Paste Passwords into blocked form fields on the Internet

Martin Brinkmann
Jul 26, 2014
Updated • Jul 29, 2014
Internet
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29

Most Internet services don't prevent you from pasting information into password fields or other form fields on websites.

Some on the other hand restrict pasting to select fields or none at all, which means that you need to fill out those fields manually as you cannot use copy and paste to do so.

That's at least how it looks like on first glance. One example that I encountered just recently. I added a couple of items to a cart on this site and was asked to create an account to complete the purchase.

Both the repeat email address field and confirm password field are locked on the site blocking you from pasting text into them.

I use KeePass to generate unique passwords for websites and paste the information into the forms. Since I was not able to do so for one field, and had no desire to type a 30+ character password into the confirm password field, I had to find a way to bypass the restriction.

Bypass the restriction

paste in blocked form fields
Using the Inspector to select the page element.

I'm using Firefox as my main browser which is why I demonstrate how it is done using it. All other "mainstream" browsers, Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer, support Developer Tools as well, and you can usually launch them by hitting F12 while the page is open that you want to modify.

  1. Make sure the page with the form is the active tab in the browser.
  2. Hit F12 to start the Developer Tools.  They are displayed in a frame at the bottom of the browser window in Firefox.
  3. Select the inspector icon (the left icon next to Inspector in the toolbar), and click on the Confirm Password field (or any other field that blocks pasting).
  4. Locate oncopy="return false" and double-click on it.
  5. Change false to true, and et voila, you can paste into the second field as well.
  6. Alternatively, delete the whole property and hit return in the end.

Note: The effect remains until you reload the website, meaning it is not permanent but only temporary. This does not appear to work in Chrome right now, check out the alternatives below.

Alternatives

If you don't like digging in code to resolve the issue, or if a site uses a different method to prevent you from pasting into select fields, then you may be interested in alternatives to the manual solution posted above.

Browser extensions make things more comfortable. Firefox users and users who run forks of the browser may install Disable clipboard manipulations which enables pasting among other things.

Users who run a Chromium-based browser can download and install Don't fuck with paste instead.

Summary
Paste Passwords into blocked form fields on the Internet
Article Name
Paste Passwords into blocked form fields on the Internet
Description
Some websites block you from pasting contents into form fields. This guide explains how you can bypass that restriction.
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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