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Fallacy of WebLockPro and other HTML security programs


Evolt is a great website, and THELIST is a great mailing list.

We were talking about how ridiculous it is to think that you can put up a web page and protect it from anyone who really wants to get at it.

There are snake oil salesmen who try to tell you differently. What they sell is bunk. Yes it will stop someone who doesn't really care. Yipee.

javascript:d=window.open();d.document.open('text/plain').write(document.body.outerHTML)

Bang, that's all it takes.

Oh, and by the way, if you go to the site with Internet Explorer be sure to disable a certain security preference:

Tools > Internet Options > Security

Click on the Internet icon

Click on customize.

Scroll down to where it says Allow Paste Operations By Script.

Set it to DISABLE.

See, it turns out that they care about THEIR privacy, but not yours, so they are perfectly happy taking over your Windows pasteboard. Do you think they ought to be able to do that? Me neither.

If you don't want anyone to have acceess to it, don't put it on the web. If you want to limit access to it, put it behind a password, but don't think it's fool-proof.