Site Behavior Lab

Baseline visit v1 schema · facts legacy-derived · descriptive report

www.youtube.com

https://www.youtube.com/

Sep 7, 2026, 4:57 AM UTC

cut short: the in-page fingerprint observer could not read every frame, so the fingerprinting evidence is incomplete; derived from status and warnings

Evidence quality

This report is built on an incomplete visit

Incomplete evidence: evidence was cut short before completion (the in-page fingerprint observer could not read every frame, so the fingerprinting evidence is incomplete). Counts for the affected evidence are lower bounds; families that completed carry only their ordinary limits. The evidence receipt states the exact per-visit quality.

What this actually means

youtube.com recorded 7 fewer third-party requests in the visit configured for Brave-list blocking.

The visit with no blocking made 159 requests; the visit configured to apply Brave's ad-block engine and default Shields filter lists (a simulation in this scanner's browser, not a live Brave-browser visit) recorded 7 fewer third-party requests. The blocker directly stopped 4 requests; the remaining difference may include follow-on requests that never started once their sources were blocked, plus run-to-run variance.

8cross-site domains
105cross-site requests

Plain-Language Findings

What this visit means

Unfamiliar terms are defined in the glossary
playwright-chromium

Context

Bottom line: this visit has review-worthy signals

The scan observed signals a non-expert should not have to decode from raw request tables. Some detector evidence was incomplete; each affected detector card states its own retained or unavailable scope, while completed request, cookie, and storage measurements keep their recorded exactness.

The cards below translate the evidence into plain language. Where a measured distribution exists, severity ranks this visit against percentiles from the report's exact schema, methodology, tracker-catalog, ServiceRole-taxonomy, metric-contract, producer, and Global Privacy Control cohort, with each percentile card naming its metric-specific measured-site denominator (among 98 sites with a successful load across all cohorts; other methodologies, request-capped visits, and post-choice consent visits are excluded from this denominator, while failed or block-page attempts are outside that coverage), a curated set of popular, mostly commercial sites, not a random sample of the web, and otherwise uses fixed reference thresholds. The request log, domain table, and methodology remain below for verification.

159 requests observed in one controlled visit.

Context

4 requests matched Brave Shields filter lists

4 requests matched the default filter lists of Brave Shields, the ad and tracker blocker built into the Brave browser, while loading normally.

Computed with Brave's own ad-block engine and default filter lists in classification mode: matched requests were not blocked by the scanner and remain in this report's observed request counts. Matching shows what Shields would target on this visit's traffic; an actual Shields visit blocks these and also prevents their follow-on requests, so this number is neither a measured block count nor the total effect.

The hand-curated service catalog separately matched 3 request rows in this visit.Show matched requests

Nothing observed

Lower values observed across comparable metrics in the Brave-list blocking attempt

With the scanner configured to apply Brave's ad-block engine and default Shields filter lists (a simulation in this scanner's browser, not a live Brave-browser visit; application was not verified), this paired visit showed 7 fewer third-party requests and 3 fewer tracking-related service requests.

The blocking visit's engine directly blocked 4 requests; the remaining difference may include follow-on requests that never started once their sources were blocked. A single paired comparison can also reflect run-to-run variance (ad rotation, caching, experiments), so treat this as an observed difference, not a measured blocking rate.

Signed per-metric differences between the two visits; nothing is summed across metrics.Show matched requests

Context

Catalogued service domains recorded responses during this visit

Google appeared in the request log.

A catalog match identifies a maintainer-reviewed service/domain mapping; it does not establish why an individual request occurred, what it carried, or whether profiling happened. Functional catalog labels include advertising. This scan identified an operator for every one of the 8 third-party domains recorded here using catalog, consent-platform, reviewed-ownership, and CNAME evidence. 2 catalogued cross-site domains belong to the same reviewed Google domain family as the site, so that traffic is not evidence of disclosure to an outside company.

105 cross-site requests across 8 third-party hosts.At or above the median for third-party domains across the 88 sites measured for this metric. Modest distinct tracking-service entities count.Show third-party requests

Context

Major-platform domains matched within the site's reviewed organization

Google domains appeared across a registrable-domain boundary, but the reviewed ownership map groups them with the site rather than an outside company.

Cross-registrable-domain traffic remains counted in the report, but this reviewed ownership relationship does not support an outside-recipient disclosure claim. Naming the operator also does not prove request purpose.

105 cross-site requests mapped to a reviewed same-organization domain family.Show catalog-matched requests

Nothing observed

No Google Analytics observed

This visit did not contact Google Analytics.

Neither Google Analytics nor its remarketing sync was observed in this visit.

No google-analytics.com or googletagmanager.com requests.Show catalog-matched requests

Nothing observed

No third-party cookies observed

The automated visit did not observe third-party cookies.

This does not prove the site never uses cookies; it means this visit did not observe third-party cookies.

7 cookies total in this report.No third-party cookies observed.

Context

Incomplete evidence: No fingerprint-like API calls observed in retained evidence before collection stopped

The scan did not observe the instrumented high-entropy browser APIs.

This is an observation layer, not proof that fingerprinting is impossible. Evidence collection was cut short, so this covers only what was recorded before the cutoff.

Retained incomplete evidence includes 0 API event records; no exact API-family total is available.

Raw evidence

Open the interactive evidence explorer

The findings above are built from the stored report. Load the request rows, domains, cookies, storage keys, browser signals, visit phases, charts and CSV export when you want to check them; the versioned report JSON is always available below without this interface.

This versioned report is currently retained in the public corpus. Follow the currently retained site history, repeat the same public route when it is available, or request a transparent evidence correction.

Report ID
20260907-b61c36ed13a8bb96a4ef8a1747988a4f
Site
www.youtube.com
Latest visit
Schema
v1 schema · facts legacy-derived · descriptive report
Verify recorded provenance

Baseline visit

Started
Run quality
cut short: the in-page fingerprint observer could not read every frame, so the fingerprinting evidence is incomplete; derived from status and warnings
Scanner
playwright-chromium
Browser
151.0.7922.34
Redaction
not recorded by this schema
Provenance
Exact build and instrument digests were not recorded by this legacy schema.

Variant visit

Started
Run quality
cut short: the in-page fingerprint observer could not read every frame, so the fingerprinting evidence is incomplete; derived from status and warnings
Scanner
playwright-chromium
Browser
151.0.7922.34
Redaction
not recorded by this schema
Provenance
Exact build and instrument digests were not recorded by this legacy schema.

Recorded provenance is self-reported measurement metadata, not a cryptographic attestation. The public versioned report JSON contains the retained public evidence; see the methodology for interpretation and retention limits.

This report covers what the scanner measures, not everything a site can do. 16 browser surfaces are not instrumented at all (Every page except the one that was scanned; Anything that only loads after scrolling or interaction; Why a request happened, as a causal chain; and 13 others), 3 capabilities are declined by policy, and 3 are outside what any single visit can see. Their absence from this report is not evidence that they did not occur. Read the published coverage boundary.

Detector accuracy is unmeasured. No calibration study currently publishes a precision or recall for the detectors on this page, so a detector match here is a recorded observation, not a calibrated classification. How detector accuracy is measured.

Approved use boundary: This report is investigative evidence that requires independent corroboration. It is not a standalone legal determination and not the sole exhibit in a legal proceeding. Recorded in this project's release manifest on .