Comments on: Text copying disabled

By: Dave R

Dave R — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:16:23 +0000

god, it happened all week.. I’ve solved it by now but wanted to see if there are any other solutions laying around
Good on ya

By: Wing

Wing — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:38:48 +0000

It really works… I was open a survey tab in browser, then “Text Copying Disabled” appear when I pressed “Ctrl + V”, didn’t notice it’s the main reason that make my “Ctrl + V” disabling before found the solutions from this forum, as some website said cuz of settings problem…

Really Thanks a lot…

The main reason is a “Global Test Market” Survey tab is open in my browser, when I close the browser, all the problems solved… Never think that a webpage will takeover some Windows function.

By: Alec Soroudi

Alec Soroudi — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:56:40 +0000

Yes, technically it is. I meant that it is not doing what the term hacking has come to be known (the unethical kind), although abuse of a mechanism is unethical.

What’s interesting is that the SWF file that the survey I was doing is only 128 bytes. It never ceases to amaze how small malware can be.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:46:30 +0000

@Alec, thanks for the further information – obvious really.

Hopefully further versions of Flash will have security settings that will remove the ability of movies to use the clipboard (without user say-so).

Oh, and if we’re getting into semantics, it could be classed as a ‘Hack‘ – from Wikipedia:
“[The term Hack] may refer to a clever or quick fix to a computer program problem, or to a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem.”.

By: Alec Soroudi

Alec Soroudi — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:10:55 +0000

It’s not hacking or taking over your system. In fact, it’s not actually /disabling/ copying at all. What it is doing is to rapidly copy that text into the clipboard in an infinite loop. It’s abusing a legitimate browser mechanism. This has the effect that not only can you not copy and paste text, but you cannot copy and paste files either (or anything else that uses the clipboard). (Technically you can still copy stuff, but you must paste it very, very quickly, before it gets wiped out of the clipboard.)

Apparently these /geniuses/ think that their survey is so bloody interesting that everyone would just drop everything else to fill it out.

If your’re using Google Chrome, you can use its Task Manager to kill the Flash plug-in to stop it (of course it will reload on the next page of the survey, so you’ll have to do it again). You could also try disabling the Flash plug-in altogether while doing the survey.

What’s interesting is to realize just how much we take copying/cutting for granted when we can’t use it.

HTH

By: halfdozmom

halfdozmom — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:51:07 +0000

Same issue here. As sson as I closed the survey, it worked again!!!

By: Elixyr

Elixyr — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:44:35 +0000

well… I updated java Runtime Environment and all was fixed

By: corifee

corifee — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:00:32 +0000

works very fine ))

By: Jay Langdon

Jay Langdon — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:33:50 +0000

I had the same issue. I was working on a survey in a browser and got the “text copying disabled” error in Excel. When I finished the survey I was fine in excel.

By: Jonathan Kubiak

Jonathan Kubiak — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:42:03 +0000

Yup, same problem. All the time!