I have seen the above dialogue box twice in the last week and it just creeps me out.

I cant think of any good legitimate reason a Website should have access to my local clipboard.

After doing some reading on this apparently IE7 can sometimes set this off in error and you can turn it off, however I would rather be bothered with false positives than not know what a particular Website is doing to my computer.

There are a number of Websites on the web designed specifically to try install Malware/Spyware on your computer or worse steal confidential information like usernames and passwords.

The number of these sites is growing.

In the bad old days Viruses\Malware\Spyware travelled by e-mail but in 2008 you are more likely to get hit by visiting a Website.

Tip: If you have any doubts about a particular Website, exercise caution move on and try another one.

Things to Avoid: Sites that try and install software.

The above prompt is trying to install an ActiveX Control. An ActiveX Control is like software that installs in your web browser.

Tip: In some cases you may need to install an ActiveX control to access some feature of the site but only accept those you *REALLY* need. Clicking yes  blindly to everything is asking for trouble.

On the link below is a well written but slightly old article on Malware.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/malware.ars/1

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Blog Entries, Security Advisories, Tech Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.