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ua:fa95ebdb-6da9-498c-aabb-77c7baaa28d3

When I woke up this morning, this "code" was the last text copied to my phone (Samsung, Android version 12), of course it was not me who copied this string, and I spent the night alone. I saw this when opening the GBoard keyboard, which offered to paste it. I didn't enable clipboard with this keyboard, so it was less than an hour before I woke up.

At first I thought it was me accidentally writing this text while sleeping (my phone is next to me all night, not turned off). But looking closer, I saw that it is a hex code. While searching on the net, I saw that ua can mean "user agent" but impossible to find what this hexadecimal string means...

Does anyone know this kind of string? Or would have any idea what could have happened to cause this to end up being copied to my phone? I admit it scares me...

Youlounn
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2 Answers2

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The format of this string is called "UUID" (universally unique identifier), or "GUID" (globally ...) in some places.

It represents a series of 128 bits which are usually chosen at random when a unique ID for anything is needed.

The collision probability on 128 random bits is so low that they are considered unique (or more precisely: unique enough) even without a central coordinating instance that guarantees global uniqueness.

That being said - if "ua:" stands for "user agent" in this case, then it seems to be a string identifying your browser, and it might have gotten into your clipboard from a badly programmed tracking script on some website you visited.

LWChris
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This looks like an app's internal ID (GUID) to identify an entity. Within the context of the app in question,n copy and pasting something will result in an entity with that ID being copied. But if you paste it externally to the app, you will see the entity's ID. This is a common technique for app development.

Clifford Cheefoon
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