Soapbox

I shall be leaving my present job in a few weeks and will hand my laptop to my successor.

I've logged onto personal email sites a number of times and because I'm a rubbish typist haven't always hit the tab button to go from login name to password field properly.

The upshot is that when I start to type in a login name the laptop shows all the options it has remembered starting with that letter. Some sho wht login name but some show the login name followed immediately by the password in clear type.

How can I get the laptop to forget what it has remembered before I hand over to my successor?

e.g. Login nicholas  password ab12 - the laptop suggests nicholas AND nicholasab12 because I've not hit the tab button properly.

All help appreciated.

hi there,

In your browser (Internet explorer/Firefox etc) options, you should be able to clear personal information, it might have to clear it all (history/passwords, not bookmarks) but they usually have a check list of things to get rid of, Just get rid of the passwords and then next time you login to everything tell it to remember me or save passwords etc.

Hope it helps!

pedro (el magnifico) wrote (see)

Chnage all your passwords and then it won't matter.

Thanks Pedro - told you I was technically challenged. Generally I'm practical but this hadn't occurred to me.....

Henry A 3 wrote (see)

hi there,

In your browser (Internet explorer/Firefox etc) options, you should be able to clear personal information, it might have to clear it all (history/passwords, not bookmarks) but they usually have a check list of things to get rid of, Just get rid of the passwords and then next time you login to everything tell it to remember me or save passwords etc.

Hope it helps!

Nick, also try CrapCleaner - available as a free (safe) DL - look for ccleaner.

That really does do a clean sweep.

Incidentally, a quick way to remove log-in suggestions is to press 'delete' when the wrong one comes up. It will vanish. I do that to clean out my Google search window at times. But for security, use something like Crap Cleaner too as PCs have a nasty habit of keeping a trace of deleted data. That's how forensic investigators find deleted porn or other evidence. You thought you'd removed that file... **

** this in no way means that I have porn, it's just a 'frinstance.

Thanks NPC, I'll have a look a CCleaner.

Another vote for CCleaner.

It will wipe all the passwordsetc and can also wipe the free space on the disk (in case you have deleted files thinking they have gone - they havent, they are just lurking, waiting to be reserected).

If you have an IT department and you feel you can ask them, they might have a prefered way of wiping disks if you explain what your worry is.    One of my old employers took all hard drives out of machines then took a hammer to the disk till it was in little bits. As they said - old hard drives can be unreliable and little bits cant be reserrected.

Thanks Simon,

I wouldn't say it was an IT department as such.... our Khartoum office has a contract with an IT firm who visit regularly and 'service' the computers.

When you ask them what exactly they have done they generally say,

I fixed it.

Fixed what?

The problem.

What problem?

With your laptop.

What exactly was the problem?

Software.

This conversation can go on until one player dies.

I'll try ccleaner!

Ah...I see your problem.

I am used to It departments called Sean or Dave...sometimes Mick...once there was Paul

AtlasLion,

What you are talking about is called Auto Complete. There's handy summary here but to save you the link, here's how to delete the saved Auto Complete information (your usernames/passwords):

For Microsoft Internet Explorer:

1.Open Internet Explorer

2. Click the Tools menu and then Internet Options.

3. Within the Internet Options window, click the content tab.

4. Click the Autocomplete button.

5. Within this window you can click Clear forms to clear all form data except for passwords and/or click Clear Passwords to clear the passwords.  In addition to clearing these fields, if you do not want Internet Explorer to save this data in the future, you may uncheck any of the available boxes in this window.

For Firefox:

1. Open Firefox

2. Click Tools and then Options

3. Within the Options window click the Privacy button and click the Clear button on the Saved  Form Information.

Hope that helps. But always handy to change your passwords too, and never ever ever use memorable words (names, dates, anything which can be found in a dictionary...).

Thanks Chris, very helpful. Yes, Autocomplete, thanks.

For some reason my Firefox doesn't have the saved form information in the options, privacy tab but I get the idea and I'm sure () I can work it out.

Anyone tried this?

I would, obviously.

Sadly I don't have a microwave

Go to internet options and history. There is a button to clear all history. Among them it has passwords option. It will clear all your cookies and browser history too which is not a bad idea to do anyway. Another option is to re-format your hardrive. A drastic option kind of like a slash and burn option. I'd suggest only doing this on your last day and only if you want to burn your bridges completely. The IT guys and your successor will love you for doing that.

Of course even doing that does not clear your hard drive as people can always recover data. Our local recycling charity / company sells re-conditioned pcs and obviously have to clear the hard drives. They use a piece of software that overwrites everything. The US DoD policy is to do this 4 times using the same software as this company who actually does it 5 times. You can get software off the internet that can clear histories and also overwrite the hard drive. This second option is the only way to completely destroy your browsing history.

Having said that if any past employer actually tried to discover your history after you use the clear browser option in internet options I'd be very surprised. I'd only expect that from companies that need higher states of security. Those companies would probably know your browsing history anyway. I know our company has not got a monitoring policy set up but do have the capability and one manager does use it contrary to current UK laws.

To summarise: -

Select "tools" then at the bottom "Internet Options", in the browsing history section select delete then at the bottom there is a "Delete all" button. Select this and it should delete everything from within microsoft explorer. I don't know about any other browser but I'd imagine there is a similar sort of process. This should be enough to stop most replacements from getting your passwords. As I said before it would require a lot of specialist knowledge and software to get passwords out after that has been done. We're talking forensic computing.

smashing the drive into little pieces doesnt destroy the data, just makes it irretrevable (for most people) as the magnetic media is broken into bits.

That said...if you have access to some very expensive hardware and software ( I am lead to believe) even that wont help...but we are talking very very specialist kit.

Thanks TTG,

I've no problem with people seeing my browsing history, just where I've mistyped user names and added the password without moving to the password field. 

I don't imagine my successor would try to access sites as me but thenwhy take the risk? Ive had plenty of good advice here on how to get round this issue. Thanks everyone.

To make a hard disk safe before disposing of an old PC, just delete all the files which you don't want anyone to see, then empty the Trash, then use SDelete to make the "deleted" space safe (it overwrites all the empty space several times to make the files unrecoverable).

"smashing the drive into little pieces doesn't destroy the data," so collecting all the bits and eating them wouldn't work either?

want to destroy data - get your IT dept to upgrade the machine. that will do it. you'll never be able to find anything ever again.