YouTube access - can I filter by channel?

ringo747 · 21 Aug 2013 at 23:07

So I've no clue really about corporate networks and the filtering techniques employed, but in theory is there any way for a comms team to block access to YouTube but allow access only for a specific channel?

If the url format was something like youtube.com/mychannel/videoguid then I suspect that some form of url filtering could be used to allow the channel to be identified but when the video id is the only parameter it seems to be an impossible task.

Also, I don't know what filtering software is used to enforce the policies on the network in question

Does this sound even remotely possible?

matthab · 22 Aug 2013 at 06:48

With the right software yes.

ringo747 · 22 Aug 2013 at 09:21

Any specific products? I believe that blocked sites currently are flagged up with a Websense message though I may be wrong on this.

Linkex · 22 Aug 2013 at 09:32

Assuming the filtering system has both a black and whitelist option, your best bet would be to blacklist all of youtube, then use youtube APIs to get a list of all videos on the channel you want to allow and whitelist those URLs with a higher priority than the blacklist.

Exactly how you go about this will depend on what the filtering software is.