An important opsec note: be very careful sharing YouTube links and make sure that they’ve been cleaned. The “si=“ or “is=“ parts of the query string should be removed if present.

These links now publicly point to your YouTube account. Previously, the “si=xyz” query parameter was an internal identifier only used on YouTube’s end. New links use “is=xyz” (not “si”) and reveal your YouTube account name.

To make this completely clear, URLs like:

https://youtu.be/abc123?si=xyz
or
https://youtu.be/abc123?is=xyz

should be cleaned to simply:

https://youtu.be/abc123

Note that the change is not retroactive — old links (“si=“) will not publicly identify you, but new ones (“is=“) will.

(Thanks to https://x.com/kellytoydk/status/2065524085602374041)

@JudgeSmoreCult
#yt #YouTube #trackers #is #si