Yes, that is us, Tynt (www.tynt.com) on all the sites mentioned. Our analytics are tracking hundreds of thousands of sites worldwide. The attribution link feature is something that individual site owners can turn on and off. Also note that we don't track any personally identifiable information. We track content and help publishers learn what content of theirs people are finding most engaging.<p>What if I don’t want this behavior? We are currently working on a global opt out for users who would rather not have Tynt monitor their actions when they visit a site. In the interim you can opt out on a site by site basis (i.e. the opt out for the SF Gate is here: <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/faq.shtml#faq1.5#ixzz0bxLIAbL7" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/faq.shtml#faq1.5#ixzz0bxLIAb...</a><p>More info on Tynt is available in our FAQs here: <a href="http://www1.tynt.com/faq-technical-topics#ixzz0bxGzIgPZ" rel="nofollow">http://www1.tynt.com/faq-technical-topics#ixzz0bxGzIgPZ</a>
37Signals covered this or something similar: <a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2087-smart-pasting-at-the-new-yorker-site" rel="nofollow">http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2087-smart-pasting-at-the-new...</a>.<p>Tynt (<a href="http://www.tynt.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tynt.com/</a>) was the "culprit" in that case and looks so here.
In case anybody else doesn't see it immediately (it took me a couple of tries) -- the 'funny' bit is that it automagically appends "Read More: <link>" to your selection.<p>I haven't pored through their code, but I already know that my initial suspicion (binding CTRL+C with JS) isn't accurate, as right-clicking -> copy also appends it.<p>It's interesting at the very least, and I don't know how they're doing it. Anybody have an idea?
Am I the only one who isn't scared of all files ending in .js? I think it's kind of cool.<p>Possibilities are already popping into my head. This could in the future make citations and references really easy, for starters! Tick an option, or copy with a certain key set, and bam you have the quote and an IEEE-style citations entry in the paste buffer.
If you're interested, here's how to do it: <a href="http://brooknovak.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/accessing-the-system-clipboard-with-javascript/" rel="nofollow">http://brooknovak.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/accessing-the-sys...</a>
I was expecting to see an attribution link, but it didn't work. I don't block JS or anything; turns out this doesn't work if you copy-paste via drag-drop.
I've noticed this behavior on quite a few sites recently. It was annoying since I was trying to quote a bunch of sites and I had to remove the links at the end every time.<p>Now it makes me double check every time I copy and paste. At first thought this might not seem too bad but modifying basic user behavior should be frowned upon.
This is actually pretty handy. On the one hand, javascript that messes with the user like this strikes me as unethical (it really angers me when basic functionality is usurped like this), this one would actually save me time in the long run. Usually when I copy/paste text from an article on one tab to a form on another, I also copy and paste the link as well. Usually that involves two trips to the article's tab. I wouldn't have to do that with this article.
Politico.com does the same thing: <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32217.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32217.html</a>
Here's my Google doc on how to disable clipboard hijacking on certain sites: <a href="https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ASuZYyoQwvDoZGdqYnY5cndfMTNkdHNkZzUycQ&hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ASuZYyoQwvDoZGdqYnY5cndfM...</a> Accepting tips, suggestions, additions of other offending sites...
I didn't notice anything either. I had to go and read the rest of the comments here to see what was actually supposed to happen.<p>Although, these comments did serve as a remindeer for me to give NoScript a chance again.
Hmm, doesn't seem to be able to insert anything into the typical X11 middle-click-paste mechanism. It does insert the URL if I use Gnome's ctrl+c/ctrl+v, but I never use that.
Huffington post does the same thing with their article headlines. Users are always copy/pasting them into the story submission fields on a website I run.<p>It's very very annoying.
<i>Copy & paste some text from this article. Notice anything funny?</i><p>No?<p>(Thanks, <a href="http://www.ghostery.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ghostery.com/</a> !)