Hiding in Plain Sight: A Measurement and Analysis of Kids' Exposure to Malicious URLs on YouTube

TL;DR

This study analyzes the prevalence of malicious and inappropriate URLs in YouTube comments targeting children, revealing significant exposure risks and emphasizing the need for better monitoring to protect young users.

Contribution

It provides a large-scale measurement of malicious URL presence in comments on children's YouTube videos, highlighting the extent of exposure and potential safety concerns.

Findings

High prevalence of malicious URLs in comments on children's videos

Large-scale dataset of approximately four million records analyzed

Videos with malicious URLs have an average of 48 million views

Abstract

The Internet has become an essential part of children's and adolescents' daily life. Social media platforms are used as educational and entertainment resources on daily bases by young users, leading enormous efforts to ensure their safety when interacting with various social media platforms. In this paper, we investigate the exposure of those users to inappropriate and malicious content in comments posted on YouTube videos targeting this demographic. We collected a large-scale dataset of approximately four million records, and studied the presence of malicious and inappropriate URLs embedded in the comments posted on these videos. Our results show a worrisome number of malicious and inappropriate URLs embedded in comments available for children and young users. In particular, we observe an alarming number of inappropriate and malicious URLs, with a high chance of kids exposure, since the average number of views on videos containing such URLs is 48 million. When using such platforms, children are not only exposed to the material available in the platform, but also to the content of the URLs embedded within the comments. This highlights the importance of monitoring the URLs provided within the comments, limiting the children's exposure to inappropriate content.