[ikidd]

It's the thing you do most with selected text and it removes the need to use a keyboard shortcut.

Selecting text with no purpose and being worried that it's a security hole is like saying "I leave my car on the street with the keys in it therefore nobody should have keys".

[bilkow]

I'd argue it's more like "looking at your keys while you're picking them". Selecting text is also known as highlighting and some people highlight text while reading / thinking.

[fn-mote]

I totally disagree.

Or is a huge surprise (to the typical user) that highlighting text BY ITSELF in one window exposes that information for JavaScript running in a different application (like the browser). It’s like knowing that my smart TV is fingerprinting my viewing habits.

Isn’t the biggest security risk from copy and pasting passwords from a “secure” location to another one?

It looks like with modern browsers, reading the clipboard is gated behind some restrictions. Whew.

[jenadine]

Javascript doesn't have access to the clipboard without explicit user actions. And the clipboard might still contain sensitive info regardless of it was something recently highlighted, or something recently explicitly copied.