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TweetNow Facebook tracks when you a copy a link, even if the app is closed. Actually, a new feature of Apple’s new OS for the iPhone is tracking whatever the users are copying and paste. Facebook app for iOS is taking advantage of this feature and suggesting that they copy whenever a user shares a URL.
Source – www.confused.com
So, if you accidentally post a private link, the data hungry Facebook will track your activity even when it is not running in the background. This feature was rolled out on October 7 during the Facebook’s latest mobile update though it is not available for all devices.
Daniel Harrison, a spokesperson of Facebook said that this feature is currently in the testing phase and is available to a very few people who use Facebook for iPhone. He also mentioned that copying a link by Facebook is not troubling the users.
Apple’s OS for iPhone allows the Facebook app to access the clipboard where all the copied texts get stored. Facebook’s new feature pulls out this copied text from the clipboard into the users’ browser.
Harrison also said that Facebook is not able to see the links, it only copies the standard URL format, and the users’ information also not get saved by Facebook after it has been deleted from the clipboard. It does not copy the data that looks different than URL like passwords or emails.
Facebook will not do any malicious with the content for sure but accessing the content without the users’ permission is little unacceptable.
Source – The Daily Beast
Well this is nothing new. I mean the code to do this is fairly simple and has been around a long time. I mean someone could write a simple Php Script and add it to any website they own and when anyone visits that website, it will harvest all kinds of information including your Saved Data in your clipboard. It can then save or log that data to a file, or send it to whoever they want. This was an old trick that was used long ago, by A’hem your’s truly to steal passwords of Yahoo Ilegal names back in the day because back then it was a big game to try and steal or hack so to speak each other’s Yahoo Accounts. So a lot of people would make extremely difficult passwords to their Yahoo Usernames, so long and difficult that they would have to copy and paste it, into the password box. Well after they log in, all you would have to do is send them a link to a website with the script running and wall-la you just owned their account. People should be careful and not store sensitive data in their clipboard, then run around surfing the web.