Video privacy, explained

Some videos are meant for everyone; others are just for coworkers, clients, or friends.

As we publish content to the cloud, exposing parts of our personal lives, company info, or creative projects, privacy becomes an important consideration of our process.

Maybe you’re working on an early version of a training video, and only want certain people within the company to review it before it goes public.

Or maybe you’re creating promotional videos, but only want people to view them on your website and not on Vimeo.com. Privacy settings play a critical role in these use cases and many others.

Fortunately, all of these scenarios and more are possible with Vimeo’s privacy settings, whether it’s for your individual one-off videos, or a video in an embeddable playlist. We’ll break it down for you to make sure that you can keep your videos as secret — or public — as you need them to be.

Individual video privacy settings

With Vimeo’s privacy settings, you can control who can see your videos by using one of the video settings. Everyone who uploads a video on Vimeo has access to the following settings:

• Public means that anyone (yes, anyone) can browse to, search for, and watch your video.
• Private means that only you (and team members on your account) can see your video.
• Password will allow you to add a password for viewers to gain access to your video, including Vimeo and non-Vimeo members.

You can set your embed privacy to “Anywhere, so anyone can embed your video on an external website.

If your embed privacy is set to “Nowhere,” no one can embed your video on an external website.

Pretty easy, right?

If you are on a paid subscription, you will also have access to a couple additional, granular privacy settings:

• Unlisted is a semi-private setting that’ll make your individual video visible only to people who have the link. Your videos won’t appear in any channels or groups and the video’s credits will be removed.
  
  (Please note, although the video will not appear in a public search on Vimeo.com,  anyone with access to this link can share it with anyone else.)
  
• Hide from Vimeo will make the video unable to be accessed on the Vimeo.com website (unless you are logged in as yourself), but it still can be embedded on other websites. Your video can be added to showcases and portfolios, but no other types of collections.

You can change the privacy settings at any time, but you can also configure a default privacy setting for all future uploads in the Upload defaults tab of your Account settings page. You can also adjust the privacy setting on the upload page itself. 

Paid users also have access to domain-level privacy, which means that you can choose what specific website(s) you want to allow your video to be embedded on.

Starter users and up have access to review pages; semi-private video links (similar to the Unlisted privacy setting) that can only be viewed by the person with the link. You can remove Vimeo branding from this page and enable notes for your collaborators to add comments about what works and what doesn’t in this video cut. The only set privacy you can add to a review page is a password, so please note that anyone with this link will still be able to share it and the password with anyone else. This setting works well for collaborating with others on an unfinished version of a video.

More complex Vimeo privacy settings

When it comes to showcases, embeddable playlists, and folders, things get more complex, as these are different ways to group multiple videos.

A showcase can be set to public, or it can be password protected.

Like with your individual videos, anyone you share the private showcase link and password with can share it with anyone else.

Adding an unlisted video to a showcase all depends on the privacy setting of the showcase.

If you add an unlisted video to a public showcase, only you and anyone with access to that individual video can see the video within the showcase. However, adding an unlisted video to a password-protected showcase means that anyone with the password to the showcase can access any unlisted videos within (without entering additional passwords).

Once you enter embeddable playlist territory, things change a bit.

Only public showcases and showcases set to Hide from Vimeo can be embedded, as password-protected showcases cannot be. Also, only videos with a privacy setting of “Anyone” or “Hide from Vimeo.com” can be displayed in an embedded playlist. But the individual video’s embed privacy setting (even domain-level privacy) will always be respected in this situation.

Starter subscribers and up can collaborate privately using Vimeo’s folders feature.

Using this allows you to limit access to a folder that you’ve created by either adding a team member as a contributor, an admin, or a viewer. 

Enterprise accounts can make use of additional folder-based permissions by assigning members as contributor plus or folder admins. These accounts can also automatically determine folder access using SSO groups. 

Understanding how Team folder permissions interact with privacy settings is essential for effective video management on Vimeo.

When someone on your team has access to a shared folder, they automatically gain access to all the videos within, regardless of individual video privacy settings.

For instance, even if a video is set to “Password protected,” team members with folder access can view it without needing the password. This integration between Team permissions and privacy settings guarantees a seamless collaboration experience while maintaining video security. 

As a reminder, viewers on a folder can only access the folders they’ve been shared on, leave comments on videos, and get notified of responses to their comments.

Enterprise-grade video security settings 

Even post-pandemic, today’s workforce is increasingly global, as HR teams realize they have access to highly skilled talent from around the world without location limitations.

To fit this model, we’re seeing companies of all sizes leverage live video in their revamped corporate communication strategies. Whether you’re using video to host a virtual training or to live-stream monthly town halls, knowing that your content is secure is still of the utmost importance, especially regarding sensitive internal communications. 

Enterprise accounts have three unique privacy options available for added layers of security.

First: controlling access with Vimeo Enterprise’s Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality. SSO streamlines the sign-up process by removing the need for administrators to create or delete new accounts and passwords, making logging in to video content seamless for employees—and more secure across the board.

For additional information on security features, check out Vimeo’s security page.

Second: “Group” or “Enterprise” privacy settings limit who can share video publicly, prevent searching public content created on Vimeo.com and stop team members from changing the name and email address associated with their account.

Third: Enterprise customers using Showcases can secure a Showcase via a custom domain with a unique Vimeo URL or a domain they already own, or by implementing the “Only my team can access” view.

So hopefully, you’ve learned a few things on how to keep your videos private, no matter where you’re sharing them.

We hope you’ll find the best way to protect your work or expand your audience using Vimeo.

For a more granular breakdown of our privacy settings, check out our Help Center articles on an overview of all of our privacy settings, how to change your privacy settings, and what changes about the privacy of videos in your collections or review pages.

Originally published in September of 2018.