MyTube - Limit the Privacy Risks of Embedded Video
Including embedded video content on your website creates some privacy risk, allowing the party that hosts the video to record information about your visitors and place cookies in their browser. This usually happens as soon as a visitor loads a webpage, whether or not they actually click to play the video.
To limit these risks, EFF has created a script called MyTube. It uses JQuery javascript to prevent a website visitor's client from connecting with a third-party video-host until the visitor explicitly opts-in by clicking on the play button.
MyTube works with almost every web-video host, whether an all-purpose host like YouTube or Vimeo, or a host specific to a TV show or content-owner like The Colbert Report or MSNBC.
For YouTube videos, MyTube automatically imports a thumbnail from YouTube.com onto the local host (in our case, EFF.org), creates a preview graphic, and adds an autoplay parameter to YouTube's embed code. The result is a seamless end-user experience.
You can see the script in action here and here.
MyTube is currently implemented as a module for Drupal 5, the content management system that powers EFF.org. We're very interested in helping to create and provide versions for other platforms — if you'd like to help, contact tim@eff.org.
You can learn more on Deeplinks.
Related Issues: Privacy, Transparency
