Stay anonymous while watching videos online

Is there a way to be anonymous while watching videos ( for ex. youtube)
I use Tails, I never tried Whonix, I think it’s hard. In tails you can watch videos with low security settings, but is it safe ?
How I can stay anonymous while watching videos in Tails?
If that is not possible I will install Whonix.

You can download videos using youtube-dl.

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

youtube-dl youtube-link

Then watch the videos using VLC.

That provides more privacy but security wise I doubt anyone can comment on that. It’s like asking which code is more easily exploited, the firefox or vlc video parsing code.

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Why watching YouTube videos over Tor, in this case Whonix, would be non anonymous or raise privacy concerns? I don’t get what is the problem.

Not a Whonix / Tails specific issue. It’s about browser fingerprinting. Documented here:

Thanks Patrick, then I guess the issue is more about YouTube browsing habits that would build a unique profile over time based on interests, timestamps, etc.? As for fingerprinting my understanding is that Tor Browser reduces it to the maximum.

Does anyone try this ?
I get error when I try to youtube-dl
Temporary failure in name resolution

Hi Movial

Using youtube-dl in Whonix-14 works for me.

For example:

youtube-dl <some_youtube_url>

It could be a temporary networking issue. I would try again a little latter as it may resolve itself.

nslookup youtube.com

Workarounds sometimes. Hacky.
This sometimes helps since DNS gets resolved by other Tor circuit and then Tor is caching it or at least marking for new resolv attempt or something. (Actually sounds like a bug in Tor.)

;; connection time out; no servers could be reached

Is there a other way to download them ? I

I can confirm the resolution error consistently appears on my end.