SmartTube Compromised • Hacker News Board

Re: SmartTube Compromised

#21

Post by codeflo » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:02 AM UTC

rkomorn wrote: post #19

denkmoon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

??? I've been on youtube premium / redtube since the beginning and I've been served 1 ad incorrectly in that time.

> YouTube premium / redtube I just googled redtube and uh... are you sure?

YouTube Premium was originally called YouTube Red. Grandparent poster may have made a Freudian slip. :)

Re: SmartTube Compromised

#22

Post by fragmede » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:02 AM UTC

rkomorn wrote: post #19

denkmoon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

??? I've been on youtube premium / redtube since the beginning and I've been served 1 ad incorrectly in that time.

> YouTube premium / redtube I just googled redtube and uh... are you sure?

YouTube Red was the previous name of YouTube Premium, probably renamed because of the unfortunate name clash you just noticed.

Re: SmartTube Compromised

#23

Post by boje » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:03 AM UTC

I really hope Google doesn't pick this out (and similar events) as further justification for getting rid of APK-based installation.

Re: SmartTube Compromised

#24

Post by Wilya » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:04 AM UTC

krige wrote: post #14

M4v3R wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is $14 dollars for ad-free, unlimited access to literally billions of videos really a steep price? Personally if I were to get rid of all but one of my media subscriptions I would stick with this one, since it's got everything - entertainment, education, inspiration, you name it.

>ad-free hasn't been in over a year

Youtube premium is still ad-free. There is a Youtube premium lite which is kinda-ad-free-but-not-really, but the full ad-free one still exists.

Re: SmartTube Compromised

#25

Post by lan321 » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:04 AM UTC

GaryBluto wrote: post #13

tcfhgj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really couldn't care less about me youtube account

YouTube accounts and Google accounts have been one in the same since 2009.

Obligatory call to free yourselves from having GMail as your (only) main email and especially to not tie it to YT or other unrelated services.

I can absolutely imagine my YT accounts at some point getting banned for using adblock, some stupid private upload or some comment.

Re: SmartTube Compromised

#26

Post by defrost » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:04 AM UTC

GaryBluto wrote: post #13

tcfhgj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really couldn't care less about me youtube account

YouTube accounts and Google accounts have been one in the same since 2009.

Many people have had multiple gmail accounts since 2004.

I have a gmail account used solely for google store and Android TV related verifications that's unlike other business, personal, registration, or spam email accounts.

The TV's in the house, smart wifi devices, and guest wifi accounts are on separate subnets, the NAS hosted media has limited read only keyhole access accounts for TV apps to use.

Whether it's SmartTube or any other app (iView, SBSOnline, Netflix, etc) it's wise to assume that anyone can be comprised by malware to sniff traffic for (say) bank account passwords, host bots for DDOS or mining, etc.

Re: SmartTube Compromised

#27

Post by rkomorn » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:10 AM UTC

codeflo wrote: post #21

rkomorn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube premium / redtube I just googled redtube and uh... are you sure?

YouTube Premium was originally called YouTube Red. Grandparent poster may have made a Freudian slip. :)

I know, I was just being... sassy. Partly because I didn't actually need to google it.

Re: SmartTube Compromised

#28

Post by retSava » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

GaryBluto wrote: post #6

It's kind of shocking to me that so many people would download an app like this and sign in using their actual YouTube account.

It's not just cost and ads. It's having the possibility to reduce attempts to manipulate my inner reptile brain. With various clients, you can disable shorts, recommended, you have sponsorblock, you can replace youtube-face-thumbs with actual thumbs and get crowd-sourced titles that better reflect the contents.

I also don't need to manually go set speed to 1.75x and enable subs in english, it's a one-time setting. _Further_ I can download a video locally, for whatever reason (later viewing, bw throttling, risk of deletion, etc).

As if that weren't enough, I don't have to watch videos logged in, my client is just set up to download my select channels.

I now see zero use of a youtube account.

Re: SmartTube Compromised

#29

Post by breakingcups » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

The official announcement is very sparse on details. If the developer doesn't know how his digital signature (and update infrastructure?) was compromised, how does switching to a new signature help? It could get compromised in the exact same way.

Re: SmartTube Compromised

#30

Post by dottjt » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

M4v3R wrote: post #12

dottjt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more shocking to people how much YouTube Premium costs.

Is $14 dollars for ad-free, unlimited access to literally billions of videos really a steep price? Personally if I were to get rid of all but one of my media subscriptions I would stick with this one, since it's got everything - entertainment, education, inspiration, you name it.

When the alternative is the exact same thing you describe but for $0 dollars, then yes.