Is there anything interesting lingering on your clipboard?

A few weeks ago I pulled up a chair in front of an aging computer that is shared by many volunteers in order to log their work and do occasional web searches. After an hour or so of doing paperwork, I wanted to look something up on Google, so I selected the word and hit Control-C to copy it and quickly pasted it into the Google search bar, only to be greeted with an unusual error from Google saying that my search text was too long.

And the bits of the search string I saw had nothing to do with what I had copied. Clearly my Control-C did not “take” and I had pasted whatever stuff had been hanging around from the prior user.
My curiosity got the better of me and I opened Notepad and did a quick Control-V and watched in amazement as a young girl’s secrets were exposed before my eyes.

She is clearly struggling in her relationship with her boyfriend, because she had listed about fifty bad points about him in detail—and some were pretty bad. She then listed a dozen or so good points at the bottom. And I must admit that I read the whole story…and felt a voyeuristic guilt with each word.

I then closed Notepad and purged the clipboard and felt much better.
Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that I will feel uncomfortable the next time I see her. I feel like I snuck into her room and read her diary.

This is what she had done: She had written her personal note in Word or some other tool and then likely decided to email it to herself, so she copied and pasted the sordid details of her love life into Gmail, forgetting to purge the clipboard before going home.

And I, with no malice or intent, bumbled into her secrets.

Learn from the mistakes of others!

When was the last time you used a public computer at the library or worked on a common computer at school or work? Did you leave anything behind?