Why are the forums accessing my Clipboard?

[xAction]

Thirty years of using the internet, fifteen of them with the same anti-virus and I've never once had a warning messages popped up that a website has accessed my clipboard.

But here, today, every single time I use Copy command...my anti-virus throws a hissy fit.

[richmond62]

Very, very odd.

When I upgraded my 2018 Mac Mini to MacOS Sonoma, the browser, Brave, told me it was sharing my Home folder: I deleted it instantly.

So: what OS, which browser?

[xAction]

Chrome Windows 10 and some extra words for the forum ghosts to be pleased

[richmond62]

Well, as Brave is based on Chrome, I'd drop it like a hot potato.

[tperry2x]

A random thought this, but I don't remember anyone reporting that behavior before the phpBB update this forum uses.
Would it be something to do with the update?

The forum might have a legit reason for wanting to access my clipboard, after all, I'd like it to - I need to paste stuff into comments as does anyone else. So this is expected behavior as far as I'm concerned.

It's just the warning is a bit unsettling. It would be more helpful to know what it's trying to do with the clipboard, rather than the fact that it's trying to access it.

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[richmond62]

Aye, well: gin you mean by "access to your clipboard" that you can paste something from your clipboard, then I'm not just that sure what the hoo-haa is about.

After all:

Thirty years of using the internet, fifteen of them with the same anti-virus and I've never once had a warning messages popped up that a website has accessed my clipboard.

I just pasted that FROM my clipboard intil this posting.

Of course, gin you mean something a bit 'odder', then . . .

What I would query is gin by "a website has accessed my clipboard" you mean that the browser has 'sucked' out information out of your clipboard when you HAVE NOT performed a PASTE action (CTRL-V, or a mouse-thing) . . . that is worrying: after all, you might have kept the size of your underpants on your clipboard (from when you ordered your recent thong), and might not be overly keen for "all the world" to know you have a size of "XYZ".

(using the Scots word "gin" today as need a change from the English "if".)

Oh, and while I am here: what is the name of your anti-virus software?

[xAction]

What the anti-virus is trying to say is that some data between the forum and my clipboard was changed.
It warns "Be careful where you paste this." And This is the only place on the web that I've seen it.

Zero-Width Character Fingerprinting is a security issue.

[richmond62]

That link you posted does make it all seem, potentially, a bit hairier than I thought.

HOWEVER . . . the Q has to be whether YOU are initiating the sending of data from your clipboard to your browser, or an 'agent' in the code of a webpage is 'reaching out' to taste your clipboard.

Presumably if you are initiating a PASTE command, unless you really are a complete prawn, you are aware of what you are pasting (and it's probably a COPIED quote from somewhere), so it should not be a source of worry.

[xAction]

It's COPYING from the forums that triggered the warning.

[tperry2x]

It's COPYING from the forums that triggered the warning.

So I suppose it's a generic warning, as the clipboard is being accessed to copy data into it?
It could be that the copy is first copying the text, but then a few moments later, trying to apply rich text formatting to the clipboard to make it look like the font / size you copied. It could be a bug with phpBB if it's specific to here.

One way is to copy some text from this site, then paste into a text editor capable of showing invisibles and any other characters, to see if there are any differences.

[xAction]

put the clipboardData["text"] into thing
repeat with i = 1 to number of chars of thing
put chartonum(char i of thing) && char i of thing & cr after allnums
end repeat
put allnums

no sign of anything, let's see if it tries to pass rich text

Oh well i have everything blocked so, I guess it'll be hard to say now.

[richmond62]

Over 'here', in Apple-Mac land, RTF & formatting re the clipboard is a bit hit-and-miss.

Oh, and by-ther-way, if you are feeling relatively kinky: try exporting some sized, coloured (err; or, perhaps 'colored') text from a field into a document as RTFtext: it's sort of 50-50.

Of course "our Heroes" (they know who they are) might try to sort out the LiveCode usual half-cock job . . .
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KM.jpg (4.8 KiB) Viewed 223 times

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Err . . . No . . . NOT that Kevin Miller.

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-baske ... vin-miller
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Mind you: 3 glasses of this and any 'Kevin Miller' will do:
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107.jpg (53.6 KiB) Viewed 222 times

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[OpenXTalkPaul]

It's COPYING from the forums that triggered the warning.

Zero-Width Character Fingerprinting is a security issue.

I'm not sure that PhpBB is using zero-width-encoding ('zero width' mean non-printable characters?) to attach a user name to forum posts, but then if it did I'm not sure that's a bad thing, unless you don't want to own your own words.
I can tell you I just updated to the latest PhpBB, and I didn't enable any options for 'zero width encoding' usernames in text, so if it does that, then it's a default option that would need to be turned off to prevent it.
I can assure you I personally have no interests in the contents of your clipboard.

The only OXT created page that would is the OXT Emscripten Engine demo (...actually that's on GitHub) which needs clipboard access to copy and pasted between the outer Web DOM and the stack(s) running inside Emscripten Engine.

What the anti-virus is trying to say is that some data between the forum and my clipboard was changed.
It warns "Be careful where you paste this." And This is the only place on the web that I've seen it.

So paste it into a coding text editor like Pulsar or BBEdit, or a HexEditor, or better yet a developer ClipBoard viewer (a ClipBoard viewer used to come with Xcode, not sure if it still does) and look to see exactly what is going onto your clipboard?

[OpenXTalkPaul]

So paste it into a coding text editor like Pulsar or BBEdit, or a HexEditor, or better yet a developer ClipBoard viewer (a ClipBoard viewer used to come with Xcode, not sure if it still does) and look to see exactly what is going onto your clipboard?

[Reads the rest of the thread]...
Oh yeah ... or just use XTalk clipboard access! Hah.
Don't forget there's also fullClipBoard and rawClipBoard variations.
And always remember to 'lock clipboard' before trying to access it (that ones bitten me before).