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Pastejacking

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Re: Pastejacking

#161

Post by qb45 »

Trundle wrote: post #140
fennecfoxen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you've got a concept of morality based on primarily being motivated to help others Ethically, self-interest is fine. Failing to help others isn't a huge deal either. It's the part where you're actively and deliberately harming others (by polluting search results - impairing both search engines, as a company, and their users) that we're objecting to.

I think the idea of "polluting search results" requires too much of a subjective concept of what good content is to say whether producing one kind or not is unethical. They aren't producing what they are because people aren't looking at it and I'm very sceptical of any notion that people don't generally do what they want. It has a very centrally planned feel to say "people want think pieces" or "people want to read a…

People generally do what they want to do, but they base their decisions on incomplete information on what they are going to get. Lots of crap wouldn't get its clicks if it didn't appear to be something it isn't.

Re: Pastejacking

#162

Post by TeMPOraL »

dave2000 wrote: post #119
ashitlerferad wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a pretty unethical way to make money.

Kind of odd to even bring ethics up when discussing how websites make money. It doesn't matter at all. Ethics is normally used to discuss other people getting harmed by actions, but when all that harm can be removed simply by closing the browser and doing something else it's barely worth talking about. Is it ethical for a shop to advertise its products in the shop windows when the people running the shop know that th…

> Who gives a shit?

I do. That's probably why I won't be running an effective business any time soon. Being nice and not fucking people over doesn't get you far in highly competitive markets.

I strongly second what 'nitrogen wrote[0]. This is very much about ethics.

> Is it ethical for a shop to advertise its products in the shop windows when the people running the shop know that there are higher quality products available in a competitors store?

In my opinion, no. Basically, if you know your product is shit, you are morally obliged to make it better or find something else to sell; lying to people to make them buy your stuff instead of something objectively better is fucking them over for your own gain.

Think about it the next time you find yourself on the receiving end of such businessmen.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11759628

Re: Pastejacking

#163

Post by TeMPOraL »

Trundle wrote: post #140
fennecfoxen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you've got a concept of morality based on primarily being motivated to help others Ethically, self-interest is fine. Failing to help others isn't a huge deal either. It's the part where you're actively and deliberately harming others (by polluting search results - impairing both search engines, as a company, and their users) that we're objecting to.

I think the idea of "polluting search results" requires too much of a subjective concept of what good content is to say whether producing one kind or not is unethical. They aren't producing what they are because people aren't looking at it and I'm very sceptical of any notion that people don't generally do what they want. It has a very centrally planned feel to say "people want think pieces" or "people want to read a…

What you wrote is a very twisted rationalization of screwing people on purpose. Sure, if you create several things and watch which ones people like more, you can say that those people do what they want. But when you start purposefully designing tricks to e.g. advertise you have information, and then sell them ads and bullshit, you're doing active harm to people. It's not subjective at all.

Re: Pastejacking

#164

Post by TeMPOraL »

Fiahil wrote: post #141
ashitlerferad wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a pretty unethical way to make money.

Yes, it's called "advertisement". Sad welcome to 2016.

Very sad welcome because somehow working in advertisement industry is considered a respectable occupation in 2016. The cognitive dissonance of the society is sometimes mind-boggling.

Re: Pastejacking

#165

Post by [deleted] »

asddddd wrote: post #118
dawnerd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to implement this kinda code when I worked for Demand Media and it certainly worked. Whats funny is you don't need any fancy new apis to make it work. We were doing some pretty basic tactics actually. Only real way to prevent it is disable javascript.

Toggling dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled in Firefox has fixed this on every implementation I've seen apart from the PoC here.

[deleted]

Re: Pastejacking

#166

Post by sdfjkl »

rcthompson wrote: post #101
userbinator wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox and IE let this feature be configurable: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250473(v=vs.85).a... http://i.stack.imgur.com/jvDUh.png https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Preferences... But the same quick search shows that it does not appear possible to control this in Chrome. If anyone knows how, please correct me.

I just turned this preference off in Firefox, and it didn't stop the demo from working, which makes sense since the preference says it only disables oncopy/cut/paste events, and this demo uses a different method.

This is because the Firefox preference is useless - it only disables the clipboard events, but not the clipboard access from any other event. So the demo simply hooks the keydown event instead. Have a look at the source, it's really quite straightforward.

What browsers really should have are a standard "Ask & Whitelist" dialog for all of these security critical features[1]. It seems Firefox even used to have this feature, but it and the corresponding addon have long since crumbled to dust[2].

Unfortunately browsers are no longer controlled by hackers who think about all the implications of a feature, but by corporations who think about money, and us hackers have to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to play security whack-a-mole, or be forced to give up and use our browsers like sheep, the way the corporations want us to.

[1] There's many more, including utterly ridiculous stuff such as telling websites the battery charge status of your device (and if your charger is plugged in): https://gist.github.com/haasn/69e19fc2fe0e25f3cff5

[2] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Granting_JavaScript_access_to_the_...

Re: Pastejacking

#167

Post by TeMPOraL »

joombaga wrote: post #74
danielweber wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're taking that step, then after you paste into the clean room, you copy out of the clean room.

At first I thought "I don't do this; it's never seemed necessary", but actually, I think I do. Years of copying to a plain text editor to strip formatting have conditioned the behavior.

Yeah, I started to copy through a text box (usually the Windows Run (Win+R) box, which isn't exactly safe now that I think of it...) to strip formatting some time ago. It's pretty much necessary whenever you want to paste anything into GMail web interface. The web is getting more ridiculous every day...

Re: Pastejacking

#168

Post by qb45 »

jschwartzi wrote: post #98
logicallee wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proof of concept didn't work for me. I highlighted the text, right-clicked and clicked "copy". I thought it was just broken or not hooking the on-copy properly. Then I realized that the reason I was doing that instead of ctrl-c is all the times that web sites break ctrl-c. I literally have gotten used to highlighting, right-clicking, and clicking copy, for a "clean" copy :) I wasn't even aware I was doing this. O…

Right-click hooking could be defeated by inserting a sequence number in the right-click menu and displaying the same sequence number somewhere in the browser window. I will say that the people who generate event hooks in browsers need to pull their heads out of their asses before this kind of thing becomes necessary.

In Firefox, holding CTRL or SHIFT (don't remember which one) bypasses JS hooks and always displays the menu. I think it's even better solution :)

Re: Pastejacking

#169

Post by Trundle »

qb45 wrote: post #161
Trundle wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea of "polluting search results" requires too much of a subjective concept of what good content is to say whether producing one kind or not is unethical. They aren't producing what they are because people aren't looking at it and I'm very sceptical of any notion that people don't generally do what they want. It has a very centrally planned feel to say "people want think pieces" or "people want to read a…

People generally do what they want to do, but they base their decisions on incomplete information on what they are going to get. Lots of crap wouldn't get its clicks if it didn't appear to be something it isn't.

Their crap is what it appears to be though. If they weren't delivering on their clickbaity titles then people would soon learn. It's not like they're anonymous publishers, sites like ehow and livestrong are strong brands. They're not counting on unaware users.

Re: Pastejacking

#170

Post by [deleted] »

arviewer wrote: post #144
rcthompson wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just turned this preference off in Firefox, and it didn't stop the demo from working, which makes sense since the preference says it only disables oncopy/cut/paste events, and this demo uses a different method.

> I just turned this preference off in Firefox, and it didn't stop the demo from working, which makes sense since the preference says it only disables oncopy/cut/paste events, and this demo uses a different method. How is this method different?

[deleted]
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