[Tip] Disable Paste Protection in Opera Web Browser

New versions of Opera web browser come with a new security feature called “Paste Protection“. This new feature monitors the copied data on webpages and if it finds a sensitive data such as bank account number, credit card number, etc was changed by an external app in the clipboard, it displays a warning message to alert the user about this change.

Here is the official description of Paste Protection feature given by Opera team:

One potential risk while browsing is the hijacking of your clipboard. By doing this, someone can replace a bank account number or crypto wallet identifier with a different one.

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Opera has just made browsing and online payments even safer with new Paste Protection feature. Whenever you copy-paste any sensitive data, like a credit card number or crypto wallet identifier, you run the risk of it being hijacked and modified by some bad actors who want your money to land in their accounts instead.

Paste Protection protects you from this. When you copy sensitive data in Opera Browser, the data is monitored for changes for some time or until you paste the data. If the data is changed by an external application, a warning is displayed.

This small feature ensures you can continue to browse securely and with peace of mind.

Following screenshot shows Paste Protection feature displaying a notification alert while copying an IBAN number:

Paste Protection feature comes enabled by default in Opera 84 and later versions. In previous versions of Opera, the feature was disabled by default.

If you don’t need this extra security feature, you can turn off this feature by modifying a secret preference. Similarly, if you want to manually enable Paste Protection feature in older versions of Opera, you can modify the same secret preference to turn on the feature.

Opera team has provided a hidden secret flag/preference in Opera browser to enable/disable Paste Protection feature.

Following steps will help you in enabling or disabling Paste Protection in Opera web browser:

1. Launch Opera web browser and type opera://flags in address bar and press Enter. It’ll open the hidden secret advanced configuration page called “Experiments“.

2. Now click inside “Search flags” text box and type paste. It’ll show following option in the result:

3. If you want to deactivate and disable new Paste Protection feature in Opera browser, select “Disabled” from the drop-down box.

Similarly, if you want to enable Paste Protection feature in previous versions of Opera browser, select “Enabled” from the drop-down box.

4. Opera will ask you to restart the browser. Click on “Relaunch now” button to restart Opera.

That’s it. You have successfully disabled/enabled Paste Protection feature in Opera web browser.

Also Check:

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