LinkedIn caught snooping on iOS clipboard; company acknowledges and assures a fix

LinkedIn has been caught snooping on iOS’ clipboard. A user of iOS 14 Developer beta has caught the Microsoft app copying contents of the MacBook Pro’s clipboard, courtesy of the Universal Clipboard feature. LinkedIn has acknowledged the issue and has assured a fix soon.

A Twitter user, @DonCubed, posted a video to highlight the snooping issue. He claims that while he was using LinkedIn on his iPad Pro, the app was copying each keystroke of the clipboard. The developer was able to catch hold of the snooping, thanks to Apple’s new iOS 14 feature, which notifies the user when an app is accessing the clipboard.

The developer further stated that LinkedIn was copying contents from his MacBook Pro while he was accessing the app on his iPad Pro. 

You may be wondering how is it possible? Apple devices come with support for Universal Clipboard, a feature that allows users with multiple Apple devices to copy and paste content from one device to another. The feature clubbed with iOS 14’s new feature, helped the developer know about the snooping activity.

Erran Berger, who is the VP Engineering, consumer products at LinkedIn, acknowledged the issue and said that the team has traced this activity to a path of the code that does an equality check between the clipboard contents and the currently typed content in a text box. He further stated that the data is neither stored nor transmitted anywhere.

Hi @DonCubed. Appreciate you raising this. We've traced this to a code path that only does an equality check between the clipboard contents and the currently typed content in a text box. We don't store or transmit the clipboard contents.

— Erran Berger (@eberger45) July 3, 2020

Berger, in the following tweet, assured that the company has found a fix which will be live soon in the LinkedIn app.

iOS 14’s enhanced privacy feature also exposed video-making app TikTok snooping on the iPhone’s clipboard without the user’s knowledge. The Chinese app reportedly told Apple that it will stop accessing the clipboard henceforth.