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Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

Selecting and copying are both definitely trackable.

Is "right click and copy url" trackable as well? Genuine question.

Yes, it is. I've tried it on Facebook several times (since I try to avoid clicking on external links on the platform) and it shows related links the moment I finish the right click and copy link location action. There is some variation depending on where one clicks (on the image that has a link or the actual hyperlink), but Facebook definitely knows in most cases what URLs someone is copying to the clipboard. The first time I saw it I was very annoyed.

Because the website notorious with spying on every single user action was spying on a user action?

I get annoyed by it too, because sometimes I want to read an article but don't necessarily want fb to continue serving those articles to me. I don't really know what happens inside the Facebook machine, but I imagine clicking a link indicates you are interested in a topic. Sometimes I just want to read trash.

So google the title in an incognito window, or alternative and preferably, stop using that site all together.

Yes, I tend to do something along those lines when I don't want to be tracked. To the original point, it's an annoying extra step to have to do but not unreasonable enough to stop using the site, I'm simply answering your question on why someone might find it annoying.

Yes and yes - Right click raises an event, and copy specifically raises an event.

If in doubt: If it happens over or in a browser window, it is probably trackable from JavaScript.

See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events/copy

Over a browser Window? So If my 1Password window overlaps with my browser window, the page I'm on could sniff the entire 1Password window? Seems like a bunch of FUD..

It's not really polite to call it FUD right off the bat, especially when you're probably just misunderstanding. A browser obviously can't get events from a different app.

Moving your mouse over the window, despite not interacting with it, will allow the page to track your cursor, and could provide a surprising amount of information. That's why I wrote "over".

You built a strawman, but it can actually be dangerous to interact with an application on the same screen as a browser!

https://jameshfisher.github.io/cursory-hack/

Subject to the same origin policy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-origin_policy

That protects you (to some extend) from page A accessing resources from page B.

Same origin policy doesn't do anything to stop you from being tracked, though.

Yeah, of course, I was replying to a post about the concern about a website getting your entire 1password database.

Maybe not in itself, but "user mouse pointer is above the url" and "user right clicked" are.

It is trackable in itself through the `copy` clipboard event (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events/copy). Both keychord and contextual menu will trigger the event.

The parent was asking whether the "Copy Link Address" (Chrome) or similar is other browsers is trackable though, not the more general copy to clipboard.

I don't think that one is.

Presumably if you select and copy from a page's source view (eg via Inspect in FF) then you'd overcome tracking of specific interactions?

Or if you just block scripts.

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