YouTube Limits Cookie Tracking on White House Website

January 23, 2009 by John Messina White House Website

(PhysOrg.com) -- With the launch of President Obama's White House website, three days ago, there has been extensive use of YouTube videos on the site. As we all know Google now owns YouTube and tracks every visitor that lands on the YouTube website or plays a YouTube video. The same did hold true for anyone visiting the White House website, until now.

President's Obama's Web Team went quickly to work to fix this issue and limit YouTube's ability to track every visitor to the White House website. By Thursday evening the White House website replace the YouTube video player with an image of their own player.

With this fix, YouTube can now only track White House website visitors if they click "play" on the embedded YouTube play button. Any visitor that does not watch any videos will not be tracked.

This is only meant as a short term solution. Visitors, who do click the play button on the YouTube video player, will be tracked as they navigate the White House website. There is really no good reason for Google to track White House website visitors who choose to watch a video that was produced by the White House staff and paid for by the taxpayers.

With the White House website only three days old, the Obama administration has already shown us that they take internet privacy very seriously. In the coming months we will see how seriously internet privacy is taken by Obama's administration.

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