Is YouTube Downloader/Converter Safe? You Take Your Chance

Bianca Willis Bianca Willis Updated on Nov 22 , 2020 Tag:

Many people are seeking for easy & secure tool to move YouTube clips onto their hard drives for further viewing, which gives rise to the question of “Is YouTube Downloader/Converter Safe”…

YouTube is the biggest and also the most popular video-hosting site across the world. According to recent data released in May 2019, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded to this platform every minute and the logged-in viewers per month have reached 2 billion. A true heaven for both video creator and viewer!

Is YouTube downloader/converter safe?

However for common video nerds, they are not always free to access and watch the content at will due to certain reasons like poor internet connection, limited data allowance, and YouTube video offline watching environment, which gives chance to programs focusing on YouTube downloading and converting. Online service, browser plug-in or standalone desktop software, are these (free) YouTube downloader or converter bets safe to use? No matter your target app is Flvto, TubeMate, Y2mate, Clipgrab, YTB Video Downloader, YouTobe to MP3 Converter, Keepvid, Savefrom.net, X2Convert, or any other names, keep on reading to find out whether your app is 100 percent reliable.

100% All-right YouTube “Downloader & Converter” – RecMaster

A totally secure and dependable YouTube content mover first. RecMaster is the recommended solution here to help you save video content from YouTube onto computer as video or audio format at will. With this YouTube Recorder Not only general video-on-demand clips, but also the live events held by broadcasters can be recorded with high quality still.

Available formats for Windows: MP4, AVI, FLV, MP3, and WAV
Available formats for macOS: MP4, M4V, MOV, M4A, and CAF
Advanced features: Scheduled recording, Annotation tool, and Built-in editor

free download RecMaster for Windows free download RecMaster for Mac

Attention: Compared to common video downloaders and converters, although this online streaming copier may take you more time to configure, it won’t put your PC in danger at all and everything will be under your own control.

Record YouTube with RecMaster

Guides: How to Record Video & Audio from YouTube on PC/Mac

Quite Many YouTube Downloaders/Converters Are Unsafe

In short, the final purpose of insecure programs is bound to damage your machine or stole your privacy information for further illegal usage. And currently, there are more and more potential malware existing in diversified formats to serve the devil, say virus, Trojan horse, spyware, adware, worm and rogue software.

By entering the free online services or downloading and installing the apps that’s coming from low-ranked, fake or disreputable sites, you are prone to face many annoying and risky pop-ups, adware and other things mentioned earlier. So, our advice is you’d better stay away from such service providers or software developers. Also, antivirus facility should be a must-have on each computer to safe guard the system when you plan to utilize any tool to rip YouTube media. That’s because apart from piles of long-time-notorious YouTube downloading or converting application, the trustworthy brands would also become dangerous by suddenly adding with insecure elements on its webpage or installing package.

Antivirus Software, User Feedbacks plus the Actual Experience, You can Evaluate the Risk by Yourself

Speaking of antivirus software, another thing you should note is that different apps may even have varying performance. For example, Malwarebytes (aka MBAM) blocks many ads from download.cnet.com and marks them as malicious ones while partial of them are purely Potentially Unwanted Program/PUP that’re safe to download and install, some McFree users complain that its site advisor unexpectedly marks some known malicious sites as Green reliable ones, and also certain YouTube downloaders are actually a scam to hack system and infect it with nasties while there’s no clue from anti-malware assistant at all…

Therefore, for anyone who is scared that the computer might be destroyed by virus or so from YouTube downloader or converter, do equip the PC with high-level safety supervisor, then investigate the target tool’s security on the web, and at last keep an eye on any abnormal stuff or behavior. As long as something strange or unknown happens, quit the usage immediately.

What If the YouTube Downloader/Converter Is Unsafe, How About the Downloaded File?

In some cases, only when customers have finished the YouTube video downloading or YouTube to audio extracting mission did they find the downloader or converter threatens computer. At this time, they will surely accomplish a completely uninstall, remove the unsafe source and clean out the system to a pristine state.

Then how to deal with the saved media files, be it MP4/FLV video or MP3/WAV/M4A audio? Do they have malware to be harmful? The general knowledge is media file is not typically taken as malware carrier unless it’s injected some malicious sector and there’s a specific crafted media player to execute it. So in all probability, the file is so safe that you don’t have to delete it.

Some Popular YouTube Downloaders and Converters

Through googling, walking through related download sites/questions and real testing, we’ve listed a couple of most commonly used names in the following part.

Name Type Alexa Rank in Sept. 2020 Available formats Ad/Adware/Antivirus software alert
youtube-dl Free open-sourced tool (NOW taken down from GitHub) No official site Any available streams N
X2convert.com Online service 3630 MP4, MP3, Audio, WEBM Y
y2mate.com Online service 228 Video, Audio, MP3 Y
savefrom.net Online service & Firefox plugin 138 Video, Audio Y
YTD Video Downloader Desktop shareware 13071 Many video and audio options Y
4K Video Downloader Desktop shareware 6292 Many video and audio options N
Any Video Converter Freeware Desktop shareware 29724 Many video and audio options N
Freemake Video Downloader Desktop shareware 2683 Many video and audio options N
….        

>> Check out comparison of different video downloaders [wiki]

Author’s Words

Without doubt, one-click keeping YouTube video with related downloader/converter via a web link is super convenient. But we also have to admit that the answer to “is YouTube downloader/converter safe” is uncertain because both service/software status and online searching results change very often. If you couldn’t confirm the real security level of a web or app, especially the freebie, using YouTube recorder software such as RecMaster is an ideal workaround to make everything safe and sound.

One last word you must take note: Downloading, converting or recording copyright-protected YouTube videos without permissions may put you into risks. You are suggested to take legal actions in accordance with the related terms and conditions, as well as laws.

Hot Related: Is Screen Recording/Recorder Safe to Use on Computer?

RecMaster – Record Every Moment on Your Computer Screen

RecMaster – Record Every Moment on Your Computer Screen

Multiple recording modes make it easy to capture anything on screen.

Record 1080p or even 4K clips at 60fps to maintain the high quality still.

Flexible settings for mouse cursor effects, watermark and annotations.

Preloaded with recording scheduler, video editor. Allow one-click sharing.

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Bianca Willis

Bianca Willis

Bianca Willis started her copywriting career since 2014. As a tech editor with over 6 years writing experience, she has worked out hundreds of posts on multi-media solutions (video recording included), hot gadgets and troubleshooting tips.

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