I frequently have very personal files temporarily on my virtual desktop.
I sometimes download a new program, which is going into a VM. Before sending it in there, I tend to VirusTotal scan it.
I load my VirusTotal bookmark in my browser (Pale Moon) click the "upload file" button, it defaults to the "desktop" view of files, and I select the correct file to upload.
Then it instantly uploads to VirusTotal, owned by Google.
It has not happened yet, but what if, one day, I make a slight mistake when clicking the program installer file, and instead select my latest ZIP archive of my internal system, full of highly private and personal data? It will be instantly uploaded to Google, forever out of my control.
Whether Google will ever use this against me in practice is beside the point: I hate the idea of this being so easily possible just from one small mistake like that.
The same could also happen if I have the browser windowed with VirusTotal open, and accidentally drag-and-drop the wrong file into it. Instant upload. Or I keep it windowed while I'm supposed to drag-and-drop my private ZIP archive, but there's a muscle twitch in my hand, or a mechanical glitch with my mouse, so the file ends up dropping into the browser window instead of going to the File Explorer location which I intended.
A lot of people are much less secure than I, and even keep a "remote cloud drive" around at all times in their File Explorer which they could accidentally drop files into at any time. Things like that make me lose sleep, just thinking about others' data flying around with no control, especially if I'm included in their data somehow.
I can think of numerous things like that. And it really stresses me out. I can't be the only one.
Other than constantly being on "full guard", are there any "tricks" to make sure this kind of thing never happens?