YouTube Help

Privacy

If you wish to learn more about protecting your personal privacy online, check out our article on privacy in our Safety Center.

If you feel your privacy has been violated on YouTube, and you wish to report this content, please file a complaint here.

About the privacy complaint process

YouTube takes our user's privacy seriously. Our Privacy Complaint Guidelines is a place we've created for our users to report privacy violations. With this form, you can report privacy violations relating to your image, voice, full name, financial and other personally identifying information such as your home address or phone number.

In some instances, we require you to go through our anonymous webform process that allows us to contact the uploader to notify them of the violation and give them a chance to rectify the situation. We give the uploader 48 hours to remove or edit the content on their own. When the 48 hours are up, and if the uploader has not removed or edited any potential privacy violations within the content as requested, the video then comes to YouTube Staff for review. Please note that while we provide the uploader with 48 hours, your claim may take longer to be processed.

In other cases, where the user is revealing personal data such as your home address, telephone number, or other financial data such as credit card numbers or bank account information, we allow direct reporting so that these cases can be reviewed as soon as possible.

Impersonation

Impersonating another user by copying their channel layout, using a similar username, or posing as them in comments, emails or videos is considered harassment and is a violation of our Community Guidelines.

In order for us to take action and remove these types of profiles, we need to hear from the person who is allegedly being impersonated to determine the validity of the claim. If you see a profile that you think may be impersonating another user's, let them know about it and have them report it through our Safety Center.

Harassment & Cyberbullying

It comes down to respect. YouTube is all about sharing and interacting with the community in respectful ways. If you're not sure whether a video or comment you've made crosses the line, follow a simple rule of thumb: if you wouldn't say it to someone's face, don't say it on YouTube. For more information on Harassment & Cyberbullying, check out our article in the Safety Center.

If you feel you are being harassed, please review this article on Harassment and Cyberbullying for tips on how to prevent this behavior. You can also report harassing content through our Help & Safety Tool.

Threats

Threatening other users on the site through comments, videos and private messages is considered harassment and is against our Community Guidelines. If you participate in threatening others on the site, your account may receive a strike or may be terminated.

If you feel you've had a serious threat made against you, please contact your local police department for further assistance. You can also report threatening comments using our Help & Safety Tool. Please note that we will only take action on complaints that are of a serious nature, which are considered to be videos or comments that make threats of serious physical harm, or an act that would involve a serious breach of the community guidelines, against a specific individual or defined group of individuals, with the intent to intimidate or antagonize.

If the threat you wish to report is not a threat of violence or threats at a similar threshold, action will not be taken by the YouTube Team.

Hateful Content

We encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. But we don't permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity). If you come across comments that contain hate speech on the site, please report this using our Help & Safety Tool. If you come across a video that contains hate speech, please use the flagging feature below the video to report this to the YouTube Team.

Not everything that is mean or insulting is Hate Speech. If someone has said something that has upset you, please read our tips on harassment and bullying.

Spam & Phishing

Hijacking

Password Protection

Comments: "Flag as Spam"

Videos: "Flag as Spam"

Flagging Videos

Flagging a video is a method of reporting content that violates the Community Guidelines to the YouTube Team. The flagging feature can be found below any video on YouTube and appears as a flag icon.

Flagging videos is anonymous and no one will know who flagged the video, however we do require you to be logged in to flag a video. YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week to determine whether they violate our Community Guidelines and nothing will be removed automatically or with enough flags. Encouraging others to flag another user's video off the site may be considered harassment and could result in a strike on your account or account suspension.

Sexual Content

Sexual Content

Most nudity is not allowed, particularly if it is in a sexual context. Generally if a video is intended to be sexually provocative, it is less likely to be acceptable for YouTube. There are exceptions for some educational, documentary and scientific content, but only if that is the sole purpose of the video and it is not gratuitously graphic. For example, a documentary on breast cancer would be appropriate, but posting clips out of context from the documentary might not be. Videos involving children (anyone under the age of 18) are particularly sensitive. Videos containing children should never be sexually suggestive.

The categories within the "Sexual Content" flag are about what you are seeing within the content. Please use your best judgment when deciding which option to choose, and where applicable, please provide as much information as possible such as time stamp or a description of what is violating the Community Guidelines.

