LinkedIn Caught Harvesting Users’ Clipboards on iOS 14 With Every Keystroke
- by Nick Cohen
- in Industry
- — Jul 6, 2020
Both the apps were reportedly copying contents from the clipboard of iOS devices after every few seconds. The professional networking website and job portal, owned by Microsoft, has allegedly been copying content from the clipboard with every keystroke.
Since the developer had this feature enabled, he could get notifications that the clipboard was being accessed on his MacBook Pro while he was using an iPad Pro. iOS 14's new privacy feature allows users to be notified when their clipboard is being accessed by an app.
Erran Berger, the Vice President of Engineering of Consumer Products at LinkedIn, responded that the behavior was due to a bug and that the behavior would be removed in an update to the app. To that end, the social media platform said that it was not storing or transmitting content recorded on iOS' clipboard.
The issue of iOS apps monitoring copy-paste data has been a subject of concern since March, when a pair of software developers published their research. In this case, it comes from an "equality check" in between the clipboard and what you have actually typed into a text box.
Don Morton, CEO at career portfolio site builder Urspace discovered that LinkedIn was copying his clipboard contents on every keystroke.
It's true that iOS 14 will come with plenty of interface changes, giving you a significantly enhanced user experience. Berger didn't say when users could anticipate a fix, but he vowed a follow-up once the service was offered in the LinkedIn app.
The actions was identified thanks to a new privacy attribute in iOS 14, which is at the moment in a minimal beta for developers.
LinkedIn is now working on a fix that should go live in an upcoming version of the app.
"We don't store or transmit the clipboard contents".
"I could easily see "phishing apps" starting to pop up (if they are not already) with the sole intention to scrape as much clipboard data as possible". This clipboard feature has already exposed the behavior of some well-known applications such as AliExpress, AccuWeather, and TikTok, etc.
Just after TikTok, LinkedIn has been called out for snooping on iOS users' clipboard data.
