If you use a computer several hours a day, you probably use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C almost automatically when copying blocks of text or pictures from one program to another.

Yuga of Ambot Ah! points out that this oft-used command may not be as innocent as we thought. The data that you copy using this shortcut key is stored in clipboard and is accessible from the internet by a combination of Javascripts and PHP/ASP/CGI.

To illustrate:

• Copy any text by Ctrl+C
• Click this link: http://www.friendlycanadian.com/applications/clipboard.htm
• You will see the text you copied on the Screen which was accessed by this web page.

Shocking isn’t it? For this reason, it would be wise NOT to copy sensitive data (like passwords, credit card numbers, PIN, etc.) in the clipboard while surfing the Web. It is extremely easy to extract the text stored in the clipboard to steal your sensitive information so opt to type in sensitive information manually so that you won’t have to worry about the possibility of a security breach. The website listed above also has a link that can clear your clipboard so if you must use the shortcut command, you can clear it immediately before other people can access your confidential information.

Note: FireFox users won’t have to worry about this problem but Internet Explorer and Netscape users should definitely pay attention to what they copy using Ctrl+C.