How to obscure faces and objects on YouTube videos

The streaming video service offers a tool that allows to obscure objects or private information, safeguarding users' privacy

Videos are the content of the future (and to a large extent also of the present). This is not said by a futurologist, but by the forecasts of the main hi-tech companies: from Cisco to Facebook they are all convinced that videos will become more and more important and central in people's lives. And many companies are investing money and resources to make them increasingly attractive.

Now any user can have his fifteen minutes of fame: every smartphone has two cameras that record high quality video. However, most of the time, the little experience can create some problems, especially in terms of privacy. While you're recording a video, you might accidentally capture some personal data, such as your Facebook login credentials or credit card PIN. If this data ended up on YouTube, a hacker could misuse it. For this reason, Google's streaming video service, offers a tool to obscure valuable items and data. Let's see how it works.

How to Obscure Objects and Personal Data with YouTube

If during video uploading the user notices something strange, YouTube offers the possibility to obscure not only people's faces, but also objects, personal data and bank information. This way it won't be necessary to re-record the scene and re-upload the video, just make the data unreadable. The process is very simple: the first step is to open the movie via the YouTube video manager and press the Edit button. A window will open with various tools that can be used: the user will have to click on Enhancements and then on Custom Blur. The various scenes of the movie will be shown and the user will be able to select the objects to be darkened and also for how long. Once the work is done, just save and YouTube will replace the new video, deleting the offending movie. A procedure that takes just a few seconds and that will allow you to save your personal data.