A great couple of questions came in from Robin, in Harrisonburg this week.  The first one she asked I had written about in August but she needed more details.

Robin said, “At home when I type in a user name to sites that I have visited before the browser starts filling it in immediately – then when I finish the user name the password automatically pops in?”  This is called, “Auto Populate”.  She went on to say that while she is at her work computer she has to type in both each time she logs into a site and nothing auto populates.  “What’s up with that?”

I will cover the answer in the two most popular browser formats.

For Microsoft Internet Explorer you start with TOOLS then INTERNET OPTIONS.  Once there choose the “Content tab” and your settings will be found under “Auto Complete” where you then click “Settings”.  You have several choices as follow:  “Web Addresses”, “Forms”, “User names & Passwords on Forms” and “Prompt me to save passwords”. Forms are basically web sites and the text boxes in them.  I check all four items which are pretty self-explanatory.  The reason I check the last one about prompting is that I really don’t want someone to easily use my bank password if they happen to be on my computer.  That feature allows you to avoid that issue with sites you choose.

With Firefox it is slightly different and (sorry MS lovers) seems more complete than the offerings in MSIE mentioned above.  In FF go to TOOLS then OPTIONS and then select the Security tab.  Now about halfway down the window that opens under Passwords you have three choices, “Remember passwords for sites”, “Use a master password” and “Saved passwords” button.

The first should be clear.  The master password allows you to set one “master” password that has to be entered for the other ones to be auto-entered.  This feature gives you more protection against someone using your computer and logging into your sites.  They have to have the master to make the others work.  The final very interesting item, “Saved passwords” allows you to view all of the sites that passwords have been saved for and even view the actual passwords if you wish to.

All of the other modern browsers allow similar functionality.  Just look at their options to find them or contact the vendor if you can’t.

Next week, the other good question from Robin.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 5:25 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.