Violent or Repulsive Content

Violent or Repulsive Content

The world is a dangerous place. Sometimes people do get hurt and it’s inevitable that these events may be documented on YouTube. However, it’s not okay to post violent or gory content that’s primarily intended to be shocking, sensational or disrespectful. If a video is particularly graphic or disturbing, it should be balanced with additional context and information. For instance, including a clip from a slaughter house in a video on factory farming may be appropriate. However, stringing together unrelated and gruesome clips of animals being slaughtered in a video may be considered gratuitous if its purpose is to shock rather than illustrate.

The categories within the "Violent or Repulsive Content" flag are about what you are seeing within the content. Please use your best judgment when deciding which option to choose, and where applicable, please provide as much information as possible such as time stamp or a description of what is violating the Community Guidelines.

Content Promoting Terrorism

Content Promoting Terrorism

This is something we take very seriously. YouTube's Guidelines prohibit content that contains hate speech and threats of violence against specific individuals or groups. We also prohibit videos that promote dangerous or illegal activities (including bomb-making, sniper attacks, or other terrorist acts), and videos that are posted with the purpose of inciting others to commit specific, serious acts of violence.

To make it easier for you to identify this type of material, we’ve added a flag specifically labeled “promotes terrorism” within the violent content tab. The same deal applies here as with all our flags: your action triggers our review, and we’ll follow our usual process of looking at flagged videos quickly and removing those that violate our Guidelines. By spelling this out in the flagging menu we hope to help you bring this kind of content to our attention quickly.

Hateful or Abusive Content

Hateful or Abusive Content

This flag captures two different types of hateful or abusive content: hate speech and bullying. "Hate speech" refers to content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. For instance, racist or sexist content may be considered hate speech. Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality.

"Bullying" refers to harassment. It comes down to respect. YouTube is all about sharing and interacting with the community in respectful ways. Attacking, harassing, demeaning, or impersonating others is not tolerated on YouTube. If you come across a video that shows an individual being bullied, flag it.

Harmful Dangerous Acts

Harmful Dangerous Acts

While it might not seem fair to say you can’t show something because of what viewers theoretically might do in response, we draw the line at content that’s intended to incite violence or encourage dangerous, illegal activities that have an inherent risk of serious physical harm or death. This means not posting videos on things like instructional bomb making, sniper attacks, videos that train terrorists, or tips on illegal street racing. Any depictions like these should be educational or documentary and shouldn’t be designed to help or encourage others to imitate them.

The categories within the "Harmful Dangerous Acts" flag are about what you are seeing within the content. Please use your best judgment when deciding which option to choose, and where applicable, please provide as much information as possible such as time stamp or a description of what is violating the Community Guidelines.

Child Abuse

Child Abuse

Videos involving children (anyone under the age of 18) are particularly sensitive. Videos containing children should never be sexually suggestive, exploitative, violent or showing minors involved in harmful or dangerous activities. If you see a video that contains child abuse, please flag it.

Spam

Spam

Everyone hates spam. It's not okay to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages. In this flag, we've listed a few different ways people spam users on the site. Here are brief descriptions of what each of the categories mean so that you can choose the correct flag when reporting a video for spam.

• Mass advertising means someone who is using automated systems or bots to advertise.
• Misleading text is in reference to a user who incorrectly identifies their videos within the title, tags and video description. This is done to trick the viewer into watching their video by being dishonest about the video content. Misleading text can also mean that an uploader has used the video description area to put in many different tags that don't match the video content to try to gain views.
• Misleading thumbnails refer to users who chose a thumbnail that is not representative of the actual video content in order to gain views. Only those in the partner program are allowed to choose their own thumbnails.
• Scams/Fraud means that a user has posted a video which may contain information to trick the user for their own financial gain.

Infringes My Rights

Infringes My Rights

This flag helps direct users who will need to provide YouTube with more information before removing the video by filling out webforms in the Help Center about their privacy, copyright complaint, or legal issue.

Moment of Death or Critical Injury

If you've identified content showing a family member during moment of death or critical injury, and you wish to request removal of this content, please contact us here.