Pastebud Privacy Bugs

Pastebud is a new solution for the lack of copy and paste on the iPhone. To get around the lack of centralized shared application storage space on the iPhone, it’s a server side storage system. It works in MobileSafari via bookmarklets, and “works” in MobileMail by asking you to forward messages from which you want to copy to Pastebud, which then turns the email into a web page you can select text from. Sounds (a) convoluted, and (b) like a potential privacy problem, right?

The privacy problem is apparently a disaster: Harry McCracken reports that his clipboard data contains the contents of text copied by other users, including complete copies of random Pastebud users’ email.

Friday, 12 December 2008