Privacy Risk With Internet Explorer

Now, not a lot of people know this, but there is a wide-open privacy risk with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It is possible for any website that you visit to obtain the current contents of your Windows clipboard. If you are not alarmed by this, you should be. If you use the clipboard to transfer data from one application to another, then this data is up for grabs.

You are at risk if you use Microsoft Internet Explorer and you have not changed your privacy settings. Keep reading, and I'll show you how to protect yourself.

To demonstrate, here is the current contents of your clipboard: (this will only show anything if you're using IE unsecured)
Using client-side scripting techniques known as Ajax or XML HTTP Requests, it is possible for the web page to transmit this data back to the web server.

Don't Panic! I will show you how to safe guard your privacy! Just follow these steps:

Step 1: On the Tools menu, choose Options.

Step 2: On the Security Tab, select Internet from the Web Content Zone and then choose Custom Level...

Step 3: Scroll down this list of options to the botton and find the 'Allow paste operations via script' setting.

Step 4: Either choose disable or select prompt. Press OK, and OK on the Internet Options form. I recommend disable because the continuous prompting can get very anoying! 'Prompt' will ask you every time a script tries to sneek a peek at your clipboard, like this:

Alternatively, you could use Firefox which is an alternative web browser instead of Internet Explorer. You can download Firefox from here or you can get it bundled with the Google Toolbar from the logo on the right.