Filetonic / How do I stop my computer from automatically entering personal info?

How do I stop my computer from automatically entering personal info?

Your computer offers “saved form data” and “saved passwords” in order to make your Web browsing more convenient. I have to admit, it’s nice to be able to go to a website and have my user name and password pre-filled out. But, it’s not always the most secure thing to do. If someone were to steal my laptop, they’d be able to log into websites as if they were me.

Saved form data is also convenient - imagine never having to type in your address or credit card number again. Instead, you can have the computer automatically fill in this data on web forms for you. Convenient? Yes. Secure? No.

AutoComplete stores entries that you’ve made on visits to websites and then offers suggestions for using them again on similar forms. AutoComplete stores the following information:

Web addresses
Forms
User names and passwords on forms

Fortunately, these options are easy to change. These instructions are for Internet Explorer 7. Other versions of Internet Explorer have similar steps. First, go into Internet Explorer and click the Tools menu. Click on Internet options. Now, click the Content tab. Find the AutoComplete section and click on Settings. Here you’ll find checkboxes for each of the AutoComplete setting options. If you do not want AutoComplete to fill in any information for you, remove all checkmarks from the check boxes.

You can also set up AutoComplete to prompt you when saving user names and passwords. This gives you greater control over which passwords you save. Use this option if you want to be able to make your own decisions.

Once you have removed these options, it’s time to delete previously saved form data. This too is simple. Go back into Internet Options. This time, select the General tab and find the browsing history area. Click the Delete button. Next, you’ll see a screen listing the following five options for deletion:

Temporary Internet Files
Cookies
History
Form Data
Passwords

In this case, we’re interested in deleting Form Data and Passwords but it doesn’t hurt to delete all of these items. You can either delete each item individually or you can delete them all at once by hitting the Delete All button.