# youtube malware

## farmer.ro

this might not be Gentoo related directly but i would like to know if it is possible to get your box owned trough watching videos on youtube?

i know it is possible to get drive by webkit exploits trough google pictures, but i wonder if the same counts for youtube

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## Zucca

Youtube re-encodes every video uploaded there. So I find it highly unlikely (still possible) that you'd get any malware from watching videos on youtube. However It's more likely to get some nasty things trough the ads from youtube.

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## bentii

 *farmer.ro wrote:*   

> this might not be Gentoo related directly but i would like to know if it is possible to get your box owned trough watching videos on youtube?
> 
> i know it is possible to get drive by webkit exploits trough google pictures, but i wonder if the same counts for youtube

 

I wouldn't worry to much about any real dangers but rather use a adblocker like ublock origin to remove ads, you can always use youtube-dl if you don't want to play in the browser.

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## farmer.ro

 *Zucca wrote:*   

> Youtube re-encodes every video uploaded there. So I find it highly unlikely (still possible) that you'd get any malware from watching videos on youtube. However It's more likely to get some nasty things trough the ads from youtube.

 

ok thank you

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## 1clue

Relying on a third party site's policy to ensure your computer's safety is maybe not the best idea. While I agree that it's unlikely that YouTube videos will be the malware that gets you, I suggest you learn what you can about videos in general and protect yourself accordingly, or adjust your behavior.

I'd like to emphasize the ads as a possible contamination route. Ads on almost any site are maintained by a third party adware site and often not very well policed. Some of these ads contain content from yet other sites, sometimes not policed at all. This way there be dragons.

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