The cautious approach to what I copy and what I type

The clipboard is the smallest interface into and out of the browser. A cautious approach treats it as a real surface, not as a convenience.

The clipboard is a room with a door in each wall

Every application on my machine can read the clipboard when it is the active window, and many of them read it in the background. That is not a scandal, it is how the clipboard works. But it does mean that anything that sits on the clipboard for a while is legible to more of the machine than I usually think about.

A cautious approach to nexus market treats the clipboard as a shared room with a door in each wall. What goes in leaves through several doors. What goes in does not stay in longer than necessary.

This changes my behaviour in small ways. It does not change my browser.

What I always copy, never type

I always copy the onion address. Always. The three addresses at the top of this article are on this page so that I have somewhere to copy them from. The copy button next to each puts the entire string on the clipboard in one action, which is the only reliable way to move a fifty six character string of pseudo random characters into a browser without an error.

A wrong character three characters from the end opens something that is not the market. There is no version of typing where I would catch that reliably. So I never type it. Not even the first three characters.

The address is the one thing whose accuracy is the whole point. Everything else about the visit is optional. The address is not.

What I always type, never copy

I always type the password to the account. Passwords do not go on the clipboard from a manager if I can help it. If the manager can autofill from a keyboard shortcut without touching the clipboard, that is what I want; otherwise I type it. This is friction, and the friction is what I am buying.

I never paste a password in a form on the market front page from a chat window or a text file. If I have to move the password across from a note, the note is wrong, not the password. Fix the note.

I never save a password inside Tor Browser. Not remembered, not synced. The manager and my head are the two places passwords live.

What I clear after I paste

After I paste the address I clear the clipboard. Copying a bit of nothing over the top of what was there is the easiest way. I copy a single space, or the first word of the next sentence I am about to write. Now the clipboard is that, not the address.

This is a small habit and it takes a second. It matters more when I am about to switch to another window or another application, because that window will read the clipboard for its own reasons and I want it to read a space, not a onion address.

On the second machine, where nothing else runs, this is less important. On the main machine, where a dozen apps might be watching, it is a small kindness to myself.

The manager, and how I use it here

A password manager on this machine holds the market login and nothing about the market itself. It does not hold the onion address, because the onion address lives on this site. It holds the account name and the password, and it knows to unlock only when I unlock it.

A cautious approach uses the manager as an autofill tool that never puts the password on the clipboard. If the manager cannot do that, I use a different manager. If I do not have a manager, I type from memory and I stop and start over if I get it wrong.

The manager does not have a screen shortcut on the desktop, and it does not stay unlocked between sessions.

A minute after the paste

I look at the address bar. I compare the last six characters of what is there with the last six of the address I meant to paste. This is a habit that costs a second and catches almost every clipboard slip.

I do not compare all fifty six characters. I do not need to. If the last six match and the first three match, and the paste was one operation, the middle is right by construction. The clipboard does not truncate strings in the middle.

If the last six do not match, I close the tab, clear the clipboard, and paste again from the copy button next to the address on this site.

What I never copy, in either direction

• Any real order id. Order ids belong on the market, in the account, and in a note I write on paper if I want to remember one for a few hours.
• Any wallet seed phrase. Seed phrases are for paper and for offline, and go nowhere near the clipboard, ever.
• Any private key material. Same as seed phrases, with the same reasons.
• Any real amount denominated in any currency. Amounts either belong on the market or in my head; they do not travel on my desktop clipboard.

Why any of this matters for a cautious approach

The clipboard is a small thing and it is where a lot of small mistakes live. A cautious approach spends a little attention on the small things because that is what saves it from the large things. Nothing here is dramatic on its own, and none of it is impressive.

Every rule above is here because it removes one small class of mistake without making the visit slower to a degree that would put me off making it. The whole point of a cautious approach is that it stays cautious for the tenth visit and the twentieth, not just for the first one.

What this article is not. This is not a claim that the clipboard is safe or unsafe on its own. It is a description of what I move through it and what I do not.