Ask HN: Why does YouTube think I am Russian?

4 pointsby miej6 years ago1 comments

I've recently noticed some peculiar trends occuring on my youtube account. It started some time ago (probably on the order of months), when my video captions started to default to Russian. Ok, no big deal - just some weird glitch. So I set it back to English. Then recently, I saw in my notifications that I had a response to some comment I left on a video - except the username displayed alongside my profile picture (only in the notification) was not my username, but rather "Katie Cherednichenko". This changed back to being my normal username on subsequent refreshes. Aaand now my captions are back to defaulting to Russian again (at least for some videos, none of which are remotely russia-related).

I am neither Russian, nor female, nor named "Katie Cherednichenko". The only russian-related content I've accessed in the remembered past was the video of anti-corruption activist and political candidate Navalny on the phone with one of the FSB members involved in one of the assassination attempts targeting him.

So does Youtube think I am russian simply because of a single video I watched recently? If so, this doesnt explain russian subtitles extending further into the past than the time when I watched that video. And the username issue I guess could be the result of a hash collision or similar? Or is this really just an indication that my account has likely been pwned?

1 comments

throwaway888abc6 years ago

Try to use some reputable antivirus (ie. Nod32) and review your installed browser extensions.

Alternatively tell Katie not to use your computer. Happy new year!