Warning: Found out my "secure" password manager was copying plaintext to clipboard all along

I was at a coffee shop in Austin last Friday working on some freelance stuff. Went to paste a password into a login field and accidentally hit paste into a text document instead. There it was, my bank password just sitting there in plain text. Turns out my old manager app had a setting I never turned off that kept a copy in the clipboard history. I figured since it was an encrypted vault, everything was handled safely. But nope. Had to change like 30 passwords that weekend. Has anyone else had a similar clipboard leak scare?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim.sandra26d ago

oh come on, I get the panic but is it really that big of a deal? like unless someone was literally leaning over your shoulder watching your screen at that exact moment, who's actually gonna see that clipboard text. most people's threat level is way lower than they think lol. yeah you had to change your passwords which sucks but honestly that's probably a good thing to do every once in a while anyway. I feel like everyone on these forums gets way too worked up about stuff that in real life barely ever actually causes problems.

craig.reese26d ago

Oh geez. That reminds me of my buddy Dave. He was helping his grandma set up her new tablet and she had her email password saved in a text file called "passwords.txt" right on the desktop. He tried to explain why that was bad but she just said "well it works fine for me." Then a week later her Facebook got hacked and someone posted a bunch of weird political memes on her wall. She finally changed everything after that but it took her months to clean up the mess.