Related Activity. Certain other activities on YouTube—like uploading videos, posting comments, flagging videos, or watching restricted videos—require you to have a YouTube Account or a Google Account. We ask for some personal information when you create a YouTube Account or a Google Account, including your email address and a password, which is used to protect your account from unauthorized access. A Google Account allows you to access many of our services that require registration.
- Usage Information. We may record information about your usage, such as when you use YouTube, the channels, groups, and favorites you subscribe to, the contacts you communicate with, the videos you watch, and the frequency and size of data transfers, as well as information you display or click on in YouTube (including UI elements, settings, and other information). If you are logged in, we may associate that information with your account. We may use clear GIFs (a.k.a. "Web Beacons") in HTML-based emails sent to our users to track which emails are opened by recipients.
- Content Uploaded to Site. Any personal information or video content that you voluntarily disclose online (on discussion boards, in messages and chat areas, within your playback or profile pages, etc.) becomes publicly available and can be collected and used by others.
Uses
- If you submit personally identifiable information to us through the YouTube Sites, we use your personal information to operate, maintain, and provide to you the general and personalized features and functionality of the YouTube Sites, and to process any flagging activity or correspondence you send to us.
- Your account name (not your email address) is displayed to other Users when you upload videos or send messages through the YouTube Sites and other Users can contact you through messages and comments. Any videos that you submit to the YouTube Sites may be redistributed through the internet and other media channels, and may be viewed by the general public. If you have enabled Active Sharing, other users may see that you, as identified by your account name (not your email address), are watching the same video.
- We do not use your email address or other personally identifiable information to send commercial or marketing messages without your consent or except as part of a specific program or feature for which you will have the ability to opt-in or opt-out. We may, however, use your email address without further consent for non-marketing or administrative purposes (such as notifying you of major YouTube Site changes or for customer service purposes).
- We use both your personally identifiable information and certain non-personally-identifiable information (such as anonymous user usage data, cookies, IP addresses, browser type, clickstream data, etc.) to improve the quality and design of the YouTube Sites and to create new features, promotions, functionality, and services by storing, tracking, analyzing, and processing user preferences and trends, as well as user activity and communications.
- We use cookies, clear gifs, and log file information to: (a) store information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the YouTube Sites; (b) provide custom, personalized content and information; (c) monitor the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns; (d) monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, pages viewed, etc.; and (e) track your entries, submissions, and status in promotions, sweepstakes, and contests. If you download the YouTube Uploader, your copy of the of the Uploader includes a unique application number. The unique application number and information about your installation of the Uploader (e.g. version number, language) will be sent to YouTube when the Uploader automatically checks for updates.
Information That is Publicly Available
- When you create an account on the site, some information about your account and your account activity will be provided to other Users of the site. This may include the date you opened your account, the date you last logged into your account, your age (if you choose to make it public), the country and the number of videos you have watched.
- Your account name (not your email address) is displayed to other Users when you engage in certain activity on the site, such as you upload videos or send messages through the YouTube Sites. Other Users can contact you through messages and comments.
- You may also choose to add personal information that will visible to other Users on your channel page (which is the public facing page for your account on the site). This may include a profile picture, you name, gender, relationship status, or other details.
- If you choose to add certain features to your channel page, then these features and your activity associated with these features will be displayed to other Users and may be aggregated and shared with your confirmed friends or other Users. Such shared activity may include what videos you favorite, what videos you rated and what videos you have uploaded.
- Any videos that you submit to the YouTube Sites may be redistributed through the internet and other media channels, and may be viewed by the general public. If you have enabled Active Sharing, other users may see that you, as identified by your account name (not your email address), are watching the same video.
Your Choices
- You may, of course, decline to submit personally identifiable information through the YouTube Sites, in which case you can still view videos and explore the YouTube Sites, but YouTube may not be able to provide certain services to you. Some advanced YouTube features may, for authentication purposes, require you to sign up for other Google services like Google Checkout or AdSense. The privacy notices of those services govern the use of your personal information associated with them.
- You may update or correct your personal profile information and email preferences at any time by visiting your account profile page.
- You may clear your viewing history at any time through the "Viewing History" feature.
- You may control the information that is available to other Users and your confirmed friends at any time by editing your account and the features that are included on your channel page.
Third-party Advertisers, Links to Other Sites
YouTube allows other companies, called third-party ad servers or ad networks, to serve advertisements within the YouTube Sites. These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to send, directly to your browser, the advertisements and links that appear on the YouTube Sites. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. They may also use other technologies (such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons) to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and to personalize the advertising content you see.
YouTube does not provide any personally identifiable information to these third-party ad servers or ad networks without your consent or except as part of a specific program or feature for which you will have the ability to opt-in or opt-out. However, please note that if an advertiser asks YouTube to show an advertisement to a certain audience (for example, men ages 18-34) or audience segment (for example, men ages 18-24 who have viewed certain channels of content) and you respond to that advertisement, the advertiser or ad-server may conclude that you fit the description of the audience they are trying to reach. The advertiser may also use information regarding your use of the YouTube Sites, such as the number of times you viewed an ad (but not any personally identifiable information), to determine which ads to deliver to you.
You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers or ad networks (see links below) for more information on their practices and for instructions on how to opt-out of certain practices. YouTube's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites. Any data obtained by third-party ad servers subsequently shared with YouTube is maintained and dealt with by YouTube in accordance with this privacy policy.
The current list of third-party ad servers or ad networks YouTube has a relationship with is available here: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=94149
More Information
Google adheres to the US Safe Harbor privacy principles. For more information about the Safe Harbor framework or our registration, see the Department of Commerce's web site.
For questions concerning the product or your account, please check out the Google Help page.
For more information about our privacy practices, go to Google's full privacy policy, or write to us at:
YouTube Privacy
901 Cherry Ave.
San Bruno, CA 94066
USA