Is it possible for a YouTube video to be "toxic"?

Factual Questions
1

I know the title sounds weird, but bear with me.

Recently, there have been certain instances where, after viewing a YouTube video - or even just being on that video’s page - my web browser (Chrome, but I also tried Firefox) would not connect to other web sites. My internet connection was inherently fine - I had no problem with AIM or my work VPN - but for some reason, I could not browse anymore unless I rebooted.

Closing the browser didn’t help. Flushing the dns cache didn’t help. Only rebooting restored my to full web “mobility”.

Have any of you ever heard of or experienced such a thing? If you’re familiar with the phenomenon, what exactly is going on, are my network settings being hacked or something? (I use the paid version of AVG Internet Security for protection, in case that matters)

2

Can you link to any of the videos where this occurred? Perhaps it has something to do with one of the ads on the page?

3

I don’t think so. Why not just watch a video from a a ‘‘secure’’ channel, like the white house channel and see what happens. Try to clean your browsing data, this time a full clean. If you have any extensions installed, disable them in turn and check every time if the problem still persists. Maybe you want to try to re-install chrome.

4

I had this happen at my house - with a certain website that had advertising with embedded video.

so yup, it’s possible that something is gumming up your browser’s chaches - but you’re not being hacked.

Any time you think “Am I being hacked?” The answer is no. You have nothing of value to anyone who doesn’t know you personally. The information that can be gotten from you does not require a hacker “breaking in” to your personal PC and can be obtained in a more profitable manner by hacking bank websites, online store databases, etc.

None of those things would involve your computer slowing down. Malware unwittingly installed on your browser, used to phish your keystrokes for information, or to track your movements to advertise junk to you, that can bog you down a bit. But I wouldn’t call it “hacking”. That’s just the dirt you get on your feet by walking through the intertubes without shoes (anti-malware) on.

5

Try seeing if your browser (and extensions, especially flash) need updating).

6

I can think of two possibilities:

  1. The Flash plugin crashed, and all the other sites you tried to open after the YouTube video had Flash embedded in them. Chrome is better about this than older browsers, but even in Chrome Flash will sometimes crash and leave the browser window unresponsive. It’s also likely that whatever quirk of the video caused Flash in Chrome to crash also caused Flash in Firefox to crash.

In this case, nothing can be done-- it’s a problem with Adobe’s code.

  1. Your DNS is randomly dying, and the YouTube association is just coincidence. The VPN and IM programs keep working because once connected they have no reason to perform a DNS lookup.

In this case, you can try switching DNS providers to one (hopefully) more reliable, for example, Google hosts free public DNS servers. See if that solves the problem.