And what happens when I let someone else use my computer to look something up? I never check any of those boxes that say, “Always keep me logged in” or “Remember my password,” so why would I want AutoFill software to automatically insert my personal information into a web form regardless of the user?

Now that I’ve read your comment, and gotten some needed rest, I realize how incredibly illogical this paragraph sounds. I’d scrap it alltogether if it didn’t alienate your comment. Regardless, you have some excellent advice for anyone who has a computer in a location where it could be accessed by untrusted individuals (which is effectively anywhere). Logging off your computer does indeed resolve the problem of having another person gain access to sensitive personal information.

Personally, I make it a policy not to allow anyone other than my most trusted friends and family to use any of my computers without supervision. Additionally, they are to have the most limited access possible.

Windows XP has a nice Guest Account feature for this exact purpose – granting users just enough access to get their business done without compromising the system. Since the Guest Account does not pull AutoFill information out of other accounts on the machine, personal details can remain secure provided that all priveledged accounts are logged out and password-protected.

Security issues, though important in their own right, are not the main reason I find AutoFill tools useless. My biggest gripe is that they are not portable. They are restricted to individual machines and provide no way of synchronizing information between multiple systems. What good does AutoFill do me when I am at a computer that is not my own? If I were stuck at a public terminal, unable remember any of my usernames/passwords kept by AutoFill on my computer at home, I’d be dead in the water.

Now, this brings me to another point. If you do not trust these “so-called” people you say use your computer, what is to keep them from loading a virus while they are “looking something up”? Or, for that matter, what if they are accessing illegal sites or some kind of terrorist information. Next thing you know the CIA is knocking at your door asking questions and taking you to jail. Probably due to the fact that by this point you have succeeded in lodging enough RAM to run a small terroists LAN party up your nose. Of course, then they wonder, “if you had no other place than your nose to place things, where else must you have tried to put things?” Thus, you are stuck dealing with the ER people while you wait 5 hours to get X-Ray’s.

And to think, all of this could have been avoided had you simply used an Autofill application. What a shame.

So the moral is….Log Off or end up in the Emergency Room. It’s your choice. Flip a coin or something.

Peace