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I would like to know if there is a way that my ISP can detect the youtube stream quality I use on my device.

For Example-

When I watch youtube video in 360p resolution and I move to the 1080p resolution. Can my ISP detect that quality from their end?

Dave M
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Supun Abeyasekara
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1 Answers1

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No, your ISP cannot see the "quality" of whatever YouTube videos you are watching. Everything is encrypted with HTTPS.

However, they can detect changes in terms of the bandwidth consumed. Example, streaming 360p then suddenly switching to 4k quality. Obviously, 4k takes a lot of bandwidth. They wouldn't see which videos you are viewing and the resolution of those videos, but they can see how much data you are consuming.

Lester
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    In other words bandwidth utilisation can be used to infer the resolution, but not with 100% accuracy. – davidgo Jan 09 '20 at 10:24