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Hey there - I work at SO. Understand your concern and wanted to share some details. Browsers fire a copy event when you copy, just like a click event fires whe

Hey there - I work at SO. Understand your concern and wanted to share some details. Browsers fire a copy event when you copy, just like a click event fires when you press on a button. We just added analytics to it like we would any other feature on the site. We didn't track the content of your copy (browsers don't let you see the text content) but we did track the following: Meta data about the post and it's parent post like the id, owner, score, tags, if it was a question/answer, if it was accepted If your copy was from a code block or from text content The Referer header Standard analytics properties like the date/time, approximated location, account metadata Here's our privacy policy on analytics: "Analytics information Stack Overflow uses data analytics to ensure site functionality and to optimize our Product and Service offerings to you. We use web browser and mobile analytics to allow us to understand Network and Apps functionality. In doing so, we record information including, for example how often you visit the Network, how often you contribute content, Network and Apps performance data, errors and debugging information, and the type of activity you engage in while on the Network or in your use of our Products and Services. We may on occasion share this information with third parties for research or product and services optimization."

podiki 5y ago
I appreciate the response and detail here, would have liked to see that in the original post.
quesera 5y ago
> Browsers fire a copy event when you copy, just like a click event fires when you press on a button. We just added analytics to it like we would any other feature on the site. This is a bit misleading. More accurate would be: Stack Overflow is able to configure our web pages to track certain of your activities on the page, including Copy and Click. We do that.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  This is a bit misleading; "onclick" and "oncopy" are part of the HTML standard that "must be supported by all HTML elements [...] and that must be supported by all Document objects" [1] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webappapis.html#handler-onclick https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webappapis.html#handl... [2] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webappapis.html#handler-oncopy https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webappapis.html#handl...
  - quesera 5y ago
    That's right, but nothing mandates that the web page configures these event handlers, and sends these events to the tracking server operated by Stack Overflow. My point is: "We can make this thing happen, and we do so and record the results" is more accurate than "this interesting thing just happens, and we observe" which is the tone of the original. Most sites do not configure their pages to track copy events. SO does the unusual thing. They should be honest about that.

podiki 5y ago

I appreciate the response and detail here, would have liked to see that in the original post.

quesera 5y ago

> Browsers fire a copy event when you copy, just like a click event fires when you press on a button. We just added analytics to it like we would any other feature on the site. This is a bit misleading. More accurate would be: Stack Overflow is able to configure our web pages to track certain of your activities on the page, including Copy and Click. We do that.

jodrellblank 5y ago
This is a bit misleading; "onclick" and "oncopy" are part of the HTML standard that "must be supported by all HTML elements [...] and that must be supported by all Document objects" [1] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webappapis.html#handler-onclick https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webappapis.html#handl... [2] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webappapis.html#handler-oncopy https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webappapis.html#handl...
- quesera 5y ago
  That's right, but nothing mandates that the web page configures these event handlers, and sends these events to the tracking server operated by Stack Overflow. My point is: "We can make this thing happen, and we do so and record the results" is more accurate than "this interesting thing just happens, and we observe" which is the tone of the original. Most sites do not configure their pages to track copy events. SO does the unusual thing. They should be honest about that.