w3c / w3c/editing

[Delayed Clipboard Rendering] Privacy issue while reading data for web custom types

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#439 25 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Delayed-Clipboard-Rendering RESOLVED
Dominant language
HTML
Stars
202
Forks
43
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

@annevk commented this on the webkit standard positions repo:

Since copying is not mediated by the user agent (other than requiring user activation) we have these concerns:

  • Websites could use this to figure out what apps or websites the user is copying data towards.
  • Websites could use this to figure out user habits. This is a lesser concern.

The first of these could perhaps be remedied by restricting the feature to the "builtin" clipboard types. That would not satisfy w3c/editing#417 (comment). We're not sure about a solution that does.

It also seems likely that the website the user copied from is not available for one reason or another. Websites can get OOM'd without notice. This relates to the user habits concern, but is also a practical concern as the feature might not be that useful on certain devices.

@evanstade @inexorabletash @sanketj We want to discuss possible mitigations for this issue.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the privacy concerns in issue #439 and the referenced w3c/editing#417 discussion, then review the linked WebKit standard-position context. The issue does not name implementation files or tests; done means reaching agreement on a mitigation for identifying clipboard destinations and user habits.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
html
Domain
security, web-dev
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
18/100

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