Sunday, June 21, 2009

avoid youtube age verification

Ever wanted to avoid Youtube's annoying age verification page, Skip the sign-in page or bypass sign-up to Youtube altogether? You only want to watch an age restricted video after all. No harm in that right?

I came across a useful workaround tonight and thought i'd share. If you've ever wondered how to avoid those annoying age verification pages directing you to sign-in or signup to an account to view adult content on the YouTubes and other streaming video sites, this post may help.

EDIT: It seems embedded videos on some 3rd party websites may also circumvent certain workplace internet filters into the bargain.

I'll provide some context behind this discovery I suppose... The internet has been buzzing this week over the controversial Iranian Election results. Today came the (inevitable?) posting of an extremely graphic video capturing the aftermath of a fatal shooting of a female Iranian Protester. The video is most definitely NSFW. Consider yourself warned >> http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?&next_url=/watch%3Fv%3Dfmi-LePl894

This workaround consists of switching the regular video link with the embedded version.

A regular video url
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

The embedded video url
>> http://www.youtube.com/v/oHg5SJYRHA0

You can make a bookmarklet to automate this url edit by dumping the javascript below into the location field of the bookmark properties:

javascript:var%20v=window.location.href.match(/%25%33%44([A-Za-z0-9_\-]+)$/)[1];if(v)window.location.href=%22http://www.youtube.com/v/%22+v

EDIT: A firefox add-on You Old Enough? in conjunction with bug me not >> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9128