A birthday (almost) surprise

[Heather76]

My 80th birthday was this past Friday. My son drove the 1,000 miles from his home to celebrate with me. My real surprise was on his way he stopped at the airport to pick my grandson, his SO, and their 14 month old daughter (my great granddaughter). Anyway, we have a granddaughter with 7 children, the oldest of which is a senior in high school. He plays on the school's football team and they had a game Friday night. With modern technology, we could watch the game on YouTube. So, I brought the game up on my laptop and suggested I get my HDMI cable to connect it to the big screen TV. I've done it before and it works just fine. I'm about to do that and my sons asks if the TV is a smart TV. Well, yes, but I've never set up that feature. My grandson says there is no setup needed and I should be able to get YouTube on it and just log in to my YouTube account. Okay, let's do it.

Everything was going good until my grandson gets me logged in. While I'm waiting on my grandson to then find the game, I notice YouTube shows the last 5 searches I've done on YouTube. The 2nd one on the list is: Crossdressers. I do a quick scan of the room. My wife isn't looking at the TV as she's facing my son talking with him. My son is looking at my wife. My grandson is paying attention to the keyboard he has to type on using the cursor. His SO isn't in the room. I honestly don't believe anyone noticed. Had my wife seen it, I know I'd have heard about it later. If anyone had asked about it, I'd have replied I have a friend that cross-dresses, and I was researching it to learn more about why men cross dress.

I couldn't believe this happened. I now know how to delete searches from my YouTube account so I don't risk this in the future. I sure wish they had let me hook up the HDMI cable.

[Debbie Denier]

Happy 80th birthday Heather. That was a close shave. Sounds like it was a great family get together. I don?t think any body would say anything if they noticed. Nobody wants to spoil your special day.

[JulieC]

One of the 'great' things about modern society; no privacy. <sigh>

[Crissy 107]

Whew Heather, hopefully nobody noticed but there is a chance someone did. That nobody said anything is good and you had a reasonable explanation. It sounds like all is good!!

[Jasmine23]

Happy Birthday Heather.
Hopefully you got away with it, but, I'd say there's a fair chance your grandson saw it and said nothing or thought nothing of it. Most young people are fairly tech savy and can type without looking or with just a quick glance. Either way I wouldn't worry about it, the fact he hasn't mentioned it, probably suggests that he either didn't see it, or saw it, but, thought of it and has forgotten about it.

[Lacey New]

Scary! That?s one of my worst fears!

[Genifer Teal]

Every time I connect my phone to my mom's t v I have to explain why my name is misspelled. My phone belongs to Gen so that's the name I wanted to appear when I call someone.

[Maria 60]

Unfortunately I have been in this awkward situations a few time when the children or grandchildren want to use the iPad of if I ask them to change a setting on my phone. I usually tell them it's those dam advertisements. I don't know if they believe me.
But it looks like you dodged a bullet and Happy 80th.

[Gi Gondin]

Search history off… google, youtube, etc. It’s a bit annoying, but it worth the safety

[Gail_veiled]

Happy belated birthday Heather - quite a milestone!

Don't know if this will help anyone but I setup Firefox on my computer with all the maximum privacy mode settings and free add-blocks installed and haven't had any surprise advertisements, suggested sites, or search history pop up unexpectedly since. You can search for how to setup Firefox correctly or use one of the AI chats for step-by-step instructions. I don't log on to YouTube but you could create an alternate email account if you wanted to save your favorites channels there. On phones or tablets, the Brave browser and search engine seems much better at keeping your privacy than Chrome / Google.

Of course you still need to be diligent to close any open windows before letting someone look at or share your display

[Stephanie47]

It can be dangerous out there. I try to block advertisements as best as I can but for some reason they still bleed through. I never "Google" or view articles/sites about sewing,but my wife does. On the MSN page Iget tons of ads for quilting and sewing. I suspect these must be related somehow to the IP address. Ebay and commercial sites will throw up ads that say "based on your viewing history" or "prior purchases."

[DianeT]

You need to setup two accounts on your laptop. One for "public" stuff and one for private. Use the private one for CD stuff. Problem solved.

[alwayshave]

Heather, Sounds like you almost got a heart attack for your 80th. I'm glad no one other than you noticed. Happy Birthday!

[Traci H]

Heather hope you had a grand birthday. Sounds like you maybe dodged the exposure bullet, but you never know.

I do watch things on my smart TV, but I catch myself and never watch anything CD related on it, and I don?t log into an account either. My granddaughters like to pull up all kinds of crap on YouTube when they are over and sure as heck, they would be seeing that history on there and asking questions out loud. They have no filters!! So I give up the pleasure of watching on a big screen just to keep it simple.

[kimdl93]

That is one reason I do not search crossdressing or gender topics on YouTube

Glad it didn?t create a problem. And happy birthday!

[Sherry Ann Evans]

One thing you can do is get Heather her very own Gmail account. They're free and you can have as many as you want. Then from now on, anything you do something online as Heather -- whether it's your account for this forum, or watching Youtube, any correspondence, or anything else at all -- just switch to that account. Unless you forget to switch back, this would have prevented the issue with your family seeing private search history.