YouTube has agreed to abandon its tracking cookies for videos found on the official website of the White House, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
"It's a good step and we commend the government and YouTube to take it," Cindy Cohn, legal director for EFF, wrote in a blog. "It shows they recognize that the government follow videos that Americans view is frightening and evil. It also shows that Google / YouTube technologists can build and deliver intelligent, useful to protect the privacy changes to their standard software ".
Cookies let YouTube keep a record of embedded videos on sites considered outside.When started whitehouse.gov, including YouTube videos for things like Obama's weekly address, the defenders of privacy raised concern that YouTube was poorly track visitors on a government website.
In response, YouTube has served as a special video player that only sent a cookie when someone plays a video, not just if they visited the site.
"Now, YouTube says that they took a second step, pushed from the EFF: largely ignoring their videos are viewed on cookies Whitehouse.gov," Cohn wrote. "Ordinarily, YouTube maintains a record of every YouTube video you've ever seen, associated with your YouTube account, through the use of cookie YouTube. Now they have agreed to exempt embedded videos on Whitehouse.gov this operation. "
Cohn urged YouTube to do the same movement with other websites, such as "human rights videos, videos politically sensitive, or even videos where ordinary spectators may want privacy should be available without any follow-up."
YouTube should also consider "tracking-free" videos across the board for all government websites, said Cohn.
In March, there were rumors that the White House had abandoned as his YouTube video provider of choice when weekly address Obama used a built-in player instead of a site owned by Google, but YouTube has denied.
In other YouTube news, the video site said Friday that users can set their accounts to automatically update their Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader accounts with information about the videos you've uploaded to YouTube.
"If you change your mind, you can turn it off at any time. And of course, for those videos you would rather not share, mark as private and will not be sent to any other site, "Brian Glick, a product manager for YouTube, wrote in a blog.
